Crossings… Kutch to Kashmir

India and Pakistan may be deliberating on how to break down the walls between the two countries, in the stadiums, they may be bonding over bats and boundaries, but out here, in the sea, there are no borders, none, at least, that the fishermen can see.

A heavy wind is blowing and Virji has a tough time keeping the boat steady as the sea becomes increasingly choppy. The sun beats down mercilessly. But except for Virji, who is holding the wheel inside a small cabin, there is no shade for the rest of us—five crew-members and me. We are thrown around as the boat rides the waves, trying to keep our balance by holding on to the strong ropes and wires tied from one end of the boat to other .

But everytime the boat hits a trough, a spray of salt water hits our faces and drenches us. ‘‘Isn’t the sea supposed to be calmer away from the coast?’’ I shout over the sound of wind and lashing waves. ‘‘You have to be prepared for sudden changes in weather. Luckily, the waves aren’t very big today,’’ Virji laughs at my discomfort.

By now I have lost all sense of direction. Even Virji seems to be having trouble maintaining his path. Neither he nor any of the crew wear a watch, and the sun doubles up as clock and landmark: Virji checks the sun’s position and modifies his course. If they cross the borderline, they will. But for a good catch, it’s a risk they consider worthwhile.

Water, water everywhere
A LARGE wave violently throws in a guest, a sea snake. Excitement mounts as it makes a dash for the safe corners. Ultimately, Laxman picks it up and tosses it back where it came from.

Ensconced in one corner of the boat is a small plastic container, the public water tank. Ramesh, 24, crewman-cum-cook, passes me a glass of water. It appears unhygenic and I have half a mind to take out my water bottle, but resist the temptation. I drink up, and the next minute, Ramesh drapes a cloth over a small metal bar protruding from the base of the flag-pole for me to sit down. I do so gladly, dig my feet on to the sides, take out my camera and begin shooting.

The seaspray has drenched my clothes, the wind and the sun make me feel sick and I seek the sanctuary of Virji’s cabin. It is not much of a cabin—just a wooden plank with a roof over it—but at least it’s shelter from the elements.

‘‘We take turns to sleep here. Only one person can sleep at a time, the rest have to stay outside, so it’s usually the captain,’’ says Virji. ‘‘When the nets are down sometimes all of us crowd in here to sit. And wait.’’

After what seems an eternity, Virji looks out of his cabin at the sun and estimates that we have been at sea for seven hours out at sea. I check my watch: He’s close enough, we set sail seven hours and 25 minutes ago. But where are we? Virji just shrugs.

One boat, one world
THE motor boat, which had been doing close to eight knots per hour, slows down and immediately Ramesh and the others get to work. They work silently, in tandem, knowing after years at sea exactly what to do.

A small diesel-powered pump shudders to life. As he eases an end of a pipe out of the boat, Ramesh points to the water that has accumulated below the deck. ‘‘Sea water seeps in through joints of the boat and the propeller shaft. If we don’t take care, it can become dangerous. We drain out the water every five or six hours,’’ he explains.

The other four crew are focused elsewhere, on the water. ‘‘There are crabs and prawns here,’’ one shouts. ‘But they are tiny… not good,’’ another observes. ‘‘We will go further,’’ Virji says with finality.

As Virji opens the throttle, Ramesh takes out a packet of rotis and potato curry. ‘‘This is a Day 1 luxury,’’ he grins handing me a roti rolled up with potatoes. ‘‘When we come out for 10-12 days, our food is whatever Ramesh cooks. Mostly it is watery dal and rice or rotis with onions and salt,’’ says Laxman.

A kerosene stove fixed inside a diesel drum and a few utensils serve as the kitchen. ‘‘When the boat is steady I can cook, otherwise it is difficult. Then you have to eat whatever I dish out,’’ Ramesh grins.

Meal over, Virji suddenly falls silent. Deaf to my questions, he scans the sea ahead but except for a boat several miles away—a tiny speck on the horizon—we don’t see anything.

Any dream will do
ANOTHER four hours of sailing and I begin to get nervous. The crew, who had been friendly, withdraw, sticking to their posts to scan the water below. It’s not just me: There’s very little conversation even among the youths.

From their faces, I guess that we are probably close to the IMBL now. Before we left port, I had asked Virjibhai to ensure we stayed at least 30 miles away from the IMBL. But now, I realise there is no way of knowing for certain if we are still in Indian waters.

A disturbing thought crosses my mind. Are we already in Pakistani waters? I don’t dare ask.

The crew is busy preparing to drop anchor while Virji is looking at schools of fish around the boat.ÿEven on a single-day fishing trip—such as this one—Virji and crew have to go back with enough catch to cover fuel costs and enough profit to induce the boat-owner to launch the boat the next day.

Interpreting his body language as Virji scowls into the waters, hands on his hips, isn’t tough. If I wasn’t accompanying them, there would have been nothing to stop them from going further into the sea—and, yes, across the border—in search of fish.

The wind tosses the anchored boat around like a toy. ‘‘The current is very strong too,’’ Virji breaks his silence. I can feel the boat being dragged along. I don’t know in which direction and don’t ask.

For a boat that remains out at sea for upto 10 days, it has neither a radio nor a VHF set or a Global Positioning System (GPS), recommended by the Gujarat government and the Indian Coast Guard for all boats venturing close to the IMBL. Actually, not a single boat has it. The boat captains rely on the faithful compass and a gut instinct which they refuse to believe when they know they have crossed the border.

For hundreds of tandels or boat captains like Virji, the risk of fishing across the IMBL, sometimes deep inside Pakistan waters, is worth taking:

• The Sir Creek area on the Indian side is a favoured site for fishermen from Mangrol, Porbandar, Veraval and Okha. But it marks just the beginning of the best fishing. The prime breeding ground for a variety of fish—lobster, red snapper, squid, prawn, cuttlefish—is at the mouth of the Indus. The big catch areas are indubitably across the IMBL.
• A boat-owner spends around Rs 50,000-Rs 60,000 (on diesel, cold-storage ice, crew salaries, food) on a 10-day fishing trip. Unless the boat returns with a catch worth at least Rs 1 lakh, the jobs of the captain and the crew are at stake, as is the next fishing trip.
• Incentives await big catches: expensive mobile phones, colour television sets, even motorbikes.

The border’s an invisible line
WITH the border just a breath away, possibilities of apprehension by Pakistan’s Maritime Security Agency (MSA) are met with top-of-the-head explanations. ‘‘The border is not clearly marked. They take advantage of this and arrest our fishermen and take away the boats. Even when we are fishing near the border, they make arrests,’’ says Veljibhai Masani, president of fishermen association, Mangrol.

‘‘Fishermen cross the border because of the strong currents and wind direction. Sometimes they lose track of time and direction in pursuit of a good catch,’’ says Ramjibhai Gohel, a boat-owner.

But talk to the captains and crew and they nail the lie. ‘‘When we leave the ports, we know where we’re heading and where we are supposed to look for fish. Fish are not available easily in the Gulf of Kutch or towards Mumbai, but there are plenty in the estuary near the IMBL. It’s common knowledge… if you want a good catch, you go there,’’ says Arjanbhai Madhabhai, a crew member.

That’s one reason why boatowners—some of whom own more than five boats, each costing upto Rs 14 lakhs—are averse to installing radios, VHF sets or GPS on the boats. ‘‘With those gadgets we won’t have any excuses left,’’ chuckles Kanubhai, a boat master at Mangrol port.

Karsan Khokhri, owner of four boats, says he cannot afford GPS sets. ‘‘Plus the crew is illiterate, they can’t operate such sophisticated equipment,’’ he says.

But it’s a fact that some boat-owners installed ‘fishfinders’ on their boats—and then pulled them out, because they provided precise locations, making ‘inadvertent’ crossings impossible.

With deep-sea fishing yet to pick up as an industry in Pakistan, the estuary, to local minds, is fair game.

Ground beneath our feet
MEANWHILE, on the boat, there is nothing to do but wait as the nets are cast. After another four hours, Virji turns back, albeit reluctantly, on my insistence. Late in the night, we cross several boats heading towards the IMBL.

It is dawn when we sight the lights of Porbandar and the winch draws the nets up. It’s an ‘‘OK’’ catch, as Virji puts it. There are medium-sized prawns and a variety of other fish —about 600 kg.

As we near port, we cross a boat that had been fishing far on the other side of the IMBL. The nets are being pulled up, but the catch is disappointing: a few crabs, tiny prawns and a couple of sea snakes that the crew quickly dump.

About 26 hours after we set sail, we are back in Porbandar.

…and along the Line of Control, MUFTI ISLAH builds a bridge for bus travel between Kashmiri borders

EIGHT hundred workers are building a road. Three are paving the way to their extended families.

Every morning, almost as soon as the spring sun rises, Kabir Ali Lone drives his construction material-loaded truck to the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road, to within 50 m of KDK Bridge, or Wood Bridge, as it was fondly called in the days before the Line of Control divided it into two.

There, the driver with the Border Roads Organisation takes a breather. As he stands there facing the LoC, his gaze seems to look through the scores of armymen, BRO workers and local labourers and their counterparts on the other side to Kalhia village. ‘‘There,’’ he breathes, ‘‘there, across the ridge, lives my uncle.’’

Kabir, 35, has never seen his uncle. ‘‘My father tells me my uncle went there in 1947 to look for a job. In those days, it was easier to go to Muzaffarabad than to Baramulla. There were no man-made borders, no soldiers, no animosity. People were as free as this river (he points to the Jhelum hurtling down the valley to Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir) to go anywhere they pleased,’’ says Kabir.

A resident of Namla, a village hidden in the misty hills to the left of garrison town Uri, Kabir knows he’s just 30 minutes away from his uncle. ‘‘If I walk there, it shouldn’t take more than half-an-hour,’’ he says meditatively.

But the road isn’t complete yet; work is underway on the last 100 meters of the tortuous five-km stretch. ‘‘That’s why I don’t want to rest even for a minute,’’ says Kabir. ‘‘This is not just a job. It is a solemn promise, a historic mission.’’

More than that, it is a familial mission. ‘‘You can’t imagine how we all long to meet our uncle,’’ Kabir says, his eyes moist. ‘‘Every time I go home—about once a week—my 72-year-old father Ghulam Mohammad Lone asks me dozens of questions: ‘Where have you reached? Does the road connect with the bridge now?’

‘‘I wish I could take my father there on the first bus.’’

Etched in cement
A FEW meters away, right next to the wood bridge, Mohammad Ramzan Bhat, 58, smiles. ‘‘I am old,’’ he says, emptying a basin of cement on the cantilever of the bridge, ‘‘but I feel full of energy while working here. It is like a dream.’’

Three weeks ago, when he was summoned along with dozens of masons from Baramulla to fix this important link—a half of which is being constructed by Pakistanis—Bhat says he couldn’t sleep. ‘‘I can’t wait for the moment when the two halves of the bridge finally meet in the middle,’’ he says. ‘‘This is not just a bridge. It is the answer to our prayers.’’

Prayers for his family, for their well-being. Prayers for their happiness and their unity. Prayers for Abdul Sattar, an older cousin separated by the LoC for 58 years.

‘‘All we know about him is that he lives somewhere near Muzaffarabad,’’ says Bhat, himself hailing from Behrampora village in Baramulla. ‘‘My uncle died 10 years ago, and I remember my cousin only vaguely.’’

Abdul’s friends in Behrampora, all in their 60s now, recall an excellent sportsman who would settle Bhat on his back and swim across the Jhelum.

Now that another way to bridge the river is so close, Bhat can barely contain his excitement. ‘‘I haven’t been back home for three weeks, and I shan’t go back for three more. I have built many homes in my life but today, whenever I lift my hand to polish this cement block, I feel I am mending broken hearts. My work has suddenly become a humble contribution towards peace and reunion. I feel so content’’.

Ah, no, there’s one desire still: ‘‘I wish I could get on the first bus.’’

Reunion road
A FEW hundred meters away, on the top of a plateau, a young man sits overlooking the bridge and the construction. Ayaz Khan, 25, is a contractor, responsible for the construction material for a small stretch of the road.

‘‘We are already celebrating the opening of the road,’’ he says. ‘‘To tell the truth, I don’t care for work these days. I am happy I got this contract.’’

Because, one day, his mother will ride down the road he helped build to meet his brother. ‘‘My mama (maternal uncle) lives just three km away from here,’’ Ayaz says, pointing towards Udoosa, a village nestled in a nearby hill. ‘‘I’ve never seen him. And it’s taken my mother 30 years to even hope to see him again. Inshallah, she will visit him soon.’’

Emotions are never very far from the surface on this last stretch of the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road. ‘‘My grandmother tells me stories about the pre-1947 days, how my grandfather would go to work in Muzaffarabad for three months and come back with good money,’’ Ayaz says. ‘‘She tells me of fights over water during farming season. She remembers it all as if it happened yesterday.’’

Khan regrets not picking up an application form for the travel permit and thus missing the first bus. ‘‘My mama lives in Bagh Chakoti, just behind this mountain. You can see the Pakistani post up there,’’ he says pointing towards the peak facing Udoosa village. ‘‘I pray this mountain melts. My mother and grandmother yearn to see my mama. So do I.’’

KABIR Ali Lone, Mohammad Ramzan Bhat and Ayaz Khan will not be in the 30-seater bus when it cuts through the LoC on April 7. They do not have the travel permits because they could not procure application forms from Srinagar. But perhaps that doesn’t matter. The ice is fast melting and for thousands of families divided into two countries, reunion is inevitable.