Fatiq's Take on Peace Project

From the 2001 section my brain, contributed by a surfeit of layers of nostalgia, a rusty image of the Wagha Border rushed through my brain, screening moments of conceited conformity, moments when I stood and watch the Flag of my country and saw red instead of green. It is said that when Molana Abul Kalam Azad was asked about Partition he found it to be absurd and said that Muslims would die in this part and Islam would die in that part. He later became the first Minister of Education in the Indian government and died denouncing the concept of Partition.

The uniformed voices of the soldiers’ beat reminiscent of an automaton reverb through my ear drums. In the air above them, I see demons in the sky sniggering jests on their misery. And in that subtle moment I joined those demons because they, fortunately, had the power to think.

In this demonic world the first person I met was Saadat Hasan Manto who hailed me into Toba Tek Singh, a city with no religion, no heaven above it and no hell below it; a city of dreams. It was located right above India and Pakistan. Manto was the minister of propaganda under the cabinet of Molana Abul Kalam Azad who was the Chancellor. And the rest of the cabinet was still to be made.

For years I didn’t want to leave that city because for me, Partition didn’t happen. It was like a blank page in the books of Nigel Kelly, a misplaced thought in my mind and a fictitious account in the words of others. But for some reason I didn’t felt proud of myself. There was guilt, a feeling that what if I was on the wrong side what if my heaven was hell after all. This confusion and anguish seemed never to end, until, until 2nd March 2014, when I talked to Aakash Chandran. Someone I never expected to meet, a sheer coincidence which proved out to be the greatest incidence in my life.

I remember we talked for about 2 hours, and as much I would like to brag about being delighted to explore a new friend with an entirely different culture to explore. I won’t. Because I won’t be saying the truth then.

Aakash seemed to me someone who lived next door, someone I meet everyday, for starters we had the same language, the same belief, the same understanding of how things were, he knew about Ramadhan and Eid, I knew about Holi and Diwali, where was the difference?

My guilt didn’t lose it that simply. We started asking each other questions, like existent questions, personal questions. Our family structures, again the same. The choices we had for college, that same too. Indian and Pakistani politics, and that was too  And then the moment when Mirza Ghalib came up, my guilt vanished and I knew I was right, the boundary between us was just an imaginary strait of steel.

This project for me was particularly special because it helped me realize the reliability of the ideas in my mind. Aakash for me was what Pluto called the other half of my being. He was an individual who represented an entire part of me which was torn apart in 1947.

This peace project for me was not life changing perhaps but it is life assuring. Aakash and all the other people I met in this journey made me realize that we are not alone. There are people out there who still believe in Toba Tek Singh. People who still believe that the truth always does prevail. People for whom there is no India and Pakistan. What only exists is humanity. And that is all that counts.