Passengers to the future

His family lives on both sides of the border, he goes to Lahore regularly to visit his sister. ‘‘My elder sister is cut off from us. She was married in Pakistan and never saw us again. She never gets visas. So I have to keep going to see her. These stupid agencywallahs! Do they think I come to Pakistan to work for them?’’

Rizwana Begum and her glamorous daughter Shazia peer through the window towards the moon. Yes, look, it is still shining. Rizwana was born in Madras, educated in a convent and grew up to become a Rabelaisian character. Toothless, massive, garishly dressed in red and yellow, with a yellow cap, peroxide blonde hair, dangling earrings and a loud voice, she sits in the train surrounded by albums, shrieking at her co-passengers that she’s not like them.

‘‘I am English-educated!’’ she screams. ‘‘My mother had 50 servants in Aurangabad. My father was chief commissioner there. I got married to man with a showroom full of cars. But he died and left me penniless. My daughters worked in Karachi. Modelling, acting. They had to. Nobody helped me! God, I love India, I love Bollywood. I hate Pakistan. India is my land.’’

She shows photos of herself with Salman Khan, Arbaaz Khan, Rishi Kapoor, Sunil Shetty. Her feet are terribly cracked, her mountains of suitcases, bags and polythene bags are strewn around, her daughter Shazia looks on, faintly embarrassed. ‘‘I tried for a career in Bollywood,’’ she says. ‘‘But now I act in Pakistani serials.’’

Shazia and Rizwana come to India as often as they can because they love it so much. ‘‘Oh, what a terrible country Pakistan is, I hate it!’’ yells Rizwana. ‘‘People fighting, double standards, wanting wealth. I am related to the nawabzadas of Bombay, but the men in Pakistan are b***. The aurat is so safe in Bombay. When I go to India, I sing, jawani diwani!’’

Haroun Butt, a Kashmiri shawl trader from Srinagar, wears his cap and beard proudly. ‘‘In India you can be what you are,’’ he says. He was born in Srinagar and wanted to become a professional photographer. Then he went on a pilgrimage to Medina and was inspired by an Iranian woman who told him that photography was un-islamic. He says he wants to be a good Muslim, but he regrets that he could not become a photographer.

His little sons Faizan and Zeeshan, however, he says will not be like him. They will resolve their dilemmas, they will know how to deal with the world.

Butt’s father’s grave lies a few miles outside Lahore. To see his valid sahib’s grave has been one of the enduring passions of his life. ‘‘My father died when he was 58. But I never got to ask him, can you be a good Muslim and also a good photographer?’’

Haji Abdul Salim, a mill worker from Bhilwara, recites a poem. Na gul chahiye, na chaman chahta hoon. Na dhan chahiye, na dharma chahta hoon, zamane ke har keemat ke badle, mein apna azad mulk chahta hoon.

Haji Abdul is visiting Pakistan after four years with his wife Hasina. For three years, he says, they have been saving money. He’s 55, but still cycles to work. Childless,, separated from his nieces in Pakistan, he says he works all day at his mill, looping thread over the loom again and again with one thought in his mind. To save money and to get to see the only children he can ever have. He drinks tea only once a day, but can’t control his addiction to No. 30 bidi.

Camping in Delhi’s Nehru Park for a week, using the garden as bedroom and toilet while he waited for his visa, he whispered to the unseen god of visas and passports: ‘‘I am a poor mill worker without children. Let me see my children in that other country. Please let me see my children.’’

The tears are bewildered, hysterical and often confused. Riding into Attari on the train from Lahore, on her way to Delhi, Begum Rashida from Karachi screams out, ‘‘Don’t close the door! Yeh (India) mera watan hain! Yeh mera watan hain. Please mujhe aane de! Mujhe aane de! (Please let me come, please let me come to India.)’’

Begum Rashida doesn’t care about the TV cameras and the journalists anymore. She says she never sees her family. She can never come for weddings, her parents died before she got to see them and her daughter-in-law can’t meet her parents. She doesn’t care about SAARC or declarations or Confidence Building Measures. Electrified wires, guns and army boots have stamped across her heart and mind for too long.

She married, thinking her life would be happy, that her family would grow together, instead, the Indian and Pakistani army came rampaging in through her front door. ‘‘Get out!’’ she yells to the immigration officials, insane with waiting and legalities, ‘‘get out!’’

Ceremonies of state seem odd when juxtaposed with intimate joys and tears. Mohammad Ishtiaq Ahmed is a tailor from Naland. He and his sister Gauhar Parveen are going to see their parents in Karachi. As BSF horsemen draw up along the train when it crosses the border, in a ceremonial if cantering send-off, Ishtiaq says, ‘‘I have seen so many things in these last years that my Ammi hasn’t. Now I think will Ammi be able to understand what I tell her?’’

They lived with their grandparents when their parents went to Pakistan with their other brothers and sisters because they were adopted by their nani. Ishtiaq says although he’s a tailor at the moment, he wants to study more so he can get a better job and visit his parents more regularly.

‘‘I feel I am going from one house to another. But the government doesn’t think so.’’ Sayid Mohammad is a clerk from Palanpur and says every time he buys gifts to take to Pakistan, he reflects on Partition. ‘‘Such a giant mistake. Such a terrible, horrible tragic mistake.’’

Wheat fields and kikar trees stretch across the border. The steel and wire border stretches for miles throwing off hostile sparks at the defeated families staring dully at the banks of security guards.

Electrician Salauddin says the borders clamped down during his honeymoon and he still hasn’t consummated his three year old marriage because his wife was left behind in Pakistan. ‘‘I’ve waited for three years. I haven’t put on weight. But sometimes I think, has she been true to me?’’

It’s a question India and Pakistan ask of each other — all the time.