An Indian In Pakistan

I have been to Pakistan several times and have often been asked ‘How doesit feel?’ ‘How was it like?’ and my answer has always been ‘Nothingdifferent, it’s as chaotic as India!’ And that is the truth to me - apartfrom the obvious Muslim majority in the streets, I feel totally at home inPakistan.

One of the more surreal experiences in my life has been witnessing the changeof guard at the Wagah border from the Pakistan side. Not once but twice.Patriotic sentiments ran high amid the theatrical show of strength. But, whilewatching my fellow countrymen across the border, I got this very strange, mixedfeeling of separation, yet being at home while standing on Pakistani soil.

I happened to have a chat with a man who comes there every day. He lives inPakistan while most of his kin happens to be in India. His request for a visithas been refused several times due to lack of paperwork and he has finallyresigned to fate. He writes to his relatives and now his only chance of catchinga glimpse of them is across Wagah’s iron gates. He has been doing this foryears and has the energy to do so for many more. After I spoke with him, my mindwandered to Freedom At Midnight, and its many pages devoted to the logic,or the lack of it, of drawing the infamous line across the heart of thesub-continent that gave birth to Pakistan.

Last year, I was fortunate to be there to witness history - India’s firstcricket tour of Pakistan in nearly 15 years. Cricket broke through severallayers of tension. It was a time of great festivity and camaraderie, of unionand celebration. There were scenes unimaginable in the past - Indians andPakistanis walking arm in arm, fans having painted an Indian flag on one cheek,a Pakistani one on the other. Indians were welcome wherever they went and thelocals were more than hospitable. To me, this is how it was meant to be. It wasa friendship tour, the proverbial thawing of the ice. The two governments hadtaken a step closer and the masses from the two nations spread the message ofbrotherhood, albeit willingly and spontaneously.

But the more important parameter of our common brotherhood, to me, are thetimes when I have been to Pakistan as producer of cricket tours that did notinvolve India. When I just happened to be an Indian in Pakistan. Those are thetimes that our neighbours were not meant to be nice to me. But, crucially, evenon those occasions, I have been greeted with warmth and welcomed with open armswherever I went. In fact, they opened up more when I said was Indian.

I will never forget the one occasion when I suffered food poisoning and thePakistani team doctor took personal care of me. Whenever I was passed ontosomeone else, it was with a footnote saying ‘He is our guest from India, takegood care of him’. Not once did I feel lonely or neglected.

I started on the wrong foot with the rather elderly national pitch curator ofPakistan - former Test cricketer Agha Zahid. Welater had a chat to clear the misunderstanding and since then he insisted onintroducing me as his barkhurdar to all his colleagues and friends. I wasdeeply touched when I found out that it translated to ‘son’.

Sikander Bakht, the former fast bowler, is one of the most hospitablePakistanis I have come across. When I wanted to acquire some Pakistani outfits,he went out of his way to get me a Pathani salwar kamiz and a pair of Peshawarichappals, locally called ‘chawat’. He even took me to his traditional tailorat Zammama street in Karachi, who happened to have done Shahid Afridi’smarriage outfit, and got him to stitch my suit in double quick time. I proudlybrandished them at a family reception in Delhi before many admiring eyes.

But, let’s be honest - I have had a few unsettling moments in Pakistan aswell. Ramiz Raja once told Sanjay Manjrekar and me that as Indians, we arealways being watched. That was a creepy feeling. It was unnerving to drive pastseveral lanes of shops in Peshawar that sold a wide variety of guns and pistolsoff the shelf. These parts of Pakistan fall under the Federally AdministratedTribal Area (FATA) the ruling body of which is the ‘Jirgah’ - the Pakistanequivalent of a panchayat. A deeper knowledge of the ‘madrasas’ intriguedme. These Islamic religious schools offer free education, but importantly, freemeals and clothing. The students, mostly children of parents who cannot offertheir progeny anything better, are called ‘talibs’, and are the breedingground for what we know as the Talibans. That sounded like a pretty serioussupply chain!

But, whatever the state of affairs there and the tensions between the twocountries at a political level, my personal experience is that on a one-to-onebasis, there in no animosity between the people of the two nations. So, when apassionate cricket fan lured me into one of those famous conversations thatinvolved Sachin and Inzy playing for the same team, my mind could not help butwander into ‘what if’ zone. If not anything else, this imaginary team wouldcertainly have given the Aussies a serious run for their money at the top of theICC cricket rankings.