[published in Hindustan Times on Feb 6, under the headline 'A Very Friendly Hostile Country']
Pakistan: On a shoestring budget, and with no firm plans
By Banajit Hussain, Gaurav Srivastav, Anand Taneja, Karan Singh
Bagal, Amit Kumar Singh, Gagan, Rajnish Kumar, Sidharth Mishra,
Madhuresh Kumar, Mitul Baruah, Iftikhar Hussain and Sudhir Kumar.
History Department, Ramjas College (Delhi University)
It was a trip in search of Pakistan, a country we have known
of since childhood, but still very much unknown. January 5, and
all 12 students of the History Department, Ramjas College,
University of Delhi, have reached Old Delhi Railway Station by 8
pm to board the 'Samjhauta Express' to Lahore. We've all had to
handle anxious parents, and our own apprehensions and fears of
travelling to a ''hostile'' country so soon after the hijacking
of the Indian Airlines plane.
At nine sharp the train leaves. But not before some nervous
moments, waiting for our teacher who arrives ten minutes before
the train leaves. We find our compartment, say our goodbyes to
our many friends who have come to see us off on the train to
Pakistan. For most of us, it is our first experience of seeing
Partition up close. Our co-passengers are mostly from families
split up and living on both sides of the border, travelling to
relatives in the other country.
It's 6.30 in the morning and bitterly cold and foggy. We are at
Attari, the last station in India. The entire train empties out,
and every passenger and piece of luggage is scrutinised by the
immigration and customs authorities. They take an agonising nine
hours, during which they humiliate, abuse and harass the mainly
Muslim passengers, large numbers of whom are also poor and
illiterate. If you are prepared to pay you can take anything
across. If you have no contraband on you, you still pay. You pay
for every step you take at Attari.
Formalities over, the Pakistan Railways train pulls out
of Attari with all passengers aboard. The 15 minute ride to Wagah
is on track fenced on either side. Mounted men of the BSF,
imposing and handsome like the horses they ride, gallop alongside
the train. They slow down to a trot as the train approaches the
gate which would take us through the barbed wire fencing, so
definitively inscribing the border between India and Pakistan for
miles on either side. The train stops. The gate takes a while to
open, and in the silence, almost menacingly the border forces
itself into our very beings.
In contrast to Attari, which station is shockingly poorly
equipped with even basic passenger amenities, like waiting rooms,
clean toilets or even a decent cup of tea, Wagah is cleaner, the
authorities more efficient and far more courteous. By nine we are
back on the train, on our way to Lahore, where we arrive 25 hours
after we left Delhi.
Beena Sarwar, editor of the 'News on Sunday' meets us warmly at
the station in the cold and the fog, with two other journalists.
We feel immediately comfortable. Lahore Station and the ride to
the Youth Hostel where we are staying, looks, feels and sounds
like parts of Delhi. Even the cars are similar. Instead of the
Maruti 800 and Maruti van, they call theirs Suzuki Khyber and
Suzuki Bolan. Add on the packed dal, roti and kaleji from the
Lahore Press Club that we have for dinner, and you begin to
wonder whatever happened to that border, how foreign really is
this foreign country?
We've barely surfaced on our first morning in Lahore when
historians Mubarak Ali and Kamran Saheb arrive to welcome us to
their city. We're overwhelmed. They bring along Irfan Usmani, a
most agreeable guide, and lecturer at the historic, and
beautifully kept Government College, Lahore. Of all that we see
of colonial Lahore, this was by far the most impressive. Its red-
brick buildings, soaring spires, green lawns, and Roll of Honour
make us swoon. All of us want to study here, until we discover
the price of subsidised coffee in the college canteen -- 12
rupees per cup, which is as much as you would pay for a daily
newspaper unlike the CDs and cassettes which sell dirt cheap, and
were further discounted for us on The Mall because we are from
India.
Irfan Usmani takes us to Jahangir's Tomb, the Jama Masjid, the
Lahore Fort, the Masjid Wazirkhan, the Minar-e-Pakistan and the
Data Saheb ki mazaar. We travel in ''Qing-qis'' (pronounced
Ching-kis) which are Lahore's version of Delhi's ''phut-phutis'.
Lahore's are manufactured by a Chinese company, hence the name.
Jahangir's maqbara, set in well-cared-for grounds, reminds us of
Humayun's Tomb at Delhi's Nizamuddin. We're accosted by wizened
Shami guide, wrapped up in a giant shawl against the cold. He
regales us with tales and eloquence for the next one hour. He
thinks Mitul, who's Assamese, is from Japan. But when he hears
that we are from India, he's visibly pleased. ''I am honoured.
Everybody in India speaks very good English.''
The Jama Masjid and the Lahore Fort are familiar too. It's the
Masjid Wazir Khan that really takes our breaths away. This 17th
century mosque in the heart of the Walled City is stunningly
mosaiced and colourfully painted. The gallis outside are famous
for delectable chana and kulcha, but we are in Lahore in the last
days of Ramzan, and all eating places are closed. All day we
wander the city eating nothing. We don't even notice the hunger
pangs. But as 5 O'clock nears, our stomachs are growling. The
enticing aromas rising in the alleyways leading out of Bhaati
Gate through Hira Mandi into Anarkali Bazaar are driving us
crazy. We finally break the fast at 5.15, with Irfan Usmani
offering us dates to eat.
Dinner is ''nihari'', mutton cooked overnight on a slow fire, at
a tiny street restaurant in Gali Paisa Akhbaari. Its tough to be
vegetarian in Pakistan. We eat by the light of candles. When the
electricity comes back we pay and move on to gorge ourselves on
''motichoor laddoos''.
It is the last Jumma or Friday of the fasting month. We are
walking through Anarkali Bazaar at night. It's like walking
through a crowded Delhi bus, except no bus could have ever been
so much fun. Anarkali Bazaar is a ''foodies' delight'' -- kheer,
falooda, Kashmiri tea and conversation. Everyone we chat to on
the streets of Lahore thinks we are from Karachi. Makes us wish
we were going to that city also. Whenever they hear we're
from India, people get talking about relatives in India, and how
much they want to go, and how difficult it is to get visas.
Fortunately we got visas on the first try. In September, we
decided to visit Pakistan on our annual History Society
excursion. Our teacher, ''Mukul Sir'', wrote off a letter to the
Pakistan High Commission. The whole college was amazed at our
plan. The news spread like wild fire. We wanted no sponsors, and
had only about Rs 2,500 each that we normally spend on our 10-day
trips to different historic places in the country. At the first
meeting where the idea was floated, 40 hands had shot up in
support of the Pakistan plan. When it came to applying for
passports, there were only some 20 students, mainly because many
parents and guardians had absolutely refused permission. ''Jaan
bhoojh kar maut ke mooh me jaa rahe ho'' was the most common
reaction.
On Oct. 12 when the army seized power in Pakistan we thought that
was the end of our Pakistan dream. But in early December, the
Pakistan High Commission wrote saying that visas would be granted
us within 24 hours of our applying, and that we would be exempted
from reporting to the police at every place we travelled to.
Passports were quickly put in order, and plans made to celebrate
the new millennium in Lahore.
But then Indian Airlines' IC-814 from Kathmandu to Delhi was
hijacked. Again there was a great deal of fear about what might
happen to us in Pakistan. More students dropped out. But those
apprehensions just vanished when we reached Lahore. In fact
everywhere we went we felt comfortable and fearless, except on
arrival at Peshawar, in the northwest and close to Afghanistan.
It was as if crossing the river Indus at Attock enroute to
Peshawar, we had actually left the subcontinent. The Indus is
greenish-blue and beautiful as it meets up with the Dariya-e-
Kabul just below Attock Fort. We couldn't believe that we were
actually where we were!
Peshawar city feels foreign: the language, Pashtu, and the
people's bearing are very different to what we experience in
Islamabad, Lahore, Taxila or for that matter, Delhi, Patna,
Majuli, Kochi, Kargil, some of the places we are from in India.
We come across the most brilliantly painted-up vehicles, strung
with ornaments, on our journey from Islamabad to Peshawar. The
Frontiersmen take pride in decking up their buses and trucks.
We're nearly in Peshawar before our driver, who later buys us
chai, realises we're Indians. He asks how many of us are Hindus.
''What do you know about Hindus?'' we ask back. ''That they don't
have beards.''
We aren't laughing though when Gaurav, tired of standing in a
crowded bus, sits down next to a purdah-clad woman. The woman
bolts. ''You're extremely uncultured,'' somebody shouts in the
general pandemonium that erupts in the bus. ''Where are you
from?'' the driver wants to know. ''India.'' The driver hastily
does, ''Tauba, tauba.'' We're taken aback. ''Why, shouldn't we
have come?'' Driver: ''Yes, you made a big mistake''. Welcome to
Peshawar!
We have only one day, and so much to see. At first sight, the
city seems forbidding -- huge, bearded Pathans all over the
place, and only the occasional woman in purdah on the streets. At
the hotel where we've stored our luggage, the proprietor tells us
not to advertise the fact that we are Indian. ''There are lots
of uneducated, foolish people here,'' he says. All of us are
feeling scared.
But not scared enough to start bargaining in Chitrali Bazaar.
Even though the famed Chitrali topis are fairly cheap, we try to
beat down the prices. Slowly Pathan hospitality gets the better
of our fears, and we're confident enough to announce that we're
from India. That makes for even more hospitality. Another round
of tea is called for from the tea-shop across the narrow street.
We eat at Namak Mandi, and how Banajit and Anand can eat. Between
them they polish off five huge 'khamiri' rotis, seven skewers
of beef kebab, half a kadhai of 'kadhai gosht' and two
milkshakes each. The Pathans still think they eat too little.
What none of us venture to try are their ''red eggs''. First they
boil them, then they paint them, then they sell them.
We are invited by Afrasiab Khattak, chairman of the Human Rights
Commission of Pakistan, to have tea with him and Khwaja Mohammad
Wasim of the Peshawar chapter of the Pakistan India People's
Forum. Khattak Saheb tells us about the porous Pakistan-
Afghanistan border. During Zia-ul-Haq's military rule, he had
walked to Afghanistan, 30 miles away, to escape persecution. He
came back nine years later, when democracy returned to Pakistan.
He tells us stories of Kissa Khawani Bazaar (literally the bazaar
of story tellers), the oldest market in Peshawar, where we had
spent most of our day. It was once the place where caravans of
traders and travellers from Central Asia and the subcontinent met
and exchanged merchandise and tales. We dream of the Khyber Pass.
You must meet Khattak Saheb, we had been told both in Lahore and
Islamabad. We arrive in Pakistan's capital city on the evening of
Eid, Jan 9, having travelled from Lahore on the new motorway
which makes the 370 km journey, a pleasurable 4 and a half hour
bus ride.
Pakistan's inter- and intra-city bus services are a pleasant
surprise, after what we are used to at home. But these are
privately-run, and motorists have to pay to use the motorway.
The truth is the majority of people, who live off the land,
neither have the means nor the chance to leave their villages.
The motorway cuts through the countryside. The few villages we
got to see from our speeding bus windows, both on the motorway,
and our journey to Taxila and later to Peshawar, appeared very
backward. Just one or two big houses in the middle of the
village, surrounded by many many small, mud houses. Pakistan's
landscape tells us that it is dominated by incredibly large land
owners. We hardly saw big industry. But then we didn't go to
Karachi, in southern Pakistan, or to the cotton mills which have
grown enormously in number over the last 50 years, according to
Mubashir Hasan, former finance minister of Pakistan, and now an
active member of the Pakistan-India People's Forum who hosted us
to Iftar in Lahore one evening.
Afrasiab Saheb explains that the lack of industry in the northern
parts of the country is because of the highly lucrative smuggling
through the North West Frontier Province. There is little scope
for industries to sink roots, and grow in this situation.
Islamabad is startlingly different to the rest of Pakistan.
Pakistanis joke that Islamabad is in fact 10 minutes away from
Pakistan. We have our first and only brush with the police here.
We are on our way to the house of Amit Baruah, The Hindu's
Pakistan correspondent who is an ex-Ramjas student, in fact
having also studied History. The police, heavily armed, stop our
pick-up van because it is over-crowded, and proceed to
systematically first frisk us, and then compare our faces with
our passport photos. We are asked: ''Kiss bag mein mashkook
samaan hai?'' Satisfied that we are indeed only students
from India, they are very apologetic. ''Aap hamare mehmaan hai.
Umeed hai ki takleef maaf karenge.''
After a ''debauched'' night at a most luxurious guest house,
which Amit paid for, for old times sake, we leave for Taxila,
with its stupas, monasteries and the ruins of the two cities of
Sirkap and Sirsuk. Taxila lies beautifully spread out, in the
NWFP. The moment we leave Punjab province, makeshift stalls
selling mountains of tempting, bright-orange maltas appear on
both sides of the road. They are very juicy and sweet, and we'd
never get to taste the same anywhere else, our Pathan driver
boasts. He's right.
The Buddhist ruins are a UNESCO World Heritage site. What struck
us is that Pakistan should so lovingly protect these ruins,
although it is not sure whether the teaching of its own history
should go back to even as far as the 8th century AD.
By late afternoon we are back in Islamabad, in time to catch the
tail end of the tense India-Pakistan cricket match in Australia.
We are in the home of one of Pakistan's well-known nuclear
physicists, Dr A.H. Nayyar who teaches at the Qaid-e-Azam
University here. His colleague Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy is also
present. Both are committed democrats and anti-nuclear activists.
The cricket match dominates the conversation. With each ball the
excitement in the room increases. Seeing our excitement, Dr
Nayyar's two sons say -- ''India will win, Prasad is bowling.''
It was probably one of the few India-Pakistan cricket matches
watched by both Indians and Pakistanis sitting in the same room
on the subcontinent!
That evening we are invited to tea at the residence of India's
(acting) high commissioner, Sudhir Vyas. We're pleased he's made
time for us. We like talking to him and his wife. Over hot
pakodas and burfis, he recounts his experiences in Algeria, and
chats about birds and many other things. He speaks so graphically
about Balochistan, Swat and Chitraal, that we imagine that he has
been to these regions in Pakistan.
Our Islamabad evening does not end here. We're joined for dinner
by a lawyer, Anees Jillani, and a journalist, Nadeem Iqbal of
'The News'. Later they drive us around the city. Its beautiful
but it lacks the life and colour of Lahore.
Anand is right. ''I don't think any of us has ever enjoyed
our Indian identity as much'' as we did in Lahore. One evening we
were honoured guests of the Pakistan India People's Forum.
Another evening it was the All Pakistan Women's Association and
historians from Punjab University. It's somewhat embarrassing
being made much of by newspaper editors, retired ministers,
university teachers et al just because you're from India.
But we're also startled by the anti-India slogans on street
walls. Iftikhar reads out from a poster in Urdu: ''Maulana Al-
Masood Azhar ki rihai mubarak ho''. We are careful to remain at
all times restrained while talking to strangers and keep a check
on each other's tongues in public places.
Yet, in Lahore on the morning of Eid, when Irfan Usmani, our
lecturer-turned-guide brings us ''sewai'' from his home, a two
hour journey from where we are staying, no place felt more like
home.
The previous night had been special. We were at the home of Raza
Kazim, a dear friend of the late Eqbal Ahmed. It was Eqbal Saheb
who had come to Ramjas College, and talked to us about Pakistan
in January 1999, insisting that more and more young people should
cross the boundaries between our two countries.
Raza, who has grown-up sons, holds forth on subjects as
varied as the 19th century Bengali intellectual revolution,
Gandhi's role in the Indian National Movement and Che Guevera.
Everybody listens enthralled. ''The bonds of slavery, like the
bonds of love, are very hard to break,'' he declaims.
Raza has been an activist, and is also an artist. He has invented
a musical instrument, the Saagar Veena a.k.a the Raza Been, which
he has been working on for 31 years. We go up to his music room.
There, and very prominently placed, is a foot high stone statue
of Saraswati. It is chand raat, the night before Eid. We plunge
into the heart of Lakshmi Chowk, which is teeming with Lahoris,
eating, shopping and strolling into the night.
Our last evening in Lahore is at the home of a Kathak dancer,
where we also meet a rock band. They call themselves, Traveller -
- and lament the fact that they cannot freely perform in
Pakistan. It's ironic, what happens in our two countries. In ours
the freedom of expression is greater, and yet rock is dead,
buried under Indi-pop and dance tracks. In Pakistan even Naheed
Siddiqui, our host, has to advertise her dance shows as ''variety
programmes''. And their girls and women, they nearly always wear
salwar kameez, not the jeans, saris, skirts and salwars worn at
home. This is what we missed the most in Pakistan.
We are sad to part with Irfan Usmani at Lahore Station on Jan.
13. We arrived knowing only Beena. We were leaving with rich
associations, and memories of many people who had spontaneously
reached out to us, and made our short trip on a shoestring budget
and with no firm plans, so special. The train back to Delhi
starts at 7 am. In half an hour we're at Wagah. Customs is a
major shock: they seize all our films, saying they have no idea
if we have taken ''sensitive'' pictures. Hours of negotiations
follow. We have almost lost all hope when the intelligence
authorities return the rolls, saying they want us to take back
''sweet memories'' of Pakistan. Gentle name-dropping has probably
done the trick, as it normally does in India.
One O'Clock, Jan. 14 we arrive at Attari. We feel happy to be
back in our own land, though we hardly felt alien across the
border in Pakistan.
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