Drop by some time…

You should drive down to Lahore," I suggested to Kiran, when both of us were sitting in a Pokhara café.

"Technically, you should be allowed to cross on foot."

"Meaning?" asked Kiran.

"Indians and Pakistanis cannot cross the border on foot – you need a special visa for that. Only other foreigners can," I told him.

"Oh! So Nepalis would be foreigners in Pakistan?" he asked.

"I suppose so," I mused.

"Would they let the car through?" Kiran wondered.

"That's tricky, but it could be done," I said, pausing to think about the hippie whose motorbike was dismembered part by part at the Wagah border. Then another memory. "Once I saw a foreign diplomat's poodle happily skip across the border post at Wagah."

"They didn't check it for fleas?" chuckled Kiran. "No, the poodle was a foreigner too," I ventured.

"But the fleas must've been Pakistani," Kiran theorised.

"I never thought of that," I admitted.

"Ok, so drive to Lahore," Kiran sat forward in his chair, clicking his pen. The calculations began on the back of a beer coaster. "How many hours?"

"Well, from Kathmandu to Delhi is 36 hours, and then it's about a nine-hour drive to Wagah. I'll come and pick you up," I said.

"What do you mean you'll come and pick us up?" asked Kiran raising an eyebrow. "How far do you live from the border?"

"Umm … about 20 minutes," I said.

"What!" Kiran almost spilled his beer, propelling himself out of his chair, "What do you mean?"

Well, what I mean, dear Kiran, can only be experienced. And for that you have to drive down to Lahore.

Much has been written, filmed, sung and spoken about the India-Pakistan border, but nothing can capture the reality of it. Not only because it casts a long, dark shadow over the lives of those living next to it, but because over the last six decades it has been so successfully solidified that it has almost ceased to exist in the public memory.

If you live in Pakistan, India is a country very far away. But this is a weird, schizophrenic existence. Every house watches Indian movies, and every car plays songs from those movies. Yet nobody in Lahore is conscious, really conscious, of the fact that 'these people' are only 15 kilometres away.

Cinematic selves
Pakistan too is an imagined space for Indians. That space is a cross between the Mughals and the mullahs. Many of my friends tore their hair out watching the 2004 film Veer Zaara, in which Lahore was more akin to 18th-century Lucknow. Who are these Pakistanis saying adaab all the time in films out of Bombay? I've never met one in Pakistan. Well, maybe one in Karachi.

In the absence of any flesh-and-blood contact, save cricket and Kargil, we are living with the cinematic selves of each other. Pakistanis think everyone in India is glamorous and sexy; Indians think that Pakistanis hum Ghalib's poetry while ironing their burqas. I cannot speak for the percentage of glamorous and sexy Indians, but the percentage of Urdu speakers in Pakistan is between 15 and 20 percent, at most. Upon hearing this, an Indian friend was as crestfallen as if I had told her that Santa Claus didn't exist.

But back to the border.

I think it will take more time, maybe a couple of decades, before the enormity of what this border has done sinks in. That's being optimistic. The new generation, my nieces and nephews, have no idea, not even a vaguely confused one, of a united Punjab. I'm sure the same is true for the children in Dhaka. The reason why I single out Punjab and Bengal is that these were the two provinces of India whose socio-historical continuity, spanning thousands of years, ended in an agonising convulsion of just one night. This continuity may have limped on in the Indian portion of Bengal and Punjab, but in Pakistan and Bangladesh it simply shrivelled up and died. Other provinces of Pakistan – Sindh, NWFP and Balochistan – have their own baggage of Partition, but none was physically split in two.

But I should correct myself when I speak of the unknowing new generation. Even my generation of post-1965 war has no idea of what this place was once upon a time. From our car windows, we pass ruins of gurdwaras without knowing what happened here.

Or is it a mandir? someone would ask.

Yeah it's called Jain mandir.

Oh. Who are Jains?

Nobody knows.

What happens in gurdwaras?

Nobody knows.

Yet the place is replete with reminders of a past at first disowned and then forgotten. Occupied houses in Lahore's Krishan Nagar, since named Islampura, still have Om written in Sanskrit on their doorposts, but no one can read these inscriptions. The script is as extinct as the hieroglyphs. Every day we use words and say names without knowing what they mean. Between Lahore and the border is a place called Baidian. The property prices in this area have skyrocketed in recent years, as wealthy Lahoris escape the city for open farmhouses. Baidian Road has become a familiar name for everyone.

But what was Baidian? A village?

Yes, but who are the Baidis?

Ummm, there was an Indian spin bowler once, Bishen Singh Bedi.

Yes, but the Baidis were the family of Guru Nanak.

Guru who?

Sifting through the leaves of history, the story of the border begins to surface, too painful, too absurd. The British were in a hurry to leave, the Indian leaders were in a hurry to take over. The man assigned to draw the line set foot in India exactly 40 days before 15 August. He had planned to visit the 'field', but it was so hot that he thought it better to stay indoors. But this is a story we shall save for another time.

Meanwhile, Kiran finished jotting, and sat back with a look of astonishment on his face. "This means we can be in Lahore in one day from Delhi," he said finally.

"Technically, yes," I nodded philosophically.

"Which means that if Alka made momos, and we pack them in a hot pot, they would still be warm when we get to your place," thought Kiran.

"Maybe not warm, but they'd surely be fresh," I concurred.

Kiran sat for a while, biting the tip of his pen. "People in Pakistan don't eat momos, right?"

"They don't even know about them."

"Well, momos are the biggest fast food in Delhi," his eyes were shining. "And you know what?"

I thought I did.

"We could start a momo business in Lahore!" said Kiran triumphantly, "It'd be a big hit, no?"

I nodded weakly. Kiran ordered two more beers, and clicked his pen open again. It was going to be a long night.

~ Farjad Nabi is a filmmaker based in Lahore.