Hira Nabi August 12, 2003

Tags: peace , indo-pak , youth , border

href="/tag/Lahore">Lahore was on the morning of 14th July; it’s been twenty days and I still wake up rubbing slumber from my eyes and dreaming I’m back at camp in Karachi. YWB (Youth Without Borders) albeit a peace conference that evolved into an arts camp, was organized by the Youth Initiative for Peace movement. It was held in Karachi from the 1st till the 12th of July, lasting for almost two weeks it brought Indians and Pakistanis together.

Being with people who I was meeting for the first time in my life and will probably never meet again was and still is scary. ‘Was,’ because despite all else they were still ‘Indians,’ and we are all familiar with the oil and water phenomenon; how oil and water never mix, well such is supposedly the case with Indian and Pakistan. However most of us aren’t aware of biological detergents that allow oil and water to mix freely and to mingle and intermingle again and again. In this case YWB happened to create it’s own unique mix of biological detergent. It still ‘is’ scary because I can’t believe that I might never be able to see these people again, to talk to them, to laugh with them, to sing and dance with them – I might never get the chance to be with these people again. Being with them, rooming with them, eating off the same plates, drinking from the same bottles, sleeping with them sharing the same mattress at times - living with them is something I’ll always hold close to my heart. These people became closer than my friends and my family who have all known me for a lot more than thirteen days...these people became my buddies, my roomies, my secret-sharers, my crushes, my confidantes, my mentors, my co-conspirators, my partners-in-crime, my best friends.

We moved from the initial unease on both sides (the apprehension at having to room together), to heated arguments about Kashmir to overwhelming surges of nationalism when you felt your country was being attacked by all, to deconstructing history and trying to find common ground while reconstructing it. History is a tricky prankstress, for it has been moulded and remoulded into shape arbitrarily over the past six decades. Intertwined deeply within all our beliefs, it slipped up every now and then only to prove that it couldn’t be trusted. Yet somewhere in the course of those thirteen days, we all rose above such restraints. We all grew up; we decided that while a spectre of the past still haunts us all and it still continues to affect us, we would focus on the future. History in any case was not to be trusted (as we discovered from looking at each other’s textbooks). Moving from trust-building sessions and conflict-management to being split up into workshops where we practiced conflict-resolution techniques – we all came through. We met on level ground. We spoke the same language; we interacted; we communicated. We sang the same notes and we swayed to the same beats, the same tunes synchronized as rhythms harmonized. We compared indigenous gaalis and taught each other new ones. We laughed at the same jokes (those inside jokes flavoured with native wit). We wept the same tears (salty tracks mingling together) at the unequivocal hated and the blind fervour sweeping both nations; and how it wasn’t us but the politicians; at how the arms race still dominates power politics; and mostly at what gullible subjects we had been, so easily swayed by the half truths churned out by the powers that be. Whether it was playing ‘kho’ by the lakeside at 2.00am or feeding the ducks by the hour or playing ‘Antakshari’ until late at night ending with camp songs and singing each other’s national anthems; playing play-for-peace games, partying in the lounge or sitting up all night and talking and then refusing to sleep until sunrise and then ofcourse sleeping by the roadside during filming while on location or dozing off in workshops – we did it all. We left flags fluttering indistinctly behind, transgressing all synthetic barriers.

We realized how alike we were, how the ‘other side’ wasn’t so much the ‘other side’ but more the ‘same side;’ how somewhere underneath all the layers of hatred and misguided passion fuelled by ignorance and propaganda, we’re all the same. We’re not Indian or Pakistani, we’re ‘subconties’ (subcontinentals), let me put it this way, we’re youth without borders, we’re “citizens of the world.”

Some in India, some in Pakistan, some at or leaving for college – all of these people both taught and were in turn taught. I have learnt quite a few things; that it’s possible to establish human-to-human contact regardless of any divisions along the lines of cast, creed, religion or geographical boundaries; that our history books are capable of misconstruing facts and figures; that biases and age-old grudges so deeply-embedded within us that they have taken root, can be put aside and disregarded, and amity is attainable. For I have learnt that peace is truly possible, not for fleeting seconds or chance glimpses but for lifetimes.

"People ask me why I walk around with those big sad dreamy eyes...how do I tell them I’ve left behind a ’home’ across the border," wrote Pavitra Challam (an Indian participant), on the e-group created by YIP.
“The YIP experience has left me saturated with the realization and subsequent jubilation at the fact that the future is ours to mould whichever way we please,” said Unum Muneer (a Pakistani participant hailing from Karachi).
“Let the magic remain for it’s not the end and it’s never goodbye,” said Sanaa Baxamoosa (a facilitator), at the end of camp.

The short-term goal of the camp was achieved in the production of a short film, created jointly by Indian and Pakistani youth. The ten-minute-long film is called ‘Bus (Enough!).’ The participants along with facilitators were split up into workshops, dealing with a different aspect of the film; professional lecturers who aided the production conducted the workshops. The film was produced in ten days, the script written in four days (re-written thrice in the course of 48 hours!), the film was shot entirely over a two-day period, and three days were given over to recording the soundtrack and editing the film. Mohammed Naqvi, a lecturer at the camp adds “An ordinary film takes eight months to be completed; a short film takes a month. These inexperienced amateurs wrote and shot the film in about ten days. They have defied statistics.” The film was screened on the last night of the conference (a formal press conference was held to bring the conference to a close), to an audience of sixty people.
“I’ve never had such a feeling of accomplishment at the end of anything else, and just seeing our product, our brainchild - I almost gagged on my own disbelief,” said Skanda (an Indian participant from Bombay) upon seeing the production take actual shape and form.

Snippets of conversation and snatches of laughter float around me randomly. I guess there are some things in life that are too hard to let go off and even when you do let go of them they never loosen their hold upon you. I feel flat and drained, my parents tell me it’s the exhaustion etc. but I know it’s something else. It’s the fact that camp has ended and it’s the all too realistically frightening possibility that all of us might never see each other again and that perhaps all this was too surreal, too short, too beautiful to last very long and appear tangible. But that’s not the case. What we have all shared is too special to let go of and too precious not to preserve for safekeeping within us. There are big things in this world, strong forces that hold the potential to affect one tremendously, but I’ve never experienced a more powerful energy than the initiative for peace and the drive behind it. Simply being at YWB with all the YIPPIES (the youth initiative for peace-niks), these wonderful committed people who have touched me with their warmth, love or sheer exuberance has proven to be inspiration enough to keep me focused and going. The fact of the matter being that although the conference has ended, it’s us who will continue to carry on...it’s all of us who will carry each other through...it’s us; “we who believe in freedom shall not rest until it comes,” as the YIP song goes.