War and Peace

This train to Pakistan was very different. The year was 1959. The passport and visa rules had been relaxed and people were rushing to mee...

This train to Pakistan was very different. The year was 1959. The passport and visa rules had been relaxed and people were rushing to meet their relatives on the other side of the border. Some for the first time after the Partition. Among them was my mother holding me by the hand. She was going to meet her sister in Rawalpindi after a gap of eleven years. I was four and excited. But as we got down to switch trains at Amritsar, I was suddenly frightened by a strange sight. A ghost-like figure all wrapped in black with a little meshed window beneath the forehead. 8220;What is that? 8221; I whispered to my mother. She looked, smiled and said, 8220;She is a lady in a burqa.8221; My ignorance was not without reason. Muslims were not to be found in the Punjab on this side of the border. They had either been killed at the time of the Partition. Or they had fled. The few who remained had taken on Hindu or Sikh identity for safety.

It was not very different in the Punjab across the border. My aunt, her husband and her daughtermade up one of the three Hindu families of Rawalpindi. They lived in my uncle8217;s ancestral house in Lunda Bazar. Since it had been a Hindu mohalla, all the houses had been taken by refugees who came from India, mostly from Uttar Pradesh and what we now know as Haryana. But we had a fine time, for my brother and I were treated specially. We were a novelty 8212; the Hindustani children.

Those were years of peace and till the spring of 1962, we had made as many as four trips to Pakistan. We had friends there and one of them was Bhaijan Mehmood. He belonged to a Kashmiri family and became very close to my older brother. One day he came, very excited, and told us that he had found some family records which showed that his great-grandfather was a Kashmiri Pandit who had converted to Islam. This was during our second trip to Pakistan. When we were leaving, he told my mother that I should send him rakhi and tikka just as I did to my brothers. A sentimental bond of a little sister across the border wasestablished.

The promise was kept and at Bhaiyadooj, I sent him tikka. He in turn put it on his forehead, got himself photographed and sent me the picture as a present. It is still there in the album, and all through childhood I would show it to my friends and say, 8220;This is my Bhaijan Mehmood. He lives in Pakistan.8221;

Then after a gap of seven long years, we made a final trip to Pakistan. We had not been able to go for my father had died and things were difficult. I don8217;t think I even sent rakhi or tikka to Bhaijan Mehmood those years. In 1969, we had to go for my mother lost her sister in Rawalpindi. It was a sad occasion.

Friends of my aunt8217;s family mourned deeply for us. Among those who came to meet us was Bhaijan Mehmood and his sister, Salma Appa. He had finished college and was in government service. He asked after my older brother who was a captain in the Indian army. We told him that he had been on the front in the Indo-Pak war of 1965. 8220;We were so afraid for him,8221; I said. At this, Salma Appasaid, 8220;It was different here. We were ready to have our brothers killed for the sake of the country.8221;

It sounded like a snub. I did not know what to say to it. Something stood between us. Yes, the war. As they were about to leave, I turned to Bhaijan Mehmood who was working in Karachi and said childishly, even though I was 14, that he give me his address for I would send him rakhi and tikka once again. Bhaijan looked uncomfortable and then said that it may be awkward for him to receive letters from India. He would try to send us a letter through the diplomatic mail. The season of sentimentality was over. The shadow of war haunted peace.