A Piece Of My Pind

When Tanvir Ahmed was told he would be participating in the World Punjabi Conference in Patiala, he knew he had to visit his ancestral village of Pandori Kad in Hoshiarpur district. A deputy inspector general who heads the Pakistan federal investigation agency of Lahore zone, Tanvir's response was, "My parents, who moved to Pakistan during Partition, would see the village in their dreams. I've grown up on stories about the village. I owe it to my dead parents to visit the village of their dreams."

Those who feel that time alters memory and dreams beyond recognition should talk to Tanvir. At Pandori Kad, he saw his ancestral house; there were landmarks which he recognised from his parents' stories. He even met a couple of old men who had been his uncle's classmates before a bloody line was drawn to divide the two Punjabs. Says Tanveer, "Even Baba Mithe Shah's Mazaar was there. I was extremely surprised to find it so well-maintained even though there are no Muslims living in the village now. I wanted to spend more time in my parents' village...." Words gush out of him as a child's prattle. His tears are of a person glimpsing a family heirloom—and returning to his roots.

Tanvir wasn't the only Pakistani overwhelmed by emotions. This was the dominant experience hundreds of Punjabis from Pakistan went through as they descended on Patiala for a 10-day cultural exchange: a three-day World Punjabi Conference beginning December 1 and the first-ever Indo-Pak Punjab Games, December 5-11.

For more than a week, Patiala witnessed an emotional carnival, a veritable bridging of the cartographic divide, of liberating the future from the past. Ecstatic Punjabis from both sides revelled as they spoke the same language, sang the same songs, laughed at jokes and quenched their thirst for information about each other's lives.

Says Prof Painda A. Malik, secretary, Gymnastics Federation of Lahore, "Every second Pakistani here has some link or the other with Indian Punjab. We want to explore our links, visit our ancestral villages, meet people." But this desire to return to the roots wasn't always satisfied. The reason: heartless government rules. The 500-odd Pakistani Punjabis who came here had been granted city-specific visas, mainly Patiala and Chandigarh. Both India and Pakistan rarely grant pan-country visas to each other's citizens.

The sheer desire to explore the roots exasperated the authorities who were flooded with requests from Pakistani Punjabis to visit their villages. And even those with no ancestral moorings wanted to visit the homes and villages of their new friends in Punjab. "There is absolutely no uprapan (foreignness) here," exulted Chaudhury Mohad Yaqub, Inspector General of Police, Balochistan, whose family hails from Hoshiarpur.

The bonhomie was incredible. Trust the Punjabis to conjure up a hearty meal out of the unusual combination of halal gosht (not common here) and sarson da saag—the two mandatory dishes at all parties hosted for the Pakistanis. Call this culinary syncretism. And every evening, singers from the two Punjabs regaled the delegates. It was, in the end, a fest of the Punjabis, by the Punjabis and for the Punjabis, the rest of India and Pakistan be damned. As Rana Sodhi, working chairman for the Patiala games, points out, "The aim is to have participation of only Punjabis at the games and cultural events."

The glow of warmth was intense enough to spread beyond the rostrums. On the concluding day of the Punjabi Conference, writers, poets and journalists regaled each other at impromptu poetry sessions on the lawns of the Punjabi University campus. Says prominent Pakistani poet Saleem Khwaja, "We have always perceived India as the hated, other country. I visited India in 1983 too.But this first visit of mine to your Punjab has changed my viewpoint.The political leaderships of the two countries shouldn't be allowed to retreat from this initiative now." Khwaja was particularly touched by the refusal of the shopkeepers of Patiala to accept money for his purchases.

The bonhomie was also about exorcising the ghosts of the past. As Bushra Rehman, a Pakistani MP, says, "In many ways, these exchanges are triggering a catharsis of the trauma of Partition." It was indeed cathartic to listen to Pakistani poet Azghar Chauhan recall how 26 members of his family were slaughtered during Partition. "We have both shed each other's blood. This makes us blood relations. It's not easy to forget the deaths of near ones. But, today, I feel like forgiving everyone for the past." And Dr Sucha Singh, the coordinator of the conference, became a touch maudlin as he recalled the embraces of the Pakistani delegates as they bid farewell: "It was as if they didn't want to let go off me. I did not want to let them go, either."

Away from the conference, Kamran Khan, a security officer with Pakistani Punjab chief minister, Pervaiz Elahi, was on a private journey of his own into the past. His parents hail from Jhill village outside Patiala. When Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh was told about this, he asked Kamran to ring up his father in Lahore. Amarinder chatted with Kamran's father about Patiala. Kamran was granted special permission to spend an entire night at the house of his father's friend in Jhill.

Even the presence of intelligence spooks did not dampen their spirit. Police officials swapped stories about their ancestral places. Yet, many could not forget that the 10-day love fest between the two Punjabs was just an interlude, that reality might soon overtake them. As a moist-eyed official of Elahi's entourage told Outlook, "Please don't write all of what I spoke to you about, it will get me into trouble."

It has taken a few months to discover the spirit of Punjabiyat across the border. The first to set the ball rolling was Fakhr Zaman, a former minister for culture in Pakistan, who organised a Punjabi Congress in Lahore in January. It was attended by Amarinder Singh. A few months later, Chandigarh reciprocated with its own Punjabi Congress. And now Haryana chief minister Om Prakash Chautala plans to organise a similar meet in Kurukshetra next week. Remember, Haryana was also part of the undivided Punjab before Partition. Add to these congresses a dozen-odd cultural and peace melas and it becomes easy to understand why Punjabiyat has now acquired a transnational meaning.

It was, perhaps, plain rhetoric when Amarinder Singh talked of "a day when these border-shorders, I mean the gates at Wagah, will be removed and we can meet each other more freely." Cynical commentators in Chandigarh dismiss the excitement among Punjabis as the "outpourings of emotional fools", claiming "they will rue their passions when they get jilted again."

For the moment, though, there are few here who have the inclination to heed such pessimistic advice. In the Punjab on this side of the border, a visit to Pakistan has become a status symbol among the chatterrati. "It's the new mecca for Punjabis nowadays," says Pramod Kumar of the Institute for Communications and Development. They would rather ignore the cynics in Chandigarh and hitch themselves to the next delegation leaving for Pakistan. This is as much true on the other side of the border.