Across barbed wires: Indo-Pak story beyond the diplomatic rumble

As the crow flies, Behrooti village in Jammu and Kashmir's Poonch district is nearly 7,500 km from the Russian town of Ufa where the premiers of India and Pakistan, Narendra Modi and Nawaz Sharif, held long-delayed talks this July. But the promise of dialogue being revived has again collapsed with gunfire at the Line of Control, aggravated tensions and fresh brinkmanship – and the people of Behrooti caught somewhere in the middle of it all.

What did the talks achieve? asks Mohammed Ashraf, who was badly injured in Pakistani shelling a week ago. "We want lasting peace. Whenever tensions between India and Pakistan rise, its Kashmiris on both sides of the border who die," the 24- year-old, who lost a cow when Pakistani troops fired 82 mm mortars and RPGs (rocket projectile grenades) at Behrooti, told dna over the phone from his hospital bed.

As the hyphen between India and Pakistan yo-yos between statesmanship and brinkmanship, it's not only those on the border who are affected. Many, far from the line of actual fire, are also hit by the diplomacy rumble. Be it from the violence of Partition in 1947, the conflict over Kashmir or the wars in 1965, 1971 and 1998, the wounds are still raw with some end up hurt irrespective of who has the upper hand.

Pangs of Partition
Among them is 79-year-old Narayan Sukeja, a resident of Mumbai's Ulhasnagar suburb, who was a young boy growing up in what is now Pakistan when the subcontinent was divided. "We are one people. Nature has blessed us with enough for both nations to prosper in peace. When I hear all the hate-talk and war mongering I wonder why god has kept me alive to see so much hostility and suspicion?

But isn't he bitter like other refugees who fled Pakistan? "Yes, they were terrible times. It is like the demons living in the deep recesses of mankind had all been let loose together." The eldest son of a grocer, he was only 11 when the first talk of hatred and killings hit their Nimanjo Chowk neighbourhood in Sindh's Sukkur town.

"When fear spread and people began fleeing to India, many came to sell off their old stuff as junk at my father's grocery shop," remembers Sukeja, the steady creaking of his swing adding to the eeriness of his narrative. "My father thought we'd be able to pay off our debt with the extra income. But in January 1948 some men broke into our home, held a knife at his throat and took away all we had. While leaving, they told us to run away to India, warning of dire consequences if we didn't."

Left with no choice, the family tied up whatever they could in bundles and took a train from Sukkur to Karachi. "The Karachi port was crowded and we awaited our turn on the special steamer ships meant to ferry refugees like us. I remember watching holding the stern railing and looking out at the city receding."

At the Mumbai docks, they were packed into a special train which brought them to the James Siding station (now Vithhalwadi). "We helped each other pack our bundles into trucks which took us to the large empty barracks (used by Allied armies in WW2). There were no rooms, just large halls. Bedsheets and saris were hung out to create privacy as we settled down."

Sukeja's current home stands on the same barrack number -- 38/49. He bears no rancour. "It's best to leave these things to destiny. The bitterness would have simply killed me." Not a single day goes by when he doesn't yearn for information about about his old home and neighbourhood.

But for that there will have to be peace. "What is the choice? Mutual destruction? I think not. The optimist in me feels that better sense will prevail."

If someone can feel so strongly for a place he's not seen in 67 years, what must it feel like for a woman who was born and brought up in in Karachi till 1980. "It can be very hard," says Firoza Punthacky, a resident of south Bombay's tony Khareghat colony. "When I hear of the terrible things happening in what was a sleepy fishing town it feels like a knife to the heart."

She remembers never feeling unsafe in the port town of her childhood. "Though among the few non-Muslim kids at first the Convent of Jesus and Mary school (Benazir Bhutto's alma mater), then the Karachi grammar school, followed by St Joseph's college and finally Karachi University, there was never a problem as everyone lived in harmony," says Firoza, the granddaughter of Framrose Punthacky, who rose from being a commiserate agent to being the revenue collector of Sindh.

"His sons Jehangir and Homi began Karachi's first Gujarat newspaper The Parsi Sansar Loksabha from the earnings off the 3,500 acres of agricultural land in the Nawabshah area in a place called Dor. The village itself was called Framabad after my great grandfather," recounts Punthacky.

Though born six years after Partition, she recalls how migrants coming from India changed the character of her hometown. "They came from really underprivileged backgrounds, often with no formal education/exposure. When allotted homes of those who had fled, they wouldn't know what to make of even Indian toilets, leave alone Western ones. Many thought they were fireplaces and began using them as chullahs to cook."

While growing up, Karachi always felt a lot closer to Mumbai than Islamabad. "On my first visit in 1962, for my Navjyot at Udwada we came by a PIA flight on a propeller plane. My maternal grandparents who came visiting often always took steamer boats. The most popular direct one from the Karachi to Mumbai was the SS Saraswati which took five hours."

She laughs, recollecting how the Parsi fondness for food translated into loads of stuff being carried back and forth. "Legs of lamb, dry fruits and saffron came from there and spices, flowers, saris and sweets from Parsi Dairy went from here. There would be loads of Bombay Dyeing bedsheets and plastic buckets which were hard to come by in Karachi."

Bombay calling
It was while working at her dad's advertising agency that she first met Khojeste Mistree who had come from Bombay to deliver lectures on the Parsi community. They got married after eight months of courtship. "Unlike Karachi where you needed a car and seldom used public transport, here one could freely travel anywhere. In the 80s, there was no Coke and there was no tissue paper or toilet paper, at least not the nice ones. These I'd bring back from my trips to Karachi."

Though she stresses that she now wouldn't trade Bombay for even New York or London, Punthacky kept her Pakistani passport for as many as 30 years. "This was at great cost to my husband's peace of mind. I only did it because it meant easier visas to visit my old parents. It was only after they passed away that I surrendered my Pakistani passport and got an Indian one."

"It was a nightmare. I couldn't leave Bombay. When I entered from Karachi, or wherever in the world, I'd have to register at the Foreigner Regional Registration Office, Crawford Market, within 24 hours. If I wanted to so much as go to Udwada to worship at our fire temple, I'd have to apply for police permission which is very difficult to get. If they consented, one would have to deregister here in Mumbai and on arrival register with the local police in Udwada." In the end, the prospect of that process was so daunting that she just stopped going anywhere. "I lived like a prisoner of the Indian government under house arrest."

Even travelling abroad which was allowed for three times a year for a stretch of nearly three months was brought down to a month and that too to once a year. "In order to keep my long term residence permit I had to comply with all this. My poor husband would plead with the police, 'My wife's not a terrorist.' Though he believes I am one at home. (Laughs)"

She admits that the oscillating India-Pakistan equation and the spectre of another war fills her with fear. "Politicians and the army on both sides keep cranking up the temperature to suit their ends..."

Staunchly opposed to generalised vilification, she underlines, "I believe the average person like me just wants peace."

Like Sukeja, Punthacky, too, feels it's a tragedy that two countries that are so alike can be so hostile to each other. "How long can we be enemies? Especially when coming together will be a win-win for both countries," she says, admitting that a lot had changed since the 26/11 terror attacks. "It led to a lot of hardened stances as it cut a very raw nerve in the Indian collective psyche. Forgiving and forgetting isn't that easy now. Especially not in the face of the Pakistan's total denial of involvement even in face of irrefutable evidence."

The worsening situation in Pakistan is only making things worse. "The confluence of hardline Pakistani politics, the army and the radical groups has only conflagrated the situation. This doesn't bode well for not only minorities in Pakistan but the nation itself."

As someone who still has strong connections in Karachi she says she's shocked to learn how even posh areas now go without water and electricity. "One has to pay for tankers, for generators and, given the extent of lawlessness, armed guards. In last month's heat wave in Karachi, 70 elderly Parsis died in a week as there was no power."

She remembers the 70s when she and her sister could be out even at 3 a.m. without a driver or male relative. "Now its possible to get mugged with gun toting gangs even in broad daylight. Only those with no means or nowhere to go are staying back. Everyone else wants out."