While a desire to visit India may not be entirely uncommon around the world, the citizens of its western neighbour probably feel the strongest pull. This may be on account of a lot of things India and Pakistan share – languages, cuisine, temperament, history. Then there are love and hatred and the curiosity about what makes the other the people they are whether or not they are that they are cranked up to be. The fact of having been one country in the past, the Partition and the wars still occupy a significant space in our national consciousness.
It is no secret, however, that the two countries do not make it easy for each other’s citizens to visit them. In fact, they make such visits quite a daunting undertaking. No wonder I got to visit India, virtually the next door neighbour, long after visiting some other countries that are quite remote by comparison.
From Kulachi to Baikunthpur
My maternal grandfather used to recount stories of his childhood spent in India, where his father and uncles had gone from their native village, Kulachi (now a town in Dera Ismail Khan district), to engage in the production and trade of a sealing resin, called lac. While it was the same country at the time, he always used to speak of India as if it were a land far away.
One day he told us how as a teenager he had travelled alone from Dera Ismail Khan to join his father. He said it took him seven days and involved several changes of the mode of transportation. A part of his family had established themselves in what used to sound like a distant and mysterious land. There were stories of sadhus who spent days on end in a single uncomfortable posture. The rest of the family had remained in Kulachi. Due to the great distance visits between the two family bases were few and far apart.
Once, upon inquiry, he had told me the names of the cities in India where his reltives had their homes. No big cities, but Baikunthpur and Manendragarh, located in a princely state by the name of Korea (sometimes spelled as Koriya, not to be confused with the two states of the name in East Asia.
I also wished to experience whatever was left of the syncretic Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb, a perception of which was created in my mind from reading Qurratulain Hyder’s fiction. I was also attracted by the peculiarly beautiful Devanagari script that I had long ago tried decoding from my collection of Indian stamps
Many years later, when I looked these towns up on Google Maps, I was surprised to see how far they were from my hometown and wondered how my great grandfather had ended up finding a business opportunity in a place so remote. Perhaps they were just following the time-tested Pashtun strategy of setting base wherever an opportunity presented itself.
The towns of Baikunthpur and Manendragarh now fall in the Chhattisgarh state. When the country was partitioned, my great grandfather had to abandon his properties and business and return to his native town. One of his cousins, who had married a woman in India stayed back. The family link, however, did not remain intact and the stream of letters exchanged in the years following the Partition eventually dried up. Who could have thought at the time that the frontiers erected between the two countries would prove so impenetrable?
Other reasons too
In addition to the aforementioned stories, my visit to India was inspired by a hope of find traces of my Pakistani hometown, Dera Ismail Khan, among people who had migrated in the opposite direction and the places they had settled in after 1947. It was also prompted by an eagerness to visit and admire the monuments and shrines, that many peple in Pakistan like to think of as something belonging to them but which are on the other side of the border.
I also wished to experience whatever was left of the syncretic Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb, a perception of which was created in my mind from reading Qurratulain Hyder’s fiction. I was also attracted by the peculiarly beautiful Devanagari script that I had long ago tried decoding from my collection of Indian stamps.
One driver of this visit was the wish to ascertain whether sadhus still held a posture for days on end or not.
The writer is a chartered accountant currently based in London