For most Indians Pakistan brings up a welter of emotions and thoughts whether the topic is cricket, literature, movies or war. An unhelpful and stark fact is that no two countries have fought more wars against each other in the post second world war era. 

Pakistan first entered my consciousness somewhat violently when I was a very young boy in the border town of Amritsar during the 1965 war. The relentless aerial bombardment left most residents including me both terrified and resentful!  Decades later, interacting with Pakistanis overseas led to a more nuanced understanding of the people and the country albeit from the outside. 

So, when a serendipitous meeting with one of the founders of the Lahore Literary Festival in New York resulted in an invitation to my wife and me to attend the festival in Lahore last month we leapt at the opportunity.  Little did we know how much of a treat we were in for as our host insisted on us, total strangers, staying in her house!

On landing in Lahore what struck us almost immediately was the remarkable similarity in mien, ethos and mores to that of India. Yes, most signs are in Urdu besides English but the alacrity of greeting, the unvarnished warmth and spontaneous hospitality is no different to that in India, particularly North India. 

The Lahore Literary Festival itself is held in the Alhamra Arts Council, a brick veneered octagonal structure with more than a passing resemblance to two Lahori landmarks, the Badshahi mosque and the Lahore fort. Its seemingly inward tapering walls draws directly from the Fort and has remarkably good acoustics with its largest hall seating nearly 700.  It was filled to the rafters for more than a few sessions including that of William Dalrymple and Orhan Pamuk.   

The grounds of the Arts Council replete with gardens and open spaces for mingling between sessions bore a festive look with free musical performances by local artistes.  Unusually for the Indian sub-continent, there were no reserved seats for “VIPs” including authors, organizers and politicians: a former finance minister found himself on the 3rd row while Dalrymple was seen squatting on the steps to the side! 

The City of Lahore is reputed to be a “twin city” to both Amritsar and Delhi but it’s Delhi with its many Mughal monuments, colonial era structures and wide avenues that is more easily recalled. Notable among the former is the stunning Badshahi mosque and the Lahore Fort with the Lahore High Court, the Railway Station and Aitcheson College among the stars of the latter. 

A lament of those less inclined to the stark nativism now seen in both countries but more so in India now is the hoops one has to go through to get a visa resulting in desultory contacts between ordinary people of both countries. The feverishly friendly interest in us at any event we attended from LLF dinners to encounters with regular folks on the street and tourist sites was due to the absence of Indians visiting Pakistan. 

If one were lucky enough to obtain a visa and choose to go overland, the only land border is the Wagah-Attari border halfway between Lahore and Amritsar. When not used for the comically absurd beating-the-retreat ceremony that occurs every evening (a big draw on both sides of the border) it is witness to a few dozen regular citizens carrying large sacks of potatoes and onions as well as the religious tourists. 

Our sojourn in Pakistan extended beyond the three days of the LLF event to a couple of days spent seeing Lahore, the archaeologically rich sites of Taxila and Kattas Raj, an ancient Hindu temple just off the highway to Islamabad. 

When it came to time to leave, we opted for the land border. It turned out to be a somewhat surreal experience as it took me past Dograi and Batapore. I had “visited” Dograi with my father who was the commander of the Air Force station in Amritsar in 1965.  Indian forces captured and briefly held it before releasing it as part of the Tashkent agreement.  

The actual crossing was anti-climactic. The Pakistani Rangers at the border could not have been friendlier and happily posed for a photograph while officials on both sides were surprisingly efficient. 

As we drove on to Amritsar to visit the amazingly well put together Partition museum I wondered about the counter-factual of an undivided India existing today knowing fully that, like shattered glass, it can never be made whole again. 

Both countries have taken distinctly separate paths but surely cross border movement will serve to dull some of the virulent hatred still prevalent in many quarters as was exemplified by the recent riots in New Delhi. That process would be greatly aided if India reverted to its foundational ideas and principles and Pakistan is able to send its military to the barracks. Then again that may be a bridge too far given the current zeitgeist.

Vijay Dandapani