The Ladies Handbag and India-Pak peace
There is panic on the face of this Indian looking lady with a 2 year old daughter, at Istanbul airport as she enquires about the gate of her flight. In the elevator now, the child is oblivious and joyful, as children are! We speak.
Turns out, she is Pakistani!
She has missed one flight connection already because her first plane was on the tarmac for 4 hours, from Lahore. We are both headed to London.
As she boards the bus from the gate to the plane, she looks like a juggler — the child in arms plus hand luggage, and the mandatory large handbag (ladies, what do you carry in it!!?) I offer help.
From here on, her ladies handbag hangs off my shoulder!
I have often felt embarrassed in shopping malls carrying my own wife’s handbag, waiting for her outside toilets. For some reason, I feel a sense of pride here — like I am a part of a Indo-Pak peace and friendship delegation!
We chat as we hold onto the rails, luggage and child as the bus makes its way on the tarmac.
I proudly share about the play that’s successfully running in Delhi right now- “Jis Lahore nahin vekhiya, O jamiya hee nahin” — If you haven’t seen Lahore, you ain’t even born yet!
“Punjabi?” She asks. “Sindhi”, I say.
Turns out her husband is Sindhi, from Sukkur. “My great grandfather was the Mayor of Sukkur!” I exclaim.
A strange sense of one-ness and connection comes over us. It gets taken to different level by the airline staff that’s welcoming us into the aircraft — we are mistaken for a married couple (sure shot and global symbol of nuptials — more than even a mangalsutra or a ring, is the handbag of the woman on the man’s shoulder!)
I set her luggage up. We say the customary goodbyes, and the these days customary hi-five with the child. The little girl’s smiles and funny faces are the best in-flight entertainment I could have hoped for.
I fly with hope …
…that we can exchange such smiles across borders…
… that when that little child herself becomes a grand mother, bullets and bombs between the neighbours, become stories of a strange ancient past!
A pipe dream? No.
Would my great grandfather, the mayor of Sukkur, have imagined that partition may turn the mayor’s own grandkids into fleeing refugees from his own town? Or that Germany would be divided, and then reunited by the time his Great Grand Son is in his 20's? Or that technology would evolve such that populations freely talk to each other & publish on global platforms such as www.medium.com ? May be ordinary people will succeed where mighty politicians have failed.
One Blog, one like, one share, and one kind gesture at a time!
