By Iftikhar H Malik
On a clear day, flying back to England from Delhi, I could see the vast, green plains of the Punjab melt into their counterparts across the Indo-Pakistani borders. I was returning after attending a conference at Jamia Millia that involved a cross-section of students and faculty. The encounter was hugely satisfying, and I was glad I had been persistent about obtaining a visa despite all the usual roadblocks that exist for Pakistanis and Pakistan origin expatriates.
Now, looking down, I could see wheat and mustard fields that were green squares in late March. I knew they extended for miles all the way to the Salt Range and beyond. In between, human encroachments like hair-like metalled roads and some brownish hamlets punctuated the green fields.
As we headed east, estimating that we might be flying over Pakistan, I looked for the Indus, which had unleashed unprecedented havoc last year, dislocating 20 million people all the way from Swat to lower Sindh.
The rage of the Indus, or the Sindhu to use its ancient name from the Rig Veda, was a rebuke to human infraction that the Indus has borne over the past decades, particularly the last two generations. Since the canalisation during the British Raj and construction of dams and barrages, the Indus and its tributaries have been ‘tamed’ so that many more millions depend on these waters. The old Sindhu knows this quite well and not with much mirth. It took its revenge on the descendants of the ancient Indus Valley and the toll of miseries surpassed the last two major tsunamis and earthquakes put together.
I had insisted on getting the Indian visa issued on my British passport because travelling to India on a Pakistani passport means going through various grinding procedures. Visa forms for Pakistanis require all kinds of biographical details about the applicant and his or her past generations, plus a bewildering clutch of documents. Screened by a whole host of functionaries and minutely studied by sleuths with suspicious eyes and magnifying glasses, the verdict finally depends on the Indo-Pakistani relationship at that moment, which is often as unpredictable as between two siblings, more temperamental than an obsequious Mir’s beloved.
Today, people are curiously shocked when I tell them of the travels of my late parents. My father took my mother to Aurangabad for their honeymoon all the way from his hamlet in the balmy Pothowar plateau where his house neighboured Joharan di Marri. His regiment was based somewhere near Emperor Aurangzeb Alamgir’s tomb, in the bagh of which they held their picnic after their fatiah. The bride, a shy damsel – the youngest in the family – sported marigold and jasmine flowers in her hair, her ears and nose laden with the traditional jewels that our Indus Valley ancestors prided themselves on millennia ago. But then of course, all this was long before 1947.
Now, if as a Pakistani you are lucky enough to obtain an Indian visa, you’ll find a separate queue and another bunch of forms awaiting you on arrival at the impressive Indira Gandhi International Airport or whatever your point of entry into India is.
You must report and register at a police station within the first twenty-four hours of your arrival and departure in each town or city you visit – and your visa is valid for specific town(s), not for the country. These restrictions are mirrored for Indians visiting Pakistan.
In the vastness of Delhi, finding the proper thana on a rickshaw, or with friends from across the Wagah, is surely a Farhadian strife. Yet by default, the ride allows you to scout around the newer and older parts of Delhi, amidst unending traffic jams that make you forget you are on the other side of the border. A few minor differences aside, like the well-fed, autonomous cows in the middle of the street or salubrious monkeys eyeing ripe bananas, you detect familiar faces and voices that could well be in Rawalpindi’s Raja Bazaar or Lahore’s Anarkali.
For a Pakistani, India is both a familiar and a foreign land. The familiarity comes from linguistic commonality, food habits, popular vocality, urban chaos and casual attitudes towards mundane pursuits, often interspersed with the muezzin’s calls, or capricious policemen seeking their own little fees for otherwise routine rigmaroles.
Like the older clubs where ripe jamans fall on your shirt or vendors hawk their spicy morsels, both Pakistan and India have their generation of retired civil and military officials, often sharing a mantra of peace that is both genuine and nostalgic. Conferences involving them are opportunities for social gatherings where exchanging cards over generous food portions supersede the serious scholarly deliberations behind the walls. Hierarchical relations between the ‘seniors’ and younger folk in the name of civility and tradition are too visible to be discarded and here South Asia comes alive with shiris, sahibs and sahibas. Pakistani after-dinner etiquette allows some forbidden liquids whereas in India, there are no such restrictions. The travails of visa acquisition and police registration soon dissolve and one staggers to a waiting rickshaw late at night brooding over the absurdities of this schismatic relationship between two neighbours with so much in common, including ecology and temperament.
Thinking of our region where nukes, ballistic missiles and navies raise emotions as well as hair, I realised that our aircraft was now flying over the tribal Pushtun regions, grievously called “the badlands”. In South Asia in case of any irresponsible showdown, we will be left only with losers; there will be no winners.
The pioneering Greek historian Herodotus – whom Alexander of Macedonia read by night during his forays into Afghanistan and Swat – had never been beyond the Bosphorus, yet he had warned his readers of the fierce, handsome tribals he called ‘Aapridis’.
The Afridis caused reversals among the Greeks who ended up in upper Chitral – the Kalash Valley – and marched through Swat until their battle with Raja Porus by the Jhelum, 99 miles from my hometown and 70 from Khushwant’s Hadiali up in the Salt Range.
The romantic Persian ghazals and verses of Firdausi and Hafiz reverberated in my mind as we left South Asia behind, flying over the snow clad peaks of the Hindu-Kush peaks that merge into the lofty Pamirs to the north and the jagged Suleiman Ranges to the south.
The writer teaches history at Bath Spa University, England.
