Cabbie bhaijaan: A drive through the unpredictable Indo-Pak relations

Within India, our vast linguistic differences sometimes make conversations sterile. We are very proud of our north Indian lineage and equally happy to dismiss the south Indian culture and vice-versa. Living in Abu Dhabi though everyone is a ‘desi’. Yet, the most interesting stories come from across the border where anecdotes and history versions are sometimes so distorted that they make you question the facts again.

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Like Jameel, the taxi driver, who took me around for a week. He is from Abbottabad, he proudly proclaimed, going on to add (as if anyone in the terror stuck world needed to be told), that this is where Osama was killed. He probably exaggerated that his family still lives in the lane next to where the attack happened but he did re-ignite the rumours, ‘Yeh sab jhooth hai, wahan koi Osama nahi tha. Woh toh chaar panch saal pehle hee bimari se mar gaya tha. Na uski biwi aur bachche wahan the. Yeh sab ek film thi ji ek film jo Obama ne apne fayde ke liye kee,’ he sighed as if the double emphasis was the final word.

The famed ‘tehzeeb’ comes out once they realize they are speaking to an Indian especially one who understands most words in urdu. Many promptly wave photographs of their children especially boys, a few talk about their second wives. Everything is ‘mashallah’ and the conversations flow.

Many Pakistani’s doing ordinary jobs here are from the Khyber Pakhtunkwa region, earlier called the North-West Frontier province. Their families still live there, almost a stone’s throw away from Afghanistan. Lahore or Karachi for them is a day’s trek. They insist that women are not house bound, but also add that even with heads covered, it may not be enough for the rest of us. The region is infested with militants but the locals are either good actors or there is another land the world media hasn’t yet discovered. Come and see the beauty of the place they insist.

Not surprisingly their hero is Imran Khan who’s party is in government. And his second marriage is dismissed, though sometimes with a little bit of embarrassment. ‘Toh kya hua agar woh saath saal ka hai, woh Imran Khan hai. Agar woh meri jaan bhi mangega, mein khushi khushi de doonga’. And then the punch line. ‘Mein ek pathan hoon aur har Pakistani pathan nahi hota jaise har Indian south se nahi hota’, referring to my Punjabi minority is the vast population of people from Kerala and Tamil Nadu here in the UAE.

One thing that remains consistent either side of the border is star adulation. If you read Pakistani newspapers, you will realise that Bollywood is as much mainstream news in the country as Nawaz Sharif. It is as if the industry is as much theirs as ours.

So, when a curious taxi driver questioned me about inter religious marriages, it was easy to give examples. Shahrukh Khan, Aamir Khan even Hrithik Roshan once upon a time. For an average Pakistani this is news. Forget looking outside their faith, many like this man don’t even look outside their family.

The love for Indian movies, though, does not extend to our television serials with all the exaggerated dressing, make-up and garish mangalsutras. On the contrary, despite our reservations, the dramas, as they are called in Pakistan, put our regressive shows to shame. Surprisingly, they are more advanced in their thinking and more mature in their treatment. And it’s been like this for decades since we watched them on our black and white television set at home in Punjab, simply catching the signal from across the border. Years later, who doesn’t remember the iconic Dhoop Kinare!

But, this time, the curiosity was mine. In serials after serials close cousins get married. Not the content, but the question itself bothered Farooq the taxi driver, since Farooq’s wife was also his father’s niece. For the rest of us this would have thrown our raksha bandhan festival for a toss not to mention the health implications of marrying so close within the family.

The one thing that always bonds us is the cuisine. What I recently learnt makes even the unhealthy eating Indian sound fit! Several households start their day with mutton paranthas, which are dipped in a bowl of ghee before a bite is taken. This is just the breakfast!

‘Ji koi vegetarian khana kyun khayega jab itna acha meat banta hai’, a confused cab driver’s relative recently turned vegetarian. The family continues to be in denial and they beg him to at least eat the curry! Taking it a morbid step further, the man added proudly that food served at prayer meetings sometimes is even better than that at weddings!

No one knows their food better than taxi drivers. There are several Pakistani restaurants here in Abu Dhabi and the most authentic they all say is ‘student biryani’ a small corner place that has more people waiting outside than sitting inside. It also serves a naan roti that will barely fit into your microwave. So, if you are Indian, it is prudent to tell them before, because it turns out we eat only half the quantity of what our friends from across the border can tuck in at the same time.

Much may seem similar, but much is also different. Away from the rhetoric and the hard talk, these encounters are a mutual discovery of each other. Yet the unpredictability of our relations is the constant. For every Bajrangi Bhaijaan that sends people across Pakistan to the theatres, there is a Phantom by the same director that doesn’t make it to the movie halls.

– Views expressed by the author are personal.