What is Pakistan to me?

I have been to Pakistan, by air, land and sea. Never officially. By air, en-route Teheran from Bombay around the time they hung Bhutto, for which we had to hang around on the tarmac inside an ancient Iran Air 707. In April. Pakistan is hot. By sea, on a ship floating around in the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq-everybody else war days, when nocturnal visits to the Pakistani coast were winked at. Pakistan is cool. By land, more recently, during a particularly noisy 14/15th August celebration in 1997 at the Wagah-Attari border, when a stern Pakistani Ranger declared me to be his brother, and then lifted my 11 year old son up in the air from the dividing line while his father clicked away furiously, and both "entered" Pakistan for a short while, returning laden with chocolates and "burfee". Pakistan is something I still need to understand.

And I have never been to Pakistan, either. My genes owe their allegiance to a dusty town called Jhung, spoken about in honoured terms by relatives from both sides, who came from "the other side" in 1947, courtesy a lot of luck and a lot of help from soldiers of my father's regiment, the Baluchis. My language at home is a mixture of English and Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi. I eat food which is cooked differently from what is served in balti restaurants but is very similar to what the wife of Capt.Shahab-ud-din Ahmed (from Karachi) cooked on board the ship "m.v. Arya Keyhan" when she joined at Liverpool.

But still, my first memory of Pakistan is as a 9-year old myself, growing up in the little railway town of Jamalpur in Bihar. 1965 was fun, it meant lights out and you could walk around with sticks, enforcing a "lights-out" on a population, which in any case had a permanent power failure. One day, walking back from school, some of my friends ran past with cricket bats and hockey sticks, shouting out that a Pakistani plane had crashed in the hills beyond the steam loco factory. Throwing books and bag onto unwilling elder sister (now in Boston, do you read this Sarita Bhalotra?), we joined pursuit. Not finding any Pakistani airplane or airman we soon lost interest and played India-Pakistan soldier ourselves, guess who won? Always?

Some years later, 1971, in Delhi. Age makes you serious, and you get news about uniformed relatives dying. Going down with the "Khukri" but miraculously returning. Flying a sleeping Jagjiwan Ram, then Defence Minister, to the captured Pakistani territory. Everything costs 5% more thanks to the fact that the Pakistanis can't keep their act together in the East and West, what will they do with Kashmir. Positions become stronger. A few years later, I join the Merchant Navy and am taught, amongst other things, anti-bacterial and chemical destruction warfare techniques. Who is going to use them against us, that we have to learn about such gory stuff? Gorgonzolas across the great divide, obviously.

What sort of people are these Pakistanis, anyway?

I find out very soon. First foreign port, Yokohama, 1975. A few dollars in my pocket, no Japanese on my tongue, I spy a familiar brown face. I ask for directions, notes are exchanged, and I have a new friend, another stranger walkabout in a strange land, but he carries more dollar than I do, dealing as he does with 2nd hand cars. In very short time, I have made a friend, he visits our ship for limitless stocks of duty-free booze and we are given the run of his flat as well as his cars. And he does know every bordello in town, too. I wonder what happened to Zaidi, his people were from Meerut. This I can relate to.

From this point onwards, in life, I realise that when you meet a Pakistani outside India, especially a Pakistani sailor, you join forces to take on the rest of the world. Admirably! I salute every Pakistani Merchant Navy person not just with this article but also every time I salute the camera for Good Morning India.

Over the next few years, I cross many Pakistanis at the watering holes around the world. From Hamburg to Immingham, New York to Vancouver BC, BA to LA, Sydney to Richards Bay, even slogging it out in East Timor. Obviously in the Persian Gulf, or is it the Arab Gulf?

Till I meet Francis Wallis, my first Pakistani Christian. Ma'an, they must be slaughtering you in Pakistan, right? Not, as it turns out. They even have a Hindu wicket-keeper, it seems. Fracis drawls, "Ma'an, you slaughtered us at Karachi in 1971, we'll show you in hockey and cricket". Around this time I become an agnostic.

Many more enter and leave my life. I retire from the sea, early, and work for an American company in Delhi. My boss is a Pakistani in Dubai, Changez Niazi visits Delhi every now and then, and one day we get higher than normal, passing an army mess I just can't help pointing out the captured Patton tank occupying pride of place at the Battle Honours Mess outside the Taj Palace Hotel, original marks and all. Niazi goes quiet, and I realise I have put foot in mouth. To make up, I take him to visit a friend who stays in the same mess, a serving armyman, unlike Changez, who resigned his commission years ago. The tank is from Changez's regiment, and was captured by my friend's. We have a very reflective, and qualitatively good, evening.

Waiting for the train from Patna at the New Delhi Railway Station, a man asks me for directions, and then suddenly clutches me, summons his family, and I am asked to pose for photos. They watch Star TV in Pakistan, and want me to be part of their vacation.

What is Pakistan to me? I don't know, a country that grabbed all my persona ancestral land in some sort of deal which I don't understand, forcing my agricultural blood to earn a living by beating a keyboard, to start with, when I could have been a lazy landlord? A country that ensured I never saw either of my grandfathers? A country that wants Kashmir, and wastes time fighting over the wastes of Siachen while buses cross the border? A country that can't play hockey well anymore, like mine? Or spends large amounts of time chasing cricketers? A country that provides safe haven to the gangsters who actually run my country?

Come to think of it, there must be somebody like me in Pakistan who thinks about India the same way?

One day I shall drive a car with Delhi registration plates, or maybe even Tamil Nadu or Nagaland plates, through Pakistan. I need to find that guy, see?