Living with the enemy, and loving it!
Here’s what happens when two groups of students from India and Pakistan break boundaries to explore their shared histories and identities.
I am an international student at the Hamburg University in Germany. And like most international students, I live in a student dorm. I am an Indian, and I live with a Pakistani.
For those who may not know why this narrative is of interest, let me give you a quick summary. India and Pakistan despite being next-door neighbours aren’t the best of friends — in fact we despise each other and have fought three major wars. Our borders remain hostile, with regular ceasefire violations from both sides, while Kashmir remains to date a disputed territory with both nations laying claim to it.
This enmity is embedded in our shared yet complex history and therefore extends beyond national and political spheres, cutting through into the highly sensitive religious and socio-cultural dimensions. While India is a predominantly Hindu country, Pakistan as a nation was separated from India in the name of Islam.
Growing up in a mainly Hindu society, I had a handful of Muslim friends, colleagues and acquaintances. In fact a very common idea propounded to us as kids was that any Muslim person was a Pakistani — and that in itself, carried multiple negative connotations with it. Of course I was able to grow up and out of this mindset — and thank God for that — whichever God that is.
But you may begin to understand my shy curiosity when I got to know at the beginning of my master’s program in Denmark, that there would be four other Pakistani students in my batch and three of them — Omer, Zahra and Fatema — would come to live in the same dorm as me.
As symbolic as it can be, my first real connection with a Pakistani came about because of a folk song that Omer played as some of us sat together in the dorm on a typically cold and dark Scandinavian evening. The song was about the Chenab River that originates in India and flows into Pakistan and is one of the five main rivers that have sustained us as a civilization for thousands of years. As such both Indians and Pakistanis share much folklore about this river and the people along its bank.
“Looking back on that evening, I am amazed at how a simple song was a trigger for a friendship that not only broke ice between us, but also gave an insight into the cultural commonalities of language, social customs, food and more that Indians and Pakistanis share. A culture that is common to us and flows between both countries, just like the Chanaa River,” says Omer reminiscing about that night.
Over the next few weeks, the ‘Indians’ and the ‘Pakistanis’ in the program bonded over multiple aspects and our identities increasingly began merging as one people. As clichéd as it may be, our mutual love for cricket, cinema and chai brought us closer and gave us multiple themes for conversations that went well past midnight. We soon discovered that in fact, our Pakistani fellows knew more about Bollywood films than even we did. Soon it was established that Fatema had Bollywood super powers — she could talk about old Bollywood films that none of us had even heard about.
We noticed that although Urdu and Hindi were essentially the same languages when spoken, we could not read each other’s scripts as Urdu is derived from Persian, whereas Hindi originates from the Devnagri script. But when one day I casually let out an “Inshallah” under my breath after Omer said something, or when Zahra began using Mumbai slang words from Hindi, we knew that our habits and cultures were fusing together into a beautiful blend of friendship.
As luck would have it, one of the best memories for all of us was in June 2017 when India and Pakistan played against each other in the ICC Championship Trophy. India-Pakistan cricket matches are known to be one of the most intense sports rivalries in the world. As we all gathered to watch the semi-finals in one of our dorm rooms, bets were placed as to who would win and the friendly banter began right from the word go. India won the semi-finals and the Indians had a blast celebrating the victory. But alas, the celebrations were short-lived as Pakistan scored a remarkable triumph over India in the finals.
In November 2016, when Indian Premier Narendra Modi announced the demonetization of all 500 and 1,000 rupee notes, I remember taking out a note from my wallet, wondering what I would do with the now-defunct currency. “Is that Indian currency? Woah can I take a look?” piped Omer’s voice from behind me. He immediately went on to take out one of his own notes from Pakistan and we promptly exchanged currencies to remember the moment. One note had Mahatma Gandhi’s face on it and the other had Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s. I have no doubts that we are going to cherish those notes for as long as we can.
As women, Fatema, Zahra and I also bonded on other aspects of our social identities. Being away from the social norms that women are expected to follow in our respective countries, we confided in each other the lightness of being we felt, walking home late at night and without worrying for our safety. Together in Europe, we found a similar sense of freedom from patriarchal social structures that dominated our lives back home.
When Fatema and I moved to Hamburg, we made a conscious decision of finding a home together. She now lives in the room right next to mine and I cannot imagine a day without cooking and eating together with her.
At times it is difficult to explain to our parents the friendships we have developed with our historic enemy. Their generation grew up in an atmosphere of intense political and cultural rivalry between the two countries and they never got a chance to really get to know the other people. My parents were extremely sceptical and suspicious of my bonding with Omer. In their eyes, he represented all stereotypes that the media has propounded about the ‘Muslim man as a threat to the Hindu woman’. But their scepticism slowly turned to fondness when they observed from afar how this bunch of Indian and Pakistani students had become a family for each other.
And so I often ask myself: Why is it that when we meet outside of our respective countries, we are able to form a completely new community hybrid, one that feeds on our similarities and is appreciative of our differences? Why does the unthinkable happen in Denmark or in Germany and not when we live side-by-side in Pakistan and India?
The answers to these questions lay in my own experiences. As I repeatedly stumbled into nuanced conversations on nationalism, religion, propaganda, common and re-written (read biased) histories with my neighbours, I realised that the most edifying aspect of this experience was that we could get to know the ‘other’ side of the story through persons whose circumstances were not so different from our own — essentially making us understand that the other side is as human as we are and that their aspirations, pain and suffering were no less than ours. This empathy or human element, unfortunately, is absent in the media and from the rhetoric of politicians on both sides of the border, which is why so many of our people remain trapped in structures that perpetuate hate and enmity.
Meanwhile here in Europe, living side-by-side we all realised that our interactions not only diffused our preconceived notions about the other, but are also helping us spread the love to our families and friends back home.
And so to all my Pakistani and Indian brothers and sisters, I can only say this: No matter how bad things get or how far apart we grow, we will always be a door-knock away from the other.
