Saaz and Rumana: Friendship across borders by Chintan Girish Modi

Rumana and I came in touch less than three years ago. We have spent only a few hours in each other’s company. Thinking about the depth of affection I developed for her in this short time, and my gratitude for her generosity and support, I realise how very lucky I am to have found a friend like her.
We connected on facebook. I was writing a book about the Sindhi community of India and looking for sources on the other side of the border, closer to Sindh than I could ever be. Rumana lived in Karachi and, like me, she was a writer and painter. As we got to know each other (virtually), I soon realised that our ideas and our life priorities were similar too. When I wrote to her, she would write back instantly, and every time I asked for advice, she responded with wholehearted generosity. In this matter I hold her as a role model.
Growing up, I must have been influenced by my mother’s emotional scars from Partition (which interrupted and ended her childhood) as well as the all-pervading fear and suspicion of a certain neighbouring enemy country. Setting out to visit Pakistan in February 2013, I felt a bit as if I was going on a trip to the moon: it was a rare and splendid opportunity, but also an expedition that required courage and tremendous fitness. Perhaps I would never return.
It was amazing to find that the intensity of love with which we had been received and surrounded made leaving Pakistan a wrench. To have friends like Rumana and others we bonded with, to know that we may never, ever see them again, was terrible. The parting pangs took me back to the desolation of early childhood boarding-school homesickness. Perhaps they arose from some kind of cellular memory of the Partition pangs my grandparents suffered.
I must say I’m grateful to facebook, one of the rare spaces on this planet where Indians and Pakistanis can mingle and smile and get to know each other and be friends, without the hostility of barbed wire and manipulative negative propaganda, and try to heal the wounds of grief and bloodshed inflicted through sources with ugly political motives.

Like looking in a mirror for the first time (Interview with Fazil Jamili)

1. What was your experience when you visited Karachi twice?
During my two short trips to Sindh, I experienced a wide spectrum of feelings. One was the excitement of visiting a region that is so intimately a part of our lives and yet forbidden to us. Another was frustration and unhappiness with the difficulty of entering and the restrictions on free travel. Yet another was the longing to visit an ancestral homeland, and delight at doing so. A fourth was the fear of being in a country where we are officially perceived as enemies. If war were to break out while we were visiting, what would happen to us? Karachi has the reputation of being a violent and dangerous place. However, most important of all has been the love that we were showered with.
I should also say that my first visit to Sindh was the most exciting and most meaningful trip I have made in my life. The warmth and hospitality my family and I received changed our feelings towards not just Pakistan but towards humanity as a whole.
2. You got a visa for Sukkur and Larkana this time but couldn’t make it to visit these cities. What stopped you from going to visit your mother's native village?
I was in Karachi in March 2014 to attend the seminar Sindh through the centuries, organized by Sindh Madrassetul Islam University. It was a fantastic experience with scholars from all over the world, resulting in a lot of learning and interaction. SMIU had courageously invited Indian writers and academics too, and nine of us accepted. We were issued NOC for visa by Islamabad with the request that we restrict our stay in Pakistan to the dates of the seminar. Though I had a visa, it would have been an abuse of hospitality to stay on, and I decided to visit Larkano, Sukkur and my mother’s native village on some other trip, if at all.
3. When you told your mother about the love you received here in Sindh, what was her reaction?
My mother and her siblings were very surprised but also happy to hear about the love and all the messages to them from people in Sindh. In the past, nobody in the family had ever spoken about Sindh. They had deliberately put it out of their minds. So it was something new and totally unexpected. I felt a lot of latent emotion in them. None of us said it aloud, but I think we all missed my grandparents and wished there was a way for us to tell them about it.
4. As she is no more with us, what are the feelings when you think about love and hate emotions towards this vanished homeland?
My mother was a fiercely proud Sindhi all her life. When I was young, these feelings were totally irrelevant to me. I never thought about her and her family’s enormous loss and how bravely they had faced it, and only realised it while I was writing the book. I then became very keen to travel to Sindh with my mother. I told her many times that if we went, our experiences would make a good last chapter to the book. She gave me many reasons for not wanting to go. The one most relevant to answer your question is, “They threw us out! Why should I go back!”
So the biggest benefit of my book was that it enabled her to experience closure by reclaiming her lost childhood and by affirming her forgotten link to Sindh.
Personally, I feel rudderless and demotivated to continue my Sindh journey without my mother.
My mother was 79 years old, and she had lived a fairly comfortable life, facing its challenges with courage. Her death was no tragedy. I was with her as she left her body peacefully, smiling all the while. My mother was an agnostic and there was no religious ritual in our home. But because I had worked with her to write the book, I knew that the prayers she was taught as a child were from the Sikh religion, and I arranged the memorial service and meal in her memory at a Gurudwara. While I am deeply grateful for all these blessings, I feel terrible that I lost her so suddenly. I was totally unprepared. There were many, many questions that I wanted to ask her, always assuming that I could do so later. If I write about Sindh and Sindhis, I will always feel pain that she is not going to read and comment on it.
5. Do you think you are in better position to understand Sindh and its people and can write another book on this subject?
I have collected many more interesting stories and intend to compile them into a sequel. Each of them gives a different insight into Sindh, the Sindhi experience, and the Sindhi psyche.
In India we have a one-dimensional stereotype of Sindhis as calculating and profit-oriented. Even when people speak positively about Sindhis, they will use adjectives like ‘hardworking’ and ‘enterprising’ which directly relate to this one-dimensional stereotype. When I visited Pakistan, I saw that Sindhis there too are labelled in a limiting way, different but also deprecatory. One reason why Sindhis are misunderstood is because they have a unique culture which has been misunderstood. I feel that these stories will help people, in particular the Sindhis themselves, to understand that unique culture.
6. Do you think India and Pakistan can ever become good friends?
India and Pakistan were one land, one people with a common history and cultural kinship.
How different are Bombay and Karachi, how different are Delhi and Lahore? People look alike, they sound alike; their body language and core ethics are similar.
When I travel to Calcutta, Delhi, Madras or other places in India, things are similar but not quite the same as they are in Pune where I live. Often there are strong regional variations. People can see from the way I dress and speak that I have come from somewhere else. Yet they know that I am one of them. Why can’t it be the same when I go to Karachi too?
It is vested interests which have kept us apart, and it would be extremely difficult to overcome their power and wealth to become good friends.
7. Would you advise all the Sindhis living in India once visit their homeland in their life?
Sadly, most of the migrant generation is no more. Those who lived in Sindh and have memories of a lost childhood home would be over 70 years old. I doubt if ALL of them would have sufficient motivation to tolerate the rigour of the required paperwork and travel. As for younger Sindhis, they feel much more rooted in the place where they live than their lost homeland. To my mind, for them to come to terms with their identity, a visit to Sindh is only one of the things they need to do, and not one of the most essential.
Having said this, I must also say that when an Indian Sindhi meets a Pakistani Sindhi, for both of them it’s like looking into a mirror for the first time. There’s a feeling of magic and wonder in the air, like when two long-lost brothers suddenly find each other. It is a miraculous, amazing and uplifting experience which I wish every Sindhi could have.
8. How can writers play a positive role in promoting peace?
Good-quality writing is enjoyable, but it is also much more than that. Through it, readers come closer to understanding themselves. When we understand ourselves better, we realise that one of the highest human priorities is a safe and peaceful existence and a certain degree of comfort, replete with human bonds of love.
9. Anything about Karachi or Sindh you miss when you recall your visit to Pakistan?
What I miss most is easy access to Sindh. I wish I could travel there whenever I felt like to spend time with my friends there, to enjoy the shopping, and to wander down the streets thinking about my mother and my grandparents and wishing I could share these moments with them.

Accept me as I am

Ten weeks ago, on holiday in another city, my family of five was getting into two autorickshaws. As we started moving, my daughters and I realised that we were together and one of them said, “Uh oh … no boys … must always have at least one boy in the auto!”
Without a second’s pause I replied, “Hey – what’s the problem. We’re just boys without a …”
We giggled for a while, and I must admit feeling mighty impressed with myself for having so spontaneously bestowed this powerfully affirming gender-equality message on my girls.
When I think about it now, however, there’s something I appreciate even more, and that is how kindly my daughters accept such words and ideas from me without feeling embarrassed. And I feel sorry that my mother, whom I lost – suddenly and most unexpectedly – six weeks ago, was never so fortunate. She had her own uncompromising ideas about how life should be lived, but I never appreciated or accepted them, always grudging her her individuality.
One of the most prevalent relationship clichés of modern times is the one that delves and moans the complexity of the mother-daughter relationship. There is scope for intimacy, for mutual dependence, synergy and growth. And yet, most of us, with the best of intentions, burden our daughters with our dreams, our neuroses and our preconceptions while we betray our mothers by determinedly treading paths they begged us to avoid.
I escaped my mother’s dreams, neuroses and preconceptions by the simple device of never really giving her credit for having her own say in the universe; for grudging her any little influence over me. At fourteen, I was enraged when a friend of my parents commented, “Oh she’s just like her mother!” when he saw me knitting. Perhaps I believed I’d been born with that 100spm knitting speed.
So when my daughter fails to flinch when people look at us and remark, “Omg you are SOOO alike” I can but be grateful.
One night, fourteen years ago, I dreamt that I had gone to the airport to see my parents off. But I was too late. They had already boarded the plane and were sitting, strapped into their seats, inaccessible to me. I was washed over with waves of regret. If only I hadn’t dawdled, if only I hadn’t delayed!
It was a dream that changed my life. Latching on to its symbolism, I somehow convinced my parents to come and live with me. And I put everything else aside, demanding support from my husband and children, and rearranging my life to make them my highest priority. It was a challenging phase but executed with commitment.
Today, reconciling myself with a heavy heart to the ultimately one-way nature of that plane, I may be satisfied with a task well done but I also deeply regret how suddenly my mother disappeared from my life before I stopped trying, unsuccessfully, to bottle her into my stereotype of what a mother should be. How lucky I am that my daughter accepts me just as I am.
first appeared in Sakal Times on 7 May 2014

Happy Birthday Mumma

Memorializing Partition: Ramachandra Guha's column in The Telegraph

Stepford comes to Pune

If Mumbai has it, then Pune wants it too.
Ok, we don’t have stable electricity, orderly traffic, or even a world-famous dabba-delivery network.
And our public transport sucks. But hey, there are more important things! And if Mumbai’s nanga-panga store mannequins are being recalled – we must dump ours too.
Apparently, Mumbai men have been spurred on by lingerie-clad mannequins to commit unspeakable acts against Mumbai women, and we Pune women had better be careful it doesn’t start here too.
Out with the mannequins!
The female mannequins, that is. No bad things will ever happen if the male mannequins stay on, continuing to grace city chaddi-banian store windows with their faux manhood. The most extreme public nuisance any male mannequin could ever have the power to inspire is a wrinkled nose and mild tremor of disgust from a woman whose glance happens, entirely by accident of course, to settle briefly on the slight swelling the male-mannequin sculptor might have indulged his mine-is-bigger-than-yours aesthetic to secretly pad into the underwear.
So, let the fibreglass men stay. They are not a dastardly danger. But the women have got to go!
Besides, we never did like them, did we? There’s something about a female store mannequin that calls to mind the Stepford Wife. Stepford, of course, is that fictional town in America where the men somehow developed the technology to convert their wives into robots. Ahhhh – what a perfect dream! A beautiful woman who scrubs and cleans the home, cooks delectable gourmet food, and drives the children (having skillfully produced one of each kind) to their tennis and taekwondo lessons, an unwrinkled brow and welcoming smile adorning her face all the while. She never, ever, feels angry or disappointed or tired or frustrated or bitter. And at night … ah, night! But alas, ‘decency’ compels me to stay silent on the subject of what transpires at night. Night, of course, is when the mannequins’ charm becomes most active. At night men, driven wild with desire by their shiny plastic skin, their coarse acrylic hair, and certain sharply-pointed body parts (which ‘modesty’ prevents me from naming), will be out lurking with intent to attack real women.
The Mumbai corporator responsible for setting off this chain of events apparently feels that scantily-clad female mannequins are an affront to dignity and are likely to deprave, corrupt, or injure the public morality or morals.
I agree!
Real women have soft, and often slightly swollen, bellies. Real women do not have mathematical proportions. Real women change their facial expressions frequently. Real women often look messy. And real women are frightened of mannequins.
Yes – that’s the truth. In 2009, Journal of Consumer Research published research which showed that a woman’s self-esteem is directly related to the kind of models they are exposed to. The researchers ended their paper by recommending that overweight consumers avoid women’s magazines.
Maybe if the BMC had been in charge, they would have recommended women’s magazines being banned instead. And maybe if those researchers had been in charge, they would have recommended that men inclined to commit crimes against women should be locked up so that they could avoid lingerie-clad store mannequins.
So, let’s not bring our sons up to respect women. Let’s not bring our daughters up to respect themselves. Let’s tell them that they don’t really need to work hard and be sincere – all they need is an MBA from one of our city’s ‘renowned’ institutes, and their lives will be fun forever. In fact, let’s not worry about garbage collection, water harvesting, cleaning up our river, or creating affinity for social justice or a rule of law. Let’s just remove female store mannequins. That should solve all our problems.
first appeared as If Mumbai has it, then neighbour Pune wants it too in Pune Mirror on 4 June 2013

Three-day laugh fest

I remember how much we wept when we left school! The thought of leaving each other forever was unbearably painful. Would it have helped if we could have looked 36 years ahead in time and seen ourselves happily posing together in front of the clock tower, striding up the slope from flag staff, inspecting the Red Fort dormitories that had been our bedrooms for so many years – and even, wonder of wonders, sitting and cheekily sipping tea in the HMs office? Perhaps not; it’s unlikely we could have identified with the glamorous aunties life’s benign transformation had wrought.
There were seven of us. It was not Founders, it was not a planned batch reunion. Some things just fall into place. We had contacted the HM a few days before – imagine, a Lawrence School HM on facebook! – and received a courteous invitation to lunch in the Senior School dining room. We were ecstatic, perhaps also a trifle giddyheaded, and it was like stepping into a wardrobe and suddenly finding yourself in a land as dear and familiar to you as it was peculiar and incomprehensible to others.
What pleased us most was the smiling welcome we got. Teachers, admin staff, students alike treated us like honoured guests. When we expressed a desire for chota buns we were indulged with a tray full, a second serving, and then a large parcel of that rare unmatched delicacy from the past. A teacher escorted us patiently around Girls’ School. Stately Nithya – we were children together, yes, 1977 was a good year – showed us around the archives.
What a surprise to find a friend and fellow OL, Rohan Sabharwal, living in school for a few months to set up a media cell! And what a delight to be mistaken for his batchmate – dear Rohan, abject apologies, but one day you will understand the CT of being thought two decades younger than you are! Yes – all the old slang came back. We were ‘dames’, we went to the ‘beach’, but sadly we never got round to ‘chroming’ on the banks. Time was short so we never ‘sent over’ or ‘chopped’ anyone but really, the tension between the strictly segregated sexes was flagrant – even to us at the far end of the hormonal spectrum.
A visit to school is not just an excursion into nostalgia, it’s also a pilgrimage, an offering of gratitude to the teachers who shaped the way we think and inculcated in us our attention to detail, and our constant striving for knowledge and concrete achievement. (Even the ones who unabashedly brandished their ugly sides at us surely gave us something good though at this moment I can’t think what exactly!) And we sang the old songs again, this time with an awareness of what they meant, and how these powerful words had implanted in us the power and the will to win! It was a 3-day Laugh Fest sincerely recommended to all.
first appeared in The Lawrencian Mar-Apr 2013