Shadowlines (Part I)

Pratap Pandey writes to an email list I belong to, "I teach in Jamia Milia Islamia. There have been no protests on Gujarat. The elite Muslim bloc that also controls the university has had nothing to say, or do, about Gujarat. They are not bothered. Ehsan Jafri was killed, his decapitated head carried around the streets. So were a lot of ex-textile mill workers. But JMI is unruffled. Or is it?"

"A friend of mine talks about secret meetings being held in the community around Jamia. He says that there exists a certain opinion among the residents who live in the Jamia area (I deliberately make this vague: do you know the "Jamia area"? Zakir Nagar, Jamia Nagar, Abul Fazl enclave?). The opinion is this: let them come. The only way they can take care of us is through aerial bombing."

"We now have examinations in Jamia. The teachers don' t talk. But my students stop me, as I gladly run away from a mindless three-hour invigilation. They talk to me about Gujarat. They are happy it didn't happen in Delhi, but they are unsure. They say they feel unsafe. They say they don't know if they should apply for good jobs. Will I be taken, sir?"

"What should I do, sir?"

An ex-student of mine has moved into Zakir Nagar. When I asked him why (this was in December, last year), he said: Safety, sir.

JMI is not protesting Gujarat, as many of the teaching staff wants it to. JMI students are locked in a dilemma: they are no longer sure "civil society" is willing to recognise their talents. They are sure it is ready to undercut them.

I don't know what my students' fathers and mothers think. I am not sure they are not dreaming about Pakistan. I don't understand them, I understand their children."

This is what I am writing in response to Pratap's letter.

Dear Pratap,

Your response has reminded me of walks, and talks, through Karachi, Bombay, Lahore and Delhi (Delhi cannot, alas, be ignored) in the '90s that I have taken, and hope to not take again; who wants to walk in circles forever.

Sorry for the delay in response. My problem has been considering how much detail can be packed in a letter. After all a letter, like a suitcase, can only take that much. Though often enough, people have had to fantasise that they can take their all with them&

When you write, about the parents of students, that you are not sure they are not dreaming about Pakistan, I read that and claim two negatives can cancel each other: they are dreaming about Pakistan. Is that such a fantastic claim?

And can I tell you that this has happened before, this dreaming in Okhla, in Pahar Ganj, in Darya Ganj, in Karol Bagh. This is no fantasy.

I can tell you about those parents' dreams, but more importantly, I can tell you their children's dreams, your students, if their parents were to come to Pakistan, and they were kids in Pakistan, and hence not your students. I can tell you because it has all happened before. A perfect circle.

Perfect circles.

Homelessness is a bad thing, you have to grit your teeth forever, that will be the only way to remember the grit. In 1997, when my father visited Delhi after 50 years, on a magical trip, he visited Okhla, met his uncle:

"Rehan," he told me later, "Muzaffar bhai cannot forget Purana Qila. As if it is still happening. And he talked about Babri Masjid. I said ek masjid hai, aur bahut masjiden hai, aur banjayengi," said my Pakistani father.

"Magar nahin, he can't let it go."

In the '90s, I have been surprised at finding so many from my generation dreaming about Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta. I, in Lahore, who would have been a student of one like you, if we had never left, dreamt about Delhi.

After I first came to Delhi, with a fellow writer from The Frontier Post, in 1992 (of all years, it didn't take long in the year for fantasies to wash). With Murtaza Rizvi, Sunny to friends, walking about in Greater Kailash 1, looking at gates upon gates which bore the sign plates of Khanna, Malhotra, Kumar and Singh, I said I could be walking in Mohammed Ali Society, PECHS, in Karachi, same gates, plot sizes, family sedans, except the houses would be properties of Haq, Rashid, Khan and Akhtar. A mirror image, which shows us, our vanities, our aspirations, exactly, except...

All Sunny and I, wanted, was a break from newsprint, maybe work for Newstrack for a while, share a barsati. That's a reasonable, non-fantastic, non-circular, alternative isn't it? A TV show in Delhi as a break from a newspaper in Lahore. We fingered our green passports.

We don't want to change the world really, we are not giddy imagining we can walk a zebra crossing of Khanna, Haq, Malhotra, Rashid, Kumar, Khan, Singh, Akhtar. We are separate and equal. We just want non-reporting, non city-specified, six-month visas.

The first Ansari to leave Sahranpur for Delhi, recently died. He was also the first Ansari to leave Delhi for Karachi. And the first to leave Karachi for London. None of the Ansaris who followed him to Karachi (and most stayed on in Karachi) became babus, none of them claimed property as blood money. They all became accountants. Un cheezon ka hisaab lagatay rahey jin ka hisaab lag sakta hai.

My first memory of "Hindu" is when my father teaching me arithmetic said, "Hindu hisaab main achay hotay hai". Years later, when I remembered to ask him, he said he was taught hisaab by a pandit, in a school in Paharganj.

They never told stories of Delhi, none of them, not one. I would not have believed them if they had. If they had told stories of massacres in schools, of machine-gun firing in Paharganj, of burning houses in Daryaganj, I would not have believed them.

They only started telling stories after I started visiting Delhi. The prior silence was good for me. Or was it not? I had to learn for myself, or I did not.

Pratap, you wonder whether Pakistan is a dream of a civil place. I grew up in the late '70s and '80s and forever will be mindful of a martial place.

Karachi, I will tell you, teems with refugee colonies. New Hyderabad, New Paharganj.

In obituaries, these days it is time for those original refugees to die. I know Uttar Pradesh kasbahs (not by visiting any, or through a map, but from circling Karachi obituaries) and Hyderabad, and Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu. Tamil Nadu? I asked our "family" doctor, why did you have to leave? He shrugged his shoulders.