It’s hard trying to determine whether what lies west of us is closer culturally than what lies east, or vice versa. What lies across either border has at one time or another exerted influence that encroached well past what is now Pakistan. Add in the influence of Islam (taken separately from the Turkic/Afghan/Persian cultural contribution, if that were at all possible), and the more recent British colonial element, and it gets complicated even further.
I’ve given up attempting to reconcile the various cultural affinities and antagonisms and influences into some sort of coherent theory. Some things just are, and should simply be celebrated and marveled at. They should be understood, but with the realization that doing so isn’t a simple endervour and the end result would not necessarily be a successful compartmentalization of the aforementioned influences into discrete entities. Just as the present is the sum total of everything that has occurred up to that point, who we are culturally is also a sum total, one whose constituents are fuzzy enough to blur into each other.
Of course if I had to choose, I would say that the western (immediately west of Pakistan) influence is the one I value more, and the one I’m most fascinated by.
