65 years and counting

My mother fondly refers to them as the 'danda (stick) brigade' – all of them eighty plus, most of them with walking sticks, gather at the Green Park in Chandigarh every evening. They settle down to a cosy chat in a charmed circle of benches. They know they are not going anywhere, the park being the limit to their excursions, but they are excited at the prospect of a visa-free entry into Pakistan. 'Let us all go together,' they tell each other, laughing uproariously at the absurdity of the suggestion and yet, half wishing it were true. Twenty years ago they might even have gone. Today a trip to Pakistan is only heart-warming fiction.

It is a travesty. They belong to a generation that grew up in Lahore, or Rawalpindi or Campbellpur (known now as Attock), fled the riots when the two nations parted ways in 1947, and have memories of a childhood that seems idyllic from this great distance of time and space. All of them crave to go back to see the hospitals where they were born, the homes they lived in and the schools they went to. "Daddy would have loved to go to Lahore," my mother said to me with the regret of a lost opportunity, the September 8 announcement of the visa agreement that allows visa-free travel between India and Pakistan for those above 65 years coming fifteen days after he passed away. Even those who were toddlers then and carry no conscious recall are equally enthusiastic about visiting the memories of their parents or older siblings. J.S. Narang, a retired judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court was two when they left their homes but he thinks he can now go to the Lahore Medical College to, "see my father's name up on the Roll of Honour. He was the seventh man in India to do a Doctorate in Medicine in those days and he was a gold medalist. I want to be able to stand in front of that panel on the wall and let a sense of pride wash over me."