Been there, done that

Now they are back. Yousuf says that this peace process is bringing them to Lahore for visits to their parents8217; and grandparents8217; homes. And Yousuf, in his little yellow taxi, has over the last year gained a sense of the cartography of the visitors8217; special landmarks. With great affection he asks around and gives them an update of recent occupants. Hmm, he frowns at a palatial structure on Shahrah-e-Quaid-e-Azam the old Mall Road, that8217;s been grabbed by a politician8217;s relative. And look at Laxmi Mansions, you know why buildings like that will never be pulled down? Because in the old days they knew how to match walls and window layouts to the climate.

HOW much has changed since the friendship cricket series in spring 2004? In a curious way, the consolidation of freer contact between India and Pakistan can be gauged in the graceful retreat of overwhelming hospitality. The Punjab has always been largehearted. Hospitality is given automatically in these parts. But it is also a tool to conceal unease and apprehension. The fear of a visitor being rebuffed places immense strain on the host to compensate with excess.

8216;8216;I was at the two one-day matches in Lahore last year,8217;8217; recalls Aaliya, spooning an ice-cream sundae at an after-dinner rendezvous with friends at Hot Spot. I had fun, says the twentysomething advertising executive, but I just did not have the energy to concentrate on the cricket. We were making such an effort to keep up the cheer, to welcome visitors from India, that we didn8217;t even notice that Pakistan had lost.

The very same men and women who would last year stiffen and change the subject at the very mention of Partition and Kashmir now raise the topic themselves. In the fabric of friendships being woven, there is a perceptible crack at picking out the strands that could knot.

You know, concedes Ali a year later, in discussions with family and friends India summons both affection and antagonism. Ali8217;s mother was ten when she left Delhi in 1947. She wants to go back and find her old house, she even wonders if the little jottings she made on courtyard walls will be still there. But, shrugs Ali, memories of Partition do divide. The following decades of estrangement have magnified the unbalanced ledger. Yet, he says, each time I meet someone from India, I know even more that we cannot do anything that would harm him. We need soft borders.

TO announce oneself an Indian in Lahore and Islamabad is no longer an invitation to inquiries about first impressions and whispered concern about badtameezi from anyone. Instead, officebearers of the Pakistan Muslim League launch into accounts of their experiences in India this spring. Attendants at newspaper kiosks instantly request assistance in getting a visa just to see the neighbourhoods in Patiala and Jalandhar where their parents grew up.

In a relationship so anchored in reciprocity, the qualitative change can be extracted from simple arithmetic. A little over a year ago, the Indian mission in Islamabad issued a hundred visas a month. That number is up to 11,000.

Even the shrill sceptic is onboard. At the prime minister8217;s house in Islamabad, a journalist raging about the peace process being a veil for inaction on 8216;8216;core8217;8217; issues loosens into a smile when you ask whether there will be a backlash against people-to-people contact in Punjab. No, he says softy, that should continue. What do ordinary people have to do with these problems?

Yousuf sums up the mood. Take my mobile number, he says. Your friends in Delhi must be planning trips to Lahore. I will take them around.