I really do hope that our countries – India and Pakistan – will learn to get along.
KULU, HIMACHAL PRADESH, INDIA: A few words of appreciation for Sarah Elahi’s article ‘What exactly is Pakistan ‘cultural heritage?’’ published on October 24. I am an Indian living in the hills of Himachal and don't have any connection with Pakistan. I stumbled onto the website of your newspaper when I was trying to search for something in the Indian Express. And when I decided to read Ms Elahi’s article I was in for a real surprise — not least because most of us think that all Pakistanis are AK47-toting religious zealots.
In fact, if I may expand on this further, the blinkers started coming off about a year ago. I was in Chandigarh and one of my friends took me to a large market area where, much to my surprise, I found a trade fair being organised where goods and items made in Pakistan were being sold. I ventured inside and saw sales people selling their wares shouting ‘do sau rupay, do sau rupay’ — and I saw Indian visitors haggling with the Pakistani shopkeepers for a better bargain. When I saw this I realised how similar these traders from Lahore, Rawalpindi and Karachi were to us Indians.
The visit to that trade fair and Ms Elahi’s article both remind me of what my father used to say. He studied in Lahore before Partition and one of his closest friends – from Lyallpur as it was called then – was a staunch Muslim Leaguer. Many of his college mates were Muslims and according to him the forces of history caused all the mess. The point I am trying to make is that I really do hope that our countries – India and Pakistan – will learn to get along.
Sudarshan Sharma
Published in The Express Tribune, October 28th, 2010.
