Watching Me, Watching You

FEBRUARY 2003 - I must confess a sudden feeling of excitement looking at the ‘Indians’ on the other side at Lahore’s Wagha border one spring day last year. As we struggled to get near the Pakistan gate and the adjoining no man’s land, we could see a few hundred feet away, rows of Indians watching us watching them. The men in starched uniforms and even more starched moustaches meanwhile began a series of elaborate rituals, marching fiercely forwards and backwards, arms flailing, wielding the fiercest of looks and bristling with implied and exaggerated anger and hostility. The pantomime continued with each side competing to out do the adversary. The men had been chosen carefully on either side. Big, brawny, muscular and threatening, moving like angry lions, watched and tutored by anxious and semi-agitated officers who directed the choreographed show like seasoned Hollywood directors.

The lowering of the flags at the two borders near Lahore is now an established show where each side performs to overwhelm the other. Mercifully there are no weapons – not so far at least and the glaring looks and physical superiority win applause from the partisan crowds gathered on both sides. The enormous force and undisguised violence with which the respective gates are slammed shut draws appreciation from the crowds who see in it and the whole spectacle, a settling of scores between the arch rivals. The lowering of the flags and the shutting of gates has become something like a war that is fought in all seriousness. People gather for hours to watch this sundown showdown and then, just as suddenly as it all starts, the pantomime is over and everyone trudges home. It is impossible to watch this and not dwell on the sad state of affairs that exist between India and Pakistan. Other countries too must have borders but I wonder where else this ritual is carried out with such emotion and fanfare. As we all stared that afternoon at the Indians before coming home, it was a bit of a letdown to realize that, more or less, they looked like us. Switch the sides and you would be hard pressed to figure out which was which, but while the irony of that situation might have been lost on us, there was no denying the undercurrent of hostility that runs ever so strongly beneath everything we say or do regarding one another.

The recent tit for tat farce that has been played out in Delhi and Islamabad with one side expelling the staff of the other side only to be repaid the same way, is laughable were it not so sad and pointless. For years and years, we have made a virtue of the hate that rules our hearts and minds as we contemplate the treachery and animosity that has been our common legacy since 1947. Starting from the fact that Pakistan’s independent status was not an acceptable truth for India to this latest act of childish behaviour, there has been nothing but a down hill slide in the relations between the two rival nations. It is amusing to consider now that even the date of our independence – 14th August was a hastily thought deflection and put our birth a day earlier but the two countries could obviously not share the same day. In reality, Pakistan could not have become independent on 14th August because it was only India, which did. We did not exist before that and our independence day is actually the day of our birth – but many would say that is splitting hairs, much in the same fashion as the current (and often repeated) controversy of Mr. Jinnah’s birthplace – Jhirk in Thatta or Karachi. It doesn’t make any difference really, but there are enough people to keep this fire burning, creating a controversy where none deserves to exist. When we had a difference of interpretation on the dates of our birth or our independence, what strife-free future could we have contemplated? Those who thought or believed that we were going to live in peace have been proven wrong by generation after generation of Indians and Pakistanis. All of us have, at one time or another stoked the fires of hate and intolerance that burn just as brightly in Delhi as they do in Islamabad.

I am sure that Jalil Abbas Jilani who is the acting high commissioner in Delhi is not a spy as is Sudhir Vyas in Islamabad – what precisely is there to spy on? While we guard our installations be they bridges or airports or railway stations and disallow photography of these ‘sensitive’ locations, the Indians probably do the same. In this day and age of satellites that can tell the colour of the elastic on your underwear, what childish games are we wasting time and money on? On both sides of the line, the common people continue to lead lives of great deprivation. It is no solace to know that our beggars are better off than theirs or our footpaths come for free when night falls on the wretched and the miserable. Neither does it help much to compare the scrawny Indian with the better-fed Pakistani and score brownie points in the bargain. The fact that human beings, almost skeletal in appearance still pull carts ferrying fat customers to and fro in India but not in Pakistan is nothing to be proud of. These are small victories and make little or no difference to the towering problems of lack of education, health, justice and well being that scar our two countries. Almost a year and a half back, I gingerly approached the Indian High Commission in Islamabad, having answered a dozen searching questions asked by two bored plainclothesmen lounging on a ‘charpoy’ outside the chancery. I was apprehensive as if I was going to be attacked any second, but all that I saw was a grated window where I handed over visa applications for a group of seven musicians who were due to proceed to India a few weeks later – the trip never materialized. A little while later, a door opened and I was asked to come in. I was even more apprehensive. I was taken to a room where an elderly man sat at a desk. He had all the seven applications in front of him. He asked me to take a seat and started asking me a few questions about the musicians and the event that was taking them to India. From there on, all he talked about was music – his three daughters were studying music and he was a devotee of all the classical musicians on either side. We talked about festivals, musicians and the wonderful legacy that we have inherited but about which we do precious little. In the meantime, the papers had all been processed and I was told to bring them back once the travel dates were final. There would be no problems with visas. He said that it was an honour for him when anyone from the performing arts field wanted to visit India. In January this year, we expelled the same person for being a spy. Maybe he is or was, but if he was, the cover was great because all he did was talk about music – not even a slight hint of a query to squeeze out unlikely information.

There can be no peace between us, not in our lifetimes. There are too many vested interests on either side to let that happen. Any effort that is initiated, here or there, is doomed to fail and as the distrust and hate multiplies, chances of a working peace and harmony fall by the wayside. It matters little who is right or wrong because the entire sorry game played by the politicians, generals and bureaucrats on both sides, has always been a zero sum game where there are no winners and only losers. And as happens in such cases, it is the common people, like you or me, who always lose out in the end.