india pakistan


The ‘other’ end of the road

One of the many things I wonder about is … what it would be like being on the Delhi – Lahore bus. The Delhi – Lahore bus service resumes today. It would have left Delhi at 6am and would be half way by now as I blog about it. What would be on the minds of the people who go from Delhi to Lahore? Would they have someone across the border to welcome them, someone looking forward with open arms or would they be going just to satiate an inherent curiosity about this ‘other’ land, which was once their forefathers…
What makes us so different from ‘them’ – the Pakistanis? They look the same as us, wear the same clothes, eat the same dishes, speak the same tongue, were ruled by the same rulers.. heck, most of us would be able to trace back some antecedents there. I, for one, am very inquisitive (part of my nature) about what it would be like to live in Pakistan. Both sets of my grandparents hail from West Pakistan and migrated at the time of partition. They actually went through what we now just hear about or watch movies about. We can not really gauge the intensity of the occurances. But my heart really goes out to them, when they recount tales of eras bygone, of land that was their own once, of people that were their own too…
What would it be like to see where my grandparents used to live at one point of time (their youth to be precise), where my dad and a few of his siblings were born, what kind of lives they lead, what that camera looked like with which my maternal grandpa used to pursue photography as a passion, what those palatial houses looked like of which I’ve heard so much. That camera was among the many prized possessions that got left behind somewhere along with many cherished memories, in what we now call Pakistan. I can sense that some part of my grandparents being was among the many things left behind. What would it be like to visit Pakistan and go, be a part of what they left behind… What would it be like at the ‘other’ end of the road…