my loves!!!!! especially MINA DAHLING! this is a joke baby love!


travelling that long road to wagah

oct 22, 2004.

the reservations were there....but what lay on the 'other' side was beautiful.




Jaspinder Kaur was Paki Punctual – thirty minutes late – and I was in a bad mood. Waking up on the right side of the right bed but still feeling like a stranger is never a good way to start the day. Especially a day that entails getting hopelessly lost on a winding road in a minivan choked with claustrophobically essentialist rhetoric. But there I was, on my way to the Other Side in a scandalous orange Patiala shalwar, armed with a new faith and a Sikh name, newly minted for the occasion.

“I don’t like my Sikh name!” was the noisy lament of one of my thirteen self-styled Sikh companions. “Gurbinder is so outdated!” Having been christened Lajwanti just moments earlier, I could relate to Guru’s annoyance. Sure, Rajinder Singh Bedi had written a touching story about a woman called Lajwanti who was abducted during the Partition, but ‘Lajo’ was a less than euphonious alias. True, I was one of fourteen Lahori students leaving home for India, and if it were utterly necessary that I be given a Sikh name, then surely it ought to be something up to the minute: more chic, less Punjabi.

Then of course, there was also the fact that I was – or would like to pretend I was – completely opposed to the delegation’s fascination with “Otherness”. Still, I went ahead and announced that I would like to be referred to as “Sush” for the duration of the trip. My matter-of-fact declaration went unheard as thirteen voices screamed out “Lajo!” in perfect sync with the unsettling thud of the van flying over a speed breaker. If the road wasn’t bumpy enough, the driver – in his Matrix-inspired shades and Osama bin Laden headscarf – was certainly on a death wish.

“So we have the Sikh names but do we look Indian?” asked an insightful Subaltern Singh. Therein began the process of reducing “The Indian” to the signifiers of his physical differences. When a consensus was finally reached, the results were somewhat disturbing – thick lips, frizzy hair, broad face, big nose and so on. A bit of a caricature, a worryingly reminiscent of the old Little Black Sambo stereotypes. Considering I was in a busload of Lahore’s finest, it was all a bit worrying.

The little reductive squabble was finally and mercifully, brought to an end (or postponed) by the driver’s announcement that we were lost. This was the perfect cue for Burger Singh – who had been eerily silent up until now – to start mumbling curses in heavily accented English. As our literature instructor cum chaperone, it was his ‘duty’ to make sure that we reached and crossed the border safely, especially considering that the trip had already been delayed a day because of “embassy complications”. More like laziness and complete lack of organisation, I thought.

As the van zigzagged its way across narrow dirt-roads and under low bridges, all thirteen pretend Sikhs, including myself, peered out in fascination at the passing mud houses with cow shit splattered on their walls. Our thirty minute ride had already stretched to ninety, and it was unsettling how it had been ages since I last spotted a woman on the roadside. It seemed as if all there was left of this side of the world, still west of the border, were men with scratchy beards, the occasional emaciated ram, and scores of barefooted, suntanned children.

And of course, if Babban Ajeet’s “Why did the Pakistani cross Wagah?” jokes weren’t enough, Santa Singh started bawling a Beatles classic at the top of his voice. “We’re going to Punjab! At least sing a Punjabi song!” exclaimed Preeto indignantly.

I almost burst out laughing. “Hello! We are in Punjab! Lahore is as Punjab as it’ll ever get!” I snapped. I was to regret this piece of commonsensical information and so was everyone else. Thanks to me, Burger – who is forever waiting for an opportunity to show-off the postcolonial rhetoric he picked up at some Ivy League – launched into a lecture about how “we” were still “inextricably caught up in the coloniser’s chains” and thus knew “nothing better than to hum his compositions”. Heavy.

“Don’t say anything against Pakistan,” warned Kamini (pronounced Kum-ee-nee) in her baby-doll voice. “You’re forgetting that the place we are going to is famous for theft.” Not for the Golden Temple, the Jalianwala Bagh Memorial or for hosting the Dussehra festival. Amritsar is famous for theft, because Kamini thinks so, just like Lahore is the place to be if you want to make millions on stolen mobile phones. While these thoughts went bump in my head, everyone else in the van was getting a crash course on how to “protect” their valuables once across the border and into the Land of Coons and Bad Bucks – strong, violent, subhuman creatures, good for nothing more than eating “pure veggie yaar”.

Just then, Subaltern started jumping up and down on the torn van seat, screaming for everyone to “look!” to their right where a platoon of sombre, wily, mammoth-sized cows were walking sluggishly in a line. It took him a few minutes to get over the excitement of seeing what might have been “Indian Cows”. After all, the mere fact that we were “quite near” the border was enough to convince Subaltern that these cows could be nothing but “Hindu”. After a ten minute discussion about the differences between “Paki and Indi” cows, it all balled down to one essential distinction: “Indian cows definitely looked more worshipped,” announced Subaltern, shaking his head in mock sadness. “They will never have to see the butcher’s knife; they will all die of old age.”

Everyone burst out laughing. Subaltern’s astute elucidations were definitely proving to be a distraction from the fact that though God and the army knew where Wagah lies, our driver certainly didn’t. The few passer-bys we had asked for directions had all – not surprisingly – pointed us towards different roads. We were citizens of God’s country and it was only natural that we would be led – over troubled waters - to the unholy side.

Thirty minutes and thirteen almost-dead-with-impatience Sikhs later, we reached Wagah only to find out that we’d been running in a wide semicircle about it the whole time! I flapped open my video camera lens right as our van pulled up at the gate to India. After getting my passport and luggage checked, I went in search for a four leafed clover. Walking gingerly across grass that did not belong to me, I realised that it was as green – if not greener – as the grass back home.

- posted by Mehreen Malik @ 10:41 AM