A tale of two cities
Dinesh Rathod

FOR a large number of Sindhis, Punjabis and Parsis scattered between India and Pakistan, the prospects of restoration of ferry services between Mumbai and Karachi have rekindled hopes of a new future — of family reunions, joint celebrations and regular visits as in the "good old days".

"We are near, yet so far," says Brij Mohan Keswani, a doctor in Mumbai, responding to Delhi’s latest peace initiative with Islamabad. "My sister stays in Karachi with her family, barely an hour away. But it is over 22 years since we last met."

"Until the flights stopped, we would visit our relatives in Pakistan every year," narrates Fauzia Husain, who came to Mumbai as a bride in 1968 as a 19-year-old bride. "Now if I have to go, I would have to take the Dubai route, or else board the bus from Delhi, for Lahore. I do not have the stamina for all that."

The sea route between Mumbai and Karachi is not only time saving, but for many like Keswani and Husain holds a "special emotional appeal" as that was how their parents and uncles used to travel when Pakistan and India were one.

With Partition in 1947, all such linkages that fostered familial relationships, cultural interaction, and trade and business, suddenly snapped. The Mumbai-Karachi ferry service however, continued till the 1965 war put an end to it. What remains now is pure nostalgia, fuelled by grandma’s tales and travellers’ accounts on what life was on either side of the Arabian Sea.

For instance, there is Salman Rushdie’s famous essay, Step Across This Line: "The steamers plying that route (between Karachi and Mumbai) were a pair of old rust buckets, Sabarmati and Saraswati. The journey was hot and slow, and for mysterious reasons the boats would always stop for hours off the coast of the Rann of Kutch while unexplained cargoes were ferried on and off — smugglers’ goods, I imagined eagerly."

Significantly, before Partition, Karachi was part of Bombay Presidency and the business-savvy Sindhi community crisscrossed the region. Gujaratis, Maharashtrians, Parsis and Goans also made their way to Karachi for business and employment from what is now India.

"When the British decided to build a port in Karachi, they brought in labour from Mumbai," informs Nandita Bhavnani, a history scholar researching on the Sindhi community from Pakistan. "Probably that accounts for the fact that the dock areas of the two cities look similar."

It is also probable that of the people who went to build the Karachi port, many stayed back. This explains the commonality of attitudes and sensibilities, cultural expressions, rituals and practises among residents of Mumbai and Karachi. In fact, both developed into commercial capitals of their respective countries.

"In many places of Karachi, you almost feel you are in Mumbai," Neera Adarkar, a member of the Pak-India People’s Forum points out. "The colonial architecture of areas like Mumbai’s Balard Estate are actual replicas. So is Crawford Market — the layout and the hustle-bustle."

Adds Omar Kureishi, a sports writer who grew up in Mumbai and moved to Karachi: "Both cities have a strong cosmopolitan character, despite Karachi having a vast desert hinterland and is ridden by sectarian violence. So in this sisterly relationship of two cities, Mumbai has become the dominant sibling."

According to Bhavnani, Mumbai owes a great deal to the migrant Sindhi community, which escaped religious persecution in their homeland to settle in refugee camps on the city’s outskirts at Ulhasnagar. From there, they rose to prosperous industrialists and set up hospitals like Jaslok and Hinduja, besides charitable institutions, religious trusts and schools and colleges.

"Resumption of the sea link will greatly increase interaction between our two peoples and lead to further development on both sides," asserts Keswani. "After all, we share a common cultural past and in the fitness of things, our future should be entwined. We have everything to gain and nothing to lose."

Former Indian naval chief, Admiral L. Ramdas is equally optimistic: "Restoration of the ferry service is a fine way of resuming people-to-people contact. The notion that terrorists will infiltrate the country is totally unfounded. Instead, liberalising contact will expose citizens on both sides to the truth of the other and give the lie to demonised differences. That’s when the real Berlin wall will fall!" MF

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