The Mirage of Peace

MAY 2003 - Immigration was a breeze. We were out of New Delhi airport in no time at all, drinking in the scenery and wondering that while it was no different from back home, yet, inexplicably, it was not the same. The flight from Lahore had left on time and the trip through the departure lounge minus the forty thousand officials with forty thousand stamps had reduced the 60-minute farce to just a few minutes. The Indian Airlines crew had been all smiles. They had standing instructions to give us Pakistanis extra special treatment. It was TLC all the way. Although the flight was short – never realized Delhi was so close, we were pampered like royalty. And we were travelling Coach! Half way to Delhi, the pilot announced that today’s flight carried over 50% Pakistanis visiting India and the plane burst into spontaneous applause. It felt good. Smiles all around, hand shaking and some emotional clinches. The comfort of many shared jokes, anecdotes and experiences cast a warm and friendly glow over our faces. We were talking nonstop, high in the clouds, watching the great Punjab plains drift effortlessly under our wing. Ripe, golden swaying fields of wheat, mile after mile.

Dream scenario? Fantasyland? It does seem like that most of the time, the half-century and more of attrition, accusations, the wars and all that killing, having taken its toll. We have been at war with our neighbour for so long, no one can remember the time when there wasn’t any. It was certainly before my time and as for the next generation round the corner, peace and goodwill between that existed at one time between the two neighbours, is steeped in the mists of years too far away to be recognized. And because it is so easy to pinpoint the differences, every one on both sides more or less, has made sure that the differences remain in sharp focus. There have been no meeting points; instead the tit for tat syndrome has played a dominating role often reducing serious issues to the level of ridiculousness. It was not too many days back, before Prime Minister Vajpayee’s surprise announcement, that both countries were measuring whose missiles were bigger and longer. Mr. Kasuri thought we had the deadlier and better missiles – we can kill more of you than you can kill, and his Indian counterparts, equally ridiculously believed the opposite. It was street urchins squabbling over marbles. And of course this is not the first time that such petty and childish showmanship has been practiced on both sides. Now, in a sudden shift, the new wave of statements from both sides in the past week, have sent a surge of relief through the lives of the ordinary people. The fact is people on both sides are tired of this confrontation. It may have created a false and very short-lived sense of pride and patriotism but the truth is it has done nothing for the lives of millions who live on either side of the line. They have been wayside spectators as the games have continued in the arenas. India and Pakistan have serious problems to resolve. There is no doubt about that, but it would improve things immensely if three fourths of the gurus on either side who tirelessly issue statement after statement, simply shut up for some time. There are just too many people interested in saying their two bits and feeling smug afterwards. When too many people speak too much, there is only trouble. Problems don’t get solved and solutions remain distant. The irony is that most of those who speak with self-created authority on the subject are ill qualified to do so. That, as we all know from experience never prevents idiots from airing their opinions but it makes a complicated situation so much more complicated that the very notion of a solution disappears faster than a drop of water on a rock in Sibi.

People like me – the common lot, have many vested interests in some durable, workable peace to heal the wounds that fester and grow cancerous. Other than the many wise things people have said for years on either side – that small but stubborn band of peace-dreamers who have raised their voices in spite of hopeless odds, there has to be a line drawn right across – not another one re-defining the boundaries, but one where more and more people rise up and say, ‘enough is enough.’ The vested interest groups, the hawks, the war mongers, the ideology stricken, the demented nationalists, the narrow focus puppet masters who pull and tug at millions of invisible strings and keep the theatre of the absurd rolling on, the obvious winners in case of a perpetuation of the status quo of war hysteria and hate – all of them and more of them, should no longer call the shots because they will never act in the larger interest of their common people. The obscene amounts of funding that has for years fuelled the fires of hate, that have allowed special classes on either side, to live lives of opulence and blind power, should no longer have the last word. This is all idealistic of course, but nothing short of being idealistic will help us rise out of the mire into which both countries have been sinking year after sad year. Shortage of drinking water, medicines, decent wages, right to education, happiness and peace are denied on both sides of the divide. While we have dug deeper into our trenches, millions have been born, have lived lives of great deprivation and died, unsung, unknown without making an iota of difference to the stalemate or dent the sheer walls of intolerance that have risen higher and higher. If there is a purpose to life other than strife and hate, these sad battalions of men and women have not even seen a glimpse of it; born in poverty, they have lived in poverty and died in poverty.

My father was 47 when we moved out of beautiful Srinagar, abandoning our home in Jammu, friends, family and a lifetime of memories and shared happiness with many wonderful people. When he died over 20 years later in the mid sixties, he still longed for the valleys he had left behind and for a way of life that was never to be. My three brothers and two sisters, many cousins and extended family, never stopped dreaming of the wonderful life they had known. Two brothers less and over fifty years of nothingness, the pain of abandoning home remains deep inside. My mother’s years were woven around stories of Kashmir and Jammu, of fruits and seasons, picnics and journeys. For all of us, refugees without a home, the past has never quite gone away. I have poor recollection of that life, too small to really comprehend, but the accounts are vivid and the mental images abide. My children or those of my siblings have no memory of that past and are happily bereft of it and the ensuing pain and longing. Perhaps we may still make that long journey to those names that have shaped our thinking and coloured our dreams – perhaps they have changed forever and are best remembered in the mind, but that is like looking at a vast ocean and hoping to see a ship appearing on the distant, shimmering horizon.

Hope springs eternal, someone said and this last week, the heart has missed a beat again. Is this the turning point or is this another end to another beginning? Another mirage? Surely, the odds have to favour peace for once.