Building bridges over stormy borders

Shumita Madan Didi

"Official NSA-level talks suspended between India and Pakistan”, scream headlines. News channels air heated debates. Experts once again comment. We have seen this happen repeatedly over the years. Now there is also a flurry of opinions across various social media. Every time there is thawing of ice between the two countries, a flareup inevitably reverses the process. Twin monsters of suspicion and hate raise their ugly heads. On the fringes of this debacle are positive efforts which gently, steadily and firmly chip away at this rock-hard-jagged man-made mountain of India-Pakistan mutual distrust. Many modest and steadily growing people-to-people initiatives are strengthening our  unbreakable ageold links.

Let strident statesmen and women, wily politicians and fanatic rabble rousers do their bit. Another, more precious, mandate is at stake — that of building bridges and not burning them. The internet unites seamlessly across these political and geographical barriers. If a Madangopal Singh composes Baba Nanak’s “Bhinni Rainarhiye Chamkan Taarey...” records his voice in Gurgaon and posts it on the Facebook today, Shahid Mirza, an artist friend from across the border in Lahore responds immediately to this rendition in raag Yaman with deep-felt joy. If Naheed Siddiqui, a danseuse in Lahore improvises delicate abhinaya and evocative movements to Bulleh Shah’s poetry: “Maati Qadam Karendi Yaar...” and shares it, Navtej Johar her Indian friend correspondingly choreographs an ecstatic piece to Shah Husain’s ever-enticing: “Ajj Da Roz Mubarak Charheya..Raanjha Saahdey Vehrey Varheya...” This “fraternity and family” of artists, suffers the divide created by political differences but rallies around to connect in spite of them.

The “official” number of “families” divided by Partition is ridiculously low — perhaps less than 100. However, just as the numbers officially recognised for farmer suicides in each beleaguered state is often a fraction of the real number, similarly there are scores of splintered families and people who are not listed accurately in any survey. It is another matter that what is considered as “family” and “dearly familiar” for many is not essentially just people linked  through ties of blood or marriage.

Partition not only divided a land it also separated people from their lands, places of worship, revered rivers,  beloved neighbours and familiar roads. It wrenched them from the very core of their beings and tore apart the fabric of a people.  I can recount a few instances of many kinds of tragedies and deep-seated longings which have shaken this arbitrary line drawn across the heartland of a people. It is such authentic emotions, fuelled by love, that will continue to move us towards peaceful co-existence, joint creative endeavours and joyous reunions despite the worst efforts of our elected leaders and powerful agencies with vested commercial interests as war mongers.

Herein is the tale of Noopo the feisty woman who hails from Lopoke and sweeps peoples homes in Preetnagar 12 km from the Attari border and her long- lost brother Rasheed Masih who sells fruit from a ramshackle stall a few kilometres away near Jaura Pul, Lahore on the other side of the Wagah border. Rashid had stayed back with his Phuppo (paternal aunt) in Lahore as a child, thinking he would be united with his siblings and parents any day after the raulaa of Partition settled down. It took the death of their parents, their four siblings and over 50 years, when through the kindness of well meaning employers and cultural activists at Saanjhey Ranng (who got inspired to read out letters, take videos and photographs across, manage passports and visas for the poor and illiterate Noopo and Rasheed too afraid to even attempt a crossing for the fear of being arrested) — to unite this brother- sister duo. They were inseparable once reunited. Holding hands, eating their meals together. Laughing irrepressibly and suddenly giving way to tears. It was heart-warming and yet tragic too, thinking of all the lost time.

Maayi Hameeda and her aged spouse Boota Masih were helped to get visas and go across to Lahore for the first time after 60 years. Senior citizens both, went to meet their relatives with their grown daughter in tow. Maayi Hameeda came back to Preetnagar resplendent with sparkling stone and brass rings on her fingers and colourful cotton and silken dupattas. She wasn’t averse to sharing her largesse generously with us as she mumbled there was so much love and attention she received in Lahore that she didn’t quite feel like taking up her dreary chores as a field hand anymore. She recounted with a chuckle that her female relatives didn’t leave her alone even a moment and would escort her even to the toilet! She self-consciously touched the shiny golden baalis in her near-deaf ears and, blushing, added  poignantly that her female relatives had fondly dressed her as a bride even in her advanced age, as they wanted to re-celebrate her marriage to Boota Masih. They had missed the wedding due to border and visa problems almost 60 years ago.

Saira Altaf, an eclectic Pakistani painter and passionate singer also known as Pawan Purvaiya fondly to her friends, was long estranged from her own family in Lahore because of her refusal to accept an unworthy suitor they had approved of for her. Their inter-familial exchange alternated between being volatile with daggers drawn or letting the icy chill of a cold war setting in. However, when she was invited by us to make a trip to India she was able to visit her ancestral village near Gurdaspur. An old villager showed her the exact chaubara of a lovely house, where her paternal grandfather had been the first in the village to proudly install a gramophone. Her family rallied around her joyously in disbelief when she went back to Lahore for they could only dream of going to their ancestral village on the Indian side. A family found its daughter again.

In Lahore, I met Muneer Ahmed, a young writer of the post-Partition generation. Cheerfully, albeit with some concern, he is applying for the third time to get a visa for Hoshiarpur. It has been refused twice. He has changed his name to Muneer Hoshiarpuria, while he waits. His only two desires in life are that his wife and he should be able to have a child and that he be allowed to visit his long-lost home in East Punjab, India, every year.

There was a contingent of young Wazirabadis from Pakistan, all of the post-Partition generation, who came from the old city at the banks of the Chenab. A group of artists had come in search of the refugee Wazirabadis, whose  houses they inhabited as displaced people themselves. They wanted to reunite them with their memories. They met veteran journalist KK Duggal, Justice Rajinder Sachar and others who were all old Wazirabadis and invited them over, handing them CDs of pictures of all the old houses, bylanes, fields and places of worship at Wazirabad.

They met a man from Wazirabad who wanderd into their exhibition but who wished to remain anonymous. He was 11 when Partition took place. He still seemed traumatised. His deepest regret was that he had been too young then to be allowed to cross the big new bridge over the Chenab, adding that his mother had promised him that when he was a little older she would let him make that trek alone. When Hafeez Khilji and Shadi Khan of Wazirabad, Pakistan, asked him to make that journey with them — he sadly shook his head. He had no wish to cross that bridge. He had waited far too long.

On the same trip to India, a group of Pakistani artists and photographers  help ed a 90-year-old woman make her final journey in peace. Mrs Puri, the gentle matriarch of a thriving merchant family in West Delhi, was handed a larger-than-life framed photograph of the Shivala Mandir of Sialkot by visiting photographers Akram Varraich and Imraan Mani. Their passion is to chronicle Hindu and Sikh places of worship. She kissed Akram’s hand as a sole tear rolled down her cheek and said: “Merey ghar Bhagwan aaye hain.” (“God has come to my house”). Her sons conveyed that she had passed away peacefully that year and that the  Shivala Mandir’s photograph occupied pride of place in their home. Her childhood home in Sialkot shared a common wall with that beautiful temple.

We share a common history and geography and fables and songs. We share our memories. I have to take across a video and photographs of the Beas darya for the frail old lady of Mirchaan wali chakki, who lives in my grandfather’s old neighbourhood, in Ram Nagar, Lahore. She is from Noorpur Jataaan Wala and longs to see the swollen river Beas with it’s leaping fish, that she vividly recollects when she walked across at the age of 20. She doesn’t have long to live, is on her last legs yet is keenly reminiscent. We also have to urgently apply for a visa for the incorrigible and delightfully effeminate mast maula part-slapstick entertainer and full-time car driver who drove me to Harappa and Multan on my last visit. He goes by the not undistinguished very masculine name of Tariq Gujjar Superchampion Bama-Bush! He has an inexplicable yen to drive with me on the GT Road, not only in West Punjab, Pakistan, but also in East Punjab, India, all the way through to Delhi. He declared, “Baji ji bass main tohanu tadd mannaanga jadd tussi mainu Dilli kharrongey (“Sister dear, I will only believe you are someone special if you can take me to Delhi)”! As you can see, we can’t be sidelined by just suspended talks, there is too much at stake!

The writer is Founder-Trustee,
Saanjhey Ranng Punjab De. She is a filmmaker, poet and cultural activist.