Lahore is not far away

IT was just another summer afternoon on a sleepy Indian road. Our car entered the gate. We walked a few steps. Nothing changed. Actually, a ...

IT was just another summer afternoon on a sleepy Indian road. Our car entered the gate. We walked a few steps. Nothing changed. Actually, a lot did. We entered Pakistan.

The Pakistani side of the GT Road received us with the song Hum honge kamyaab. The police officer offered us tea, imported from not Darjeeling or Assam but faraway Kenya. 8216;8216;Janaab,8217;8217; he remarked, 8216;8216;dil ki bus chal pare to sab raaste khul jayenge.8217;8217; Sir if the bus of the heart begins moving, all roads will open. Indeed, this is what we heard through our eight days in Pakistan. The core issue between India and Pakistan was not Kashmir. It was a mutual lack of trust.

From the Attari border to the centre was only a 20 minute drive. Lahore seemed so familiar, so much like our own Delhi.

Many of my fellow MPs did not quite know what to expect in Pakistan. No surprise was more pleasant than the women of Lahore, trendy, smartly turned-out and confident. We were expecting burqa-clad women but, at least in Lahore and even in the Anarkali Bazar, the burqas were absent.

We had a lengthy discussion with women activists. We learnt that there was 30 percent reservation for women in all elected bodies in Pakistan. It all seemed so familiar.

This was the first delegation of Indian MPs to visit Pakistan in 55 years. The three cities we travelled to were a contrast. In Lahore we were received with enthusiasm. Islamabad was cautions but courteous. Karachi was emotional.

We were welcomed by traditional friendship enthusiasts like Mubashar Hassan, former Pakistani finance minister and Hanif Ramey, former chief minister of Punjab. Yet we were also greeted by religious figures like Maulana Fazlur Rehman. The Jamaat-e-Islami, known for its support to jihadi groups, hosted a reception for us in Karachi. Was the popular mood really changing?

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One evening in Islamabad, as we were preparing to visit Mian Mohammed Soomro, Pakistan8217;s acting president, for dinner, a friend gave me an old-fashioned journalistic tip. He told me about a charity dinner being organised by Imran Khan at the Marriot. I decided to gatecrash. It was worth it. The political satire presented there was a big surprise. From General Pervez Musharraf to President George Bush, from jihadis to maulvis to faujis, no one was spared.

My most interesting encounter was with a Pakistani businessman who, during the 1971 war, was living in Dhaka and taken prisoner with his wife. His two children were born in a POW camp in Roorkee, a fact, he laughed, driven home each time they looked at their passports or filled up a form that demanded to know their place of birth.

Other than a three-day, three-city seminar tour in 1996, this was my first visit in Pakistan. I was asked about Gujarat. I said for every religious bigot in India there were ten secularists.

In the past musicians and scholars travelled from India to Pakistan or the other way round. But it is not they who can resolve the bitterness. Politicians created these problems and it is they who have to understand the new realities. History cannot wait for them.

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The author, a Samajwadi Party MP, was part of a six-member Indian parliamentary team that visited

Pakistan recently