That's what two Multan students said of Chandigarh. For many, the two Punjabs are the same.
opinion
The '90s rancour is past. Cricket, the victim before, is now the tone-setter.
Mike Marqusee
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indo-pak tour
Cricket is an excuse. Most visiting Pakistanis want a slice of Indian life. And they want it for keeps.
Chander Suta Dogra
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Sheikh Mohammed and Sheikh Mohammed Ajmal, two MBA students from Multan, spent the night in a Lahore park to line up for the cricket visa being issued by the embassy counter there. Their friends and relatives cautioned them before leaving because as they say, "We were going to India, a country which evokes awe and fear among Pakistanis. What if we were branded terrorists and thrown into jail?" Two days of living in the home of Chanchaljit Chawla, who picked them up as they alighted from the bus at the Sector 16 cricket stadium, and the two are ecstatic at being in Punjab. "We realise now that this is our 'watan' , the land of our forefathers, our home. All these years we have been misled by our leaders who have been feeding us hateful propaganda," the duo told Outlook. "There is absolutely no difference between us. We speak the same language, eat the same food and I feel as if I am in my own home here," says Sheikh Mohammed who can barely contain his excitement at finding Indian Punjab so much like the one back home in Pakistan.
More and more of visiting Pakistanis are beginning to see India as their own and there is now a veritable clamour to open the borders to permit free movement of people. Shaukat Ali, a real estate agent in Lahore, too feels that "India is our home, just as Pakistan is yours. There should at least be a door between us to enable us to meet." Raja Munnawar Ahmed, one-time advisor to president Zia-ul-Haq and now with the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), is more categorical. "When the country was partitioned, the then government drew a line and said that this is now the border. But no one told the people to leave their homes and go. They did so on their own either due to fear or misplaced convictions. So now, if the very same people want to meet and be one again why are the governments coming in the way?" He says that the trust with which people left the keys of their houses with friends and neighbours when they migrated is still there. "It's time to see the invisible feelings of people. Don't see that which is overtly visible or that which the governments want us to see," says Ahmed.