I want to go to India too!

KARACHI: Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani will be travelling to India today, along with a large entourage, at the request of the Indian prime minister, to watch the semi-final in Mohali.

I am an Indian national by birth and was married to a Pakistani national in 1992. I surrendered my Indian nationality and obtained Pakistani citizenship. Since then, I have visited my hometown Pune in Maharashtra five to six times on a Pakistani passport. A few years ago, tension started to build between India and Pakistan and the Indian Embassy in Islamabad stopped issuing visas. PIA and Indian Airlines suspended their flights to Mumbai and Delhi. During this period, my mother suffered a brain haemorrhage and was hospitalised in Pune. She was in a coma for 17 days and eventually died. The only name she had on her lips before her death was mine, because I couldn’t get a visa in time.

Now my father is ill. He is suffering from prostate cancer and is undergoing treatment at the Pune Adventist Hospital. I have been told that getting a visa will take around two to three months. I have all the necessary papers required for obtaining a visa but I cannot wait this long because I have no idea how long my father will be alive. Through your newspaper, I appeal to both the Indian and Pakistani governments to kindly help me in getting an Indian visa so that I can visit my ailing father as soon as possible.

Thousands of people will travel to Mohali and Mumbai in India to witness the cricket semi-final but I have to wait for several months to visit my ailing father — and I am sure there are hundreds of others like me.

If the purpose of the Indian prime minister’s invitation is to use cricket diplomacy to normalise and improve relations between his country and Pakistan, why can’t people like me be helped? Won’t that set a good example of such friendship having a tangible result on the lives of ordinary people?

Mrs Rizwana Rafique Suriya

Published in The Express Tribune, March 30^th, 2011.