My Love–Hate Relationship with Pakistan - Shivani Mohan / Khaleej Times 30 December 2008

My grandparents hailed from Kasur in Pakistan. My grandmother often recollected, with a lot of warmth and fondness, the good old days they had spent in undivided Punjab.

Her childhood friends there, her neighbours and acquaintances were the subject of many an interesting anecdote. She spoke of Kasur being the city of Sufi saint and poet, Bulle Shah, a humanist and philosopher who wrote of harmony and peace.

And her favourite quote in Punjabi roughly meant, “The person who has not seen Lahore, hasn’t seen anything.” All this talk of Pakistan left an indelible mark of mystique and awe on my mind about the land of my forefathers.

I had the usual teenage crushes on Imran Khan and Wasim Akram. During heated India-Pakistan cricket matches, I secretly favoured Pakistan. I devoured PTV serials such as ‘Dhoop Kinare’ and ‘Unkahee’ stationed at various Indian cantonments along the border as an Indian Army officer’s daughter. Now I am an Indian Army officer’s wife. Pakistan has been this invisible enigma in my life by virtue of the profession of the two most important men in my life. Even though no individual from Pakistan has done any harm to me personally, as I grew older, I acquired a reticent stance about all things Pakistani. Over the years I acquired some Pakistani friends on my Facebook and Gmail accounts too but convention demanded that a definite distance was maintained at all times.

Then one sweltering day in September in Dubai I ventured out alone on my own, for a lark. It was my third day in Dubai and I was still getting used to my whereabouts. I took a hotel cab to Karama and sent it off. I was in the mood to walk a bit, do some window-shopping and return as and when I pleased. Before I realised, I had shopped for good four hours.

When I started trying to hail a cab, I was met with complete failure. The cabs would appear smoothly, very promisingly from the corner of an alley and disappear equally fast. The bright sun loomed large on top. A headache had begun to knock on my temples. It was Ramadan, so I hadn’t carried any water along. The parched, arid afternoon hung like an inevitable cloud of migraine over my head.

From the corner of my eye I could feel a pair of eyes watching me. It was a scruffy middle-aged man in a black shirt, thick gold chain around his neck. His eyes had the puffiness that comes with years of heavy drinking. His mouth had the artificial redness of paan stains. He could easily play the goon in a B grade Hindi movie. Yet he stood there nonchalantly taking in my discomfiture with a contrived indifference.

After a while Mr Blackshirt walked up to me. I shifted a few paces. I almost jolted as he said, “Is something the matter? I see you are uncomfortable.”

I said, “No, nothing. Just waiting for the cab. But they are not stopping today.”

“Arre, this is a common problem here. Goron ko dekh ke rokenge na.(They will stop only for the whites).”

To know that he had said in as many words what I had been experiencing for past one hour, had a ring of validation to my ordeal. But I pretended otherwise and said, “Don’t worry. I’ll find my way.”

As I fiddled with my phone thinking of calling the hotel to send a cab, the battery went kaput. I had not charged the cell that day and I realised I did not remember any number. I felt a nervous trickle of sweat dripping down my collar.

Half an hour later Mr Blackshirt was back. This time he was more persistent, “I am telling you, you won’t get a cab. Can I drop you somewhere?”

“You have a car?” I asked dumbly.

“There, that ramshackle blue car you see. That’s mine. I buy old cars and sell them. Do small repairs. Once in a while I drop passengers here and there and they pay me whatever is suitable.”

I still didn’t want to believe him. But a combination of thirst, migraine and panic made me consider the option. I put on my bravest expression and said, “Okay.”

As I was about to open the rear door of his car, Mr Blackshirt said, “Madame if you don’t mind, you have to sit in front. Well, what I do is not legal. It shouldn’t appear as if I am taking a passenger in a car that is not a taxi.”

I almost wanted to run away that moment but then thought it would look rather silly now. Reluctantly I sat in front, next to Mr Blackshirt, in a classic defensive folded-arms pose. I kept my tone firm and no-nonsense while making a mental note of the route he was taking. But Mr Blackshirt was a chatterbox. He proceeded to tell me all the intricacies of the complex nature of his occupation. When he told me he was from Pakistan and that too Lahore, I don’t know why I felt a sense of relief. I immediately blurted out, “Oh! I have come from Amritsar, just a few kilometers away.”

“You look new here”, he said.

“No, no, I have been here many times”, I lied. And then I too spun a yarn about how influential and well known I was in Dubai, just incase he was planning to kidnap me, or something. I had read about the gruesome murder of a South African lady in the papers that morning. When we reached my hotel, I asked him how much I should pay him. He said, “Let it be Madame. We are neighbours literally.” He took the money with a lot of insistence and handed me a visiting card- Kamran Ansari, buyer seller, car-mechanic.

While I thanked him profusely, letting him know that I was actually new to the city, he said most genuinely,
“Inshallah, there shouldn’t be a need. But if you manage to get stranded
 again anywhere in Dubai, just give me a call. I’ll be there.” I stood speechless
 by the kerb with his card in my hand
 as he drove away in the ramshackle 
blue car.

After the recent Mumbai attacks, I was livid like most Indians. In one sweeping motion I wanted to delete all the Pakistani contacts on my friends list. Who needed enemies when you had friends like these? They were telling on TV that the lone captured terrorist, Kasab was from a place near Kasur. That was not the association I had of Kasur. I had known Kasur as the hallowed land of my grandmother’s tales, the city of Sufi saint and poet, Bulle Shah.

Then the condolences poured in. Yes, from my Pakistani friends too. A young bride who hails from Karachi and is now married to an Indian in Chandigarh wrote in, “I do feel insecure; I don’t want people to know that I am from Pakistan. They look at me as if I am also one of the terrorists or as if all Pakistanis should be held responsible for this mayhem. I am not sure if I would be allowed to stay with my loving family here or would I be thrown out of India one day just because a few people bearing Muslim names and a Pakistani tag to their skins had committed an unforgivable crime in India…..”

All these messages in my inbox seemed genuine and heartfelt. Much more believable than the promises made by their leadership. More believable than even the promises made by our leadership.

They provided succour in days of little hope, reminding me of the fact that before my grandparents walked the arduous trek to the Indian side of Punjab sixty years ago, we were one people for centuries.

Last week I sat cleaning my bag and I chanced upon the visiting card of Kamran Ansari, Car-buyer-seller-mechanic. I regarded it for a while before I could throw it into the dustbin. I don’t know when I would be stranded next on a parched afternoon in Dubai. But I found myself flipping the card back into my purse. For now there is some comfort in keeping these few channels open.