Hira felt like a sister from another mother...
Strange that we had never ever met before..
By Bhavana Mahajan

In December 2013, life presented me with an unusual opportunity – the CONTACT South Asia programme, an annual residential training conducted by the Vermont- based School for International Training in Kathmandu, Nepal. The programme aims to help participants develop ways to understand and celebrate their differences as well as bonds. Beyond that, it enables people to connect at a deeper, more human, level.

It was here that I met Hira Hashmey, a crazy effervescent Punjabi girl from across the border who was so much like me – sans the stupid jokes! Hira is from Pakistan, and I am from India. Both of us, due to our Punjabiyat, are extremely patriotic and opinionated, independent thinking women. However, by the end of it all, Hira, for me was not just a roommate; she was more like a sister from another mother.

Late one evening — in fact, well past midnight — after a serious giggling fit that lasted over an hour, we sobered up only enough to wonder if we could dig up common familial roots and found it so strange that we had never ever met before. And then one of us said something stupid about how the lights in the distance looked so stern that we better shut up and go to sleep – a comment that paralysed us with a fresh bout of giggling hysteria for another hour. We must have woken up participants in the adjoining room that night. This was not true of just one night – we giggled and talked our way into the wee hours night after night.

Hira and I talked at every opportunity – in the morning, at breakfast, during workshop sessions, at tea break, you get the drift. We never tired of it – there was just so much to talk about – right from our outfits to our religions to how irritating the food was. We talked only as two girls, both grown women, but quite like teenagers inside, can. We talked, fought, shared, cried, talked some more, ate, shopped; basically, we caught on to a lifetime of having missed out on each other, in a span of 12 days.

Sure, we had our differences to respect, and experiences that made us different, but to any observer, my parents and her parents included, who were a part of some of our conversations via Skype, we were clearly friends plus plus from the word go.

Bhavana Mahajan studies International Relations at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, and has earlier worked in the corporate, social and government sectors. This is extracted from the Facebook page Friendships Across Borders: Aao Dosti Karein, an initiative that aims to transform the hostility between India and Pakistan by building on the power of cross-border friendships
https://www.facebook.com/fabaaodostikarein