Trying to ride the state's coattails to power, Pakistan's ageing Maoists concede that they misjudged the nature of their country and population.
Down at the Anarkali Bazaar teashops in Lahore, the aged leftovers of what was once the Left of Pakistan have time in their hands. When they tire of the television screens at home, they come here to debate the merits and demerits of the pro-China and pro-Russia decisions made so long ago by their respective factions.
Ironically, this is perhaps the only place in the country where you can hear such discussion, for there is hardly a trace of the Left remaining elsewhere in the polity. The Maoism that permeated the political thinking of the intelligentsia in the 1960s, if not mainstream politics itself, today survives only in teashop gossip of late-night Lahore.
Ironically enough, the decade-old history of Maoism in Pakistan had very little to sustain, anyway. Listening in to the conversation, one realises that even the staunchest Maoists today accept that their analyses and politics "back then" were misconceived.