When Qureshi came calling

Rameshinder Singh Sandhu     

Across the world, the opening of the Kartarpur corridor has become the talk of almost every tongue. Historic and inspiring, it has paved another great path for fortifying love and peace between the parted brothers: India and Pakistan. The opening raced my mind back to that very day in the summer of 2006 when my maternal village home at Butala near Amritsar hosted guests from Pakistan — mainly from its Punjab. A delegation of agricultural experts — led by Shah Mehmood Qureshi, currently Pakistan’s minister of foreign affairs — who was then an official at the top echelons in his state’s agriculture department.

Like several other villages, they were here for an interaction with farmers, and our home, for it was chosen by the sarpanch, not only for hospitality, but also because of my family’s roots in Sargodha, Pakistan.

I was in grade 12 that year, and it was worth taking leave from school, as also encouraged by my grandmother Swaran Bal, who represented the village. What I vividly remember is the exhilaration among villagers to welcome the delegation, each one calling them ‘our special guests’. The street leading to our home was filled with people, especially by the elderly holding garlands, and once the guests arrived, they were welcomed to the beats of traditional drums. 

‘They are just like us’, many were overheard expressing joyfully, and as the interaction session commenced, the many farmers gathered along with villagers were more eager to learn about Pakistan from them, and soon, almost every member of the delegation, too, unfolded their nostalgic tales before the Partition, filling the air with both poignant and happy emotions. Which is why, little do I remember any talks on agriculture from that day, and only messages of love and friendship followed by several from the village hugging them post the event.

I do remember my moment of joy as I was tasked with proposing the vote of thanks. I ended it thus: ‘We are born to love, not to hate, to help each other and not to destroy one another.’ Qureshi stood up and came to hug me, adding that this was what each one of us on both sides of the border needed to understand.

Later, they kept praising our village cooks, and women, for the sumptuous Punjabi lunch prepared by them.  

Nostalgia continued when we took them to the home’s rooftop, where they, lost in the views, termed them similar to villages in their Punjab. Finally, with heavy hearts, we bid them goodbye. As a symbol of love, we gifted them phulkaris and inspiring messages written on cards by schoolchildren. One of them read: ‘Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind’.