Nothing quite prepares you for the experience of simply walking across Pakistan into India and vice versa…
By Tehmina Ahmed
Nine years. It had been nine years since I crossed the notorious and often bullet-ridden border between India and Pakistan. But it was not for want of trying.
The love affair between those so-called enemies, Indians and Pakistanis, is a star-crossed affair, although it refuses to die out altogether. There is something narcissistic about it, perhaps. For where else in ‘another country’ will you find people who are so much your own.
And yet different. Sixty-seven years ago, the British drew a line in the sand. Partition. Muslims, walk this way. Hindus, Sikhs go the other way. Bengal and Punjab were torn asunder.
“Ab kay hum bichrey,” wrote the poet Ahmed Faraz, “tau shayad kabhi khwabon main milain/ Jis terha sookhay huay phool kitabon main milain.” (If we part again, we may meet again only in our dreams / like withered flowers crushed between the pages of a book).
I grew up on tales of Delhi because my mother went to school and college there. It’s been a long time, yet she speaks of it as if it were yesterday.
My work as a journalist first took me across the border, from Karachi to Delhi, Bombay and Ahmedabad. Delhi remained a constant, the first place to touch down. Nine years ago in Delhi, it was Diwali, the festival of lights. In subsequent years, as the political heat went up, it became more and more difficult to lay one’s hands upon that precious piece of paper, the Indian visa.
I took to calling close friends in Delhi every Diwali, so there could be at least what one friend describes as a ‘telephonic hug’.
On one failed attempt to travel back to Delhi, it took the better part of a month to complete the paperwork, which included, incidentally, a ‘character certificate’ from the nearest police station. In our part of the world, visits to police stations can be hazardous at times. But that is another story.
When all was over and done, the bureaucrats on the other side of the border took so long to come up with ‘security clearance’ that the trip had to be abandoned. Frustrated, I swore I would never try to get an Indian visa again ‑- but never say never.
This time around, friends were heading for a yoga retreat in Tamil Nadu and the temptation to join in was too great to resist. We would actually cross the border on foot, something I’d never done before. From my hometown of Karachi we’d fly to Lahore, then walk across the Attari checkpost, catch a cab to Amritsar, a flight to Delhi and onwards to the ashram.
Nothing quite prepares you for the experience of simply walking across Pakistan into India and vice versa. In ‘The Sky Below,’ a documentary on Partition, the filmmaker Sarah Singh asks a farmer trudging across the green fields of Punjab, “Pakistan <span style="font-style: italic;"kithey way?" (Where is Pakistan?)
“Othey,” he says with a vague gesture. Over there, just a way across, the line in the sand invisible. It was like that.
Perhaps all borders are equally arbitrary. But this border separates nuclear powers that have fought two wars in the recent past, thankfully not pressing the button but doing everything short of that. Two nations, sworn to ‘otherness’ on the basis of ‘ideology.’ How then, can they be so much one?
The questions remain. The journey is on, though, and it begins in the most casual way. I’m travelling with a cousin from Lahore and a friend from Karachi. A Lahori nephew packs all three of us with our suitcases and roller bags into his car and we go off on a drive through a quiet Lahore suburb. The car draws up next to an arched gateway, and one recognizes the locale of the obstreperous flag lowering ceremony, beloved of television networks, held at sundown. This is Attari, the border post where we disembark.
Porters wheel our baggage through a small gate with a grill into the Customs Hall where we are sternly asked to declare any Indian currency. We do not reveal the small change we have on us and are waved through to immigration. Here they want to know why we’re going to India.
“Budian jawan howan ja raiyan nain,” says my cousin facetiously (The old ladies are going there to become young again). This seems to be the right answer and we are waved on.
Passports are stamped and there is a short walk through a sort of no man’s land, then another high, arched gate. Here the porters hand our baggage over to the porters of the ‘other’ side. The language remains the same, Punjabi, with some changes in the accent. The porters take us to a waiting bus. There are just the three of us in the large, air-conditioned bus.
The bus begins to roll, the Pakistani border guards on posters and billboards metamorphose into Indian ones. “The largest border guarding force in the world,” proclaims a huge billboard. We learn that Srimati Anjna Gupta has produced a documentary on India’s Border Security Force. Suddenly, our cell phones stop working. We’re on the other side.
On the road to Amritsar; the lush green fields raise the same crops. Photo: Ankita Sagar
Five minutes later, the bus stops, luggage is unloaded and wheeled into Indian customs and immigration. The staff is courteous and there are even fewer questions asked, although the bundle of visa forms, other forms and sponsorship letters has to be unrolled before we can get on to the next step.
We create a run on the bank at the moneychanger’s who pleads a cash shortage before my turn comes. Fortified with Indian rupees exchanged for US dollars, we drift out into the open. There’s not much security around. Done with immigration, we step out into the heat and dust, to face a bevy of quarrelling Sikh porters.
My cousin switches to her best Punjabi, calling all to order. A taxi is hailed and the luggage piled in. “Ayho jian madaman fair nainyon labnian,” says the driver, chuckling, to a porter as tips are disbursed all around. You won’t find ladies like this again…
And we are on the road to Amritsar. On the shop fronts and road signs, the Punjabi surnames, the castes are the same: Cheema, Sandhu. The lush green fields raise the same crops ‑ but this is another country.
Something one does notice is a change in the way women hold themselves. Their body language is less furtive, somehow. Riding a bicycle, minding a shop counter, sitting on a takht in the bazaar, they seem surer of their place in the world.
At the shiny new Amritsar airport, we have to pull out our green passports again at identity checks. No one blinks an eye and we’re off to Delhi for an overnight stop before heading for the yoga ashram in Tamil Nadu.
At the ashram, there is no war on. Although everyone follows a strict schedule, there are plenty of breaks where the North Indians, as usual, tend to clump together to gossip and pass the time. Only some of the North Indians are Pakistani.
In the practice of yoga, there is an inclusiveness that overlooks all borders, whether of race or caste or religion. Three weeks later, the blissful interval comes to an end, and we must now do the border trek in reverse.
After hugs, kisses and goodbyes we’re on our way. The flight to Delhi is uneventful. There’s a day’s stopover, time to trace old friends and make some new ones.
At Delhi airport, waiting for the Amritsar flight, we come across acquaintances from Lahore, an elderly lady and her daughter. The family belongs to one of the princely states of India and had opted to cross the border at Partition. The daughter grew up in Lahore, but married into a branch of the family that stayed in India. She’s accompanying her mother, headed home after a visit, just up to the border post.
We share a vehicle from Amritsar to Attari and promise to help with customs and immigration formalities. The border begins to harden as soon as we step out of the vehicle and take the steps up to the Immigration Hall. Mother and daughter exchange glances, and reluctantly part. Halfway up the steps, the daughter suddenly darts up to clasp her mother from the back.
“One last hug,” she says before turning back.
“It’s very difficult to part with a daughter,” says the old lady, turning to me, her voice choked. The tears she’s holding back find their way to my eyes.
The guards at the gate have witnessed this parting before. It may have happened many times, but it never gets easier. “She’ll come back in a while to see that her mother’s alright,” says one of the guards. But this time, the mother has the three of us to see her through the forms and formalities.
“She won’t be back,” I say.
And we turn our backs on India to step into Pakistan.
(‘Borderlines’ published by Voices Breaking Boundaries –
http://borderlines.vbbarts.org/borderlines-publications/)
Tehmina Ahmed is a journalist and photographer based in Karachi. This piece originally appeared in ‘Borderlines’ published by Voices Breaking Boundaries and is reproduced with permission
