Boundaries or Bridges?

from Assam in the north-east (one from Majuli, the largest river island in
the world), and Kerala in the south. Only two were Dilli-wallas. And there
was Iftikhar Hussain, amazingly from Kargil -- yes, Kargil. Relieved at the
warmth with which they were met by total strangers, they related some of
the reactions back home to their trip.

One student has a five-year old niece, who asked what he would say if asked
where he was from. "From Hindustan," he replied. "No, no, don't," she
pleaded. "Say you're from Pakistan, or they will kill you". The students
who stayed behind gave them a little going-off ceremony with "Acha zindagi
rahi to milenge" kind of jokes being bandied around not so jokingly. All
of this, of course, bears testimony to the kind of tension created by
governments and increased by media in its projection of issues. The
reality the students encountered here was quite different from what they
had expected.

Besides not finding the Pakistan they had envisioned, they were overwhelmed
at the warmth and hospitality they encountered. Many stereotypes were
shattered and misconceptions cleared in their encounters with ordinary
people, as they travelled about on a shoe-string budget -- upper limit Rs
2,500 for the entire week, including travel, lodging, food and shopping.
They stayed in hostels, travelled by bus, on foot or crammed in Suzuki
pickups.

In this they were aided by their teachers dedicated efforts to save them
money. At an informal dinner at Naheed Siddiqui's (the famous Kathak dancer) on Jan 12, the night before they departed for Delhi, Mitual Baruah, a lively student from
Assam, had everyone, including Mukul Mangalik, laughing with his imitation
of the teacher striding up "to the ticket-collector or whoever is at the
gate of the place we want to go to. He goes up and greets them, then
introduces himself like this (flinging his arms out): "Dekhiey janab, I am
a history teacher from Hindustan. These are my students. I can pay
whatever your ticket is, but the students are after all students. We are
your guests. Its up to you. No one refused him!"

That would have been difficult. Mukul is after all from Lucknow, legendary
for its manners. "They are lucky to have a teacher like him," commented a
Pakistani student who met them. "I dont know any teachers here who
would rough it out with their students on buses and trains every year.
They respect him, but it's also a friendly relationship which gives them
enough room to clown around."

There was no fixed itinerary, no programme; just a couple of contacts here,
though which a booking was made at the youth hostel in Lahore. The Samjhota
Express steamed into the Lahore station late on the night of Jan 6, and
they spilled out into the cold, bundled up in overcoats, hats and scarves,
lugging a piece of baggage each. The cold and the well-meaning warnings of
their friends and families were temporarily forgotten in the excitement of
actually being here, their spirits undampened by spending all day at
Attari on the Indian side of the border. "A learning experience," said
Mukul Mangalik good humouredly. "Theyre a sporting lot," he added. "I
really believe that all this is a crucial part of their education."

The students possibly hadn't bargained that having to 'fast' would be part of
their education this time round. Having arrived during Ramzan, they
uncomplainingly respected the local norms and abstained from eating and drinking all day while sight-seeing, led by someone they had never met, Arif Usmani, a
young history teacher from Government College who dedicatedly showed them
around when asked for his help by Pakistani historian Dr Mubarik Ali.

Their original programme would have landed them here in the middle of
Ramzan instead of at the end, and they had wanted to spend New Years Eve
here. Many people, here and back home, thought they were mad on both
counts. But as the students explained it, this was one country they had
intensely wanted to visit, "and what better time to be here than for the
millennium," as one of them put it. But by the time the programme was
finalised and the logistics worked out, it was too late and they had to
make do with the last week of their vacation, missing a couple of days of
college which was to re-open a couple of days before they returned.

There were comic moments as the two Assamese students in the group, and
Iftikhar Hussain from Kargil, found themselves being mistaken for Thai,
Uzbek or Filipino. For Iftikhar, it was perhaps a more intense experience
than for the others, since he had spent the summer with his family in
Kargil town dodging the shelling and bullets coming from across the
border. They had to evacuate their homes more than once, and he remembers
thinking "what kind of people they are who trouble us".

"I used to hate them," he admits candidly, "but after coming here and
travelling about, I am quite confused in my thinking, wondering whom I
should blame. The people here are so nice and hospitable. And really, I
didnt feel any sort of alienness here," he added. Karan Singh Bagal, a
second year student, had similar misgivings "due to the media propaganda.
But to my surprise the environment I found was very homely, familiar,
similar faces, living conditions. I didnt feel myself alienated. The
people greeted us more than their relatives and made us comfortable in
every way."

Other students too placed the blame for the misconceptions they had about
Pakistan on the media.

"Wonderful" and "amazing" is how Gagan Kumar, another second year student
described his experience. "Wonderful because of the variety of people and
things I have been able to experience, and amazing because of the warmth
and hospitality of the people towards us here."

His trip to Peshawar nearly didn't turn out to be so wonderful, however.
There was one tense moment in a "typical rang birangi Pakistani bus"
heading for Qissa Khawani bazar when a Ramjas student innocently sat down
on an empty seat next to a woman, only to realise that the entire bus was
staring at him, horrified. He was roundly scolded by the woman, and the
Pathan driver touched his ears in a 'tauba' on learning where the offending
passenger was from.

Kumar confesses he was "frightened to see the six-foot bearded Pathans",
with whom he had trouble communicating in his "Delhi-walla language". "Tum
kedhar se aya?" a Pathan asked him.

"Hesitatingly I told him, 'From Hindustan.' For a minute he was shocked and kept looking in my eyes with his eyebrows up. He did not speak with me after that, but kept talking to his friend about us (perhaps) in Pashto. Between all these people, I
thought I was alien and after getting to the hotel room, I did not feel
like going out to shop. But my friends insisted. After that, what I
experienced was probably the nicest welcome in my life. Everyone I
communicated with, shook hands, some even hugged me, and one topi seller
even gave me qehva to drink. All this time I realised what a fool I would
have been if I had not come out of the hotel room and not met such nice
human beings."

"The whole world honours India for its culture and especially for its
hospitality," said Amit Singh, a BA Honours student from Saharsa, Bihar.
"But I say that the culture and hospitality I saw in Pakistan is richer.
There were lots of doubts in our minds before coming to Pakistan," he
added. "But after reaching here, all these doubts disappeared as I found
myself on my own land."

Another moving comment came from Sidharth Mishra of Patna, a thin,
intense-eyed MA student. "This boundary between the two countries is a
reality now," he said. "The earlier we accept this, the better it is for
both countries. But the boundary should not be a barrier," he added with
feeling. "It should be a bridge. I wish to see this in my lifetime. And I
will work for it."

He will, too. After all, he braved the local student mafia, defying the
unwritten rule which requires students to become RSS members before they
can get a room in the RSS-controlled hostels (sound familiar?). As the
only non-RSS member in his hostel, doesn't he get threatened? "How can
they?" he asks. "I am entitled to the room on merit. They know I'll go to
court if they try anything."

For Gaurav Srivastava of Delhi, the opportunity to visit Pakistan meant the
fulfilment of a secret dream, "to see the great Indus which was so
beautiful and ironically once a part of India."

Like many of his fellow students he loved the food here (only four of the
twelve students were vegetarians). His parting wish: "I pray to God, and
hope that this beautiful, wonderful land, so close to India, will set an
example to the international community."

Mukul Managlik sums up the experience thus: "Apart from the warmth and
hospitality that was showered on us, we discovered also that ordinary
people are not in the least bit obsessed about India in a devilish sort of
way, that they would talk to us about what everyday life in India was
like, the films, the music, the food we ate, with Kargil , the hijacking,
and Zee TV thrown in for good measure. We talked about everything without
feeling scared or threatened. as we had imagined we might. It was this
feeling that we were travelling as ordinarily and easily as we would in
any part of india that was refreshingly reassuring. It was as if having
been forced to spend so inordinately long crossing the border, the border had
evaporated once we stepped into Pakistan. People were ordinary people
like people in India, grappling with problems and trying to find
solutions. Civil society and a democratic discourse were not the absent
phenomena that most Indians think they are."