India-Pakistan

No I am not going to talk about any cricket nor any Kashmir. Its just about a small incident which made me think about the feelings we get whenever the words India and Pakistan are uttered together. And how strange it is to discover the people on the other side of the border.

I have never met any of the Pakistanis in India but in my few stints outside India happened to meet or hear about a few of them. One was a typical example of how we perceive them and love to hear those stories of them. There was a guy who was in an Indian guy gang because all used to work in the same office and he would come out cursing the film makers whenever he went to watch Indi patriotic movies like Border etc. Quite natural to the image of Pakistanis who as we think are surely not going to believe in our glory.

Its common for Indians to look for an Indian restaurant to get a taste of our own food and there are many of them who are Pakistani run but the names and ambiance is all Indian. I bet every major European city will have a 'Taj Mahal' restaurant. So it was a few visits to a variety of them which made me make some observations:
- Generally recognizing you as Indians, the owners will tend to ask you sometimes where are you from and all that. In case you tell them you are Indian, most Pakistani restaurant owners will not confess they are Pakistanis. They would rather say we are from Punjab.
- The Pakistani style food is quite the same as north Indian food.

And hence we have an habit to shrug their attitude thinking its valid considering the relationship the countries share. But a recent incident changed this outlook a little. I happened to go to an "specialty Indienne" restaurant named 'Shameer' with a friend of mine who has been there in Paris for long. The same sequence of questions followed. "Where do you come from?" and we unanimously answered "India". "Hindi bol lete ho?" and we said "Haan haan , kyon nahin!!". Then he asked where in India and all that and then when we asked where was he from and he said Pakistan. This itself was a little surprising but it had happened for me only once earlier when on too many questions on Punjab the person had said that he was in Pakistani Punjab which is almost the same as ours.

We ordered some northie food and wine. The food was real good and so in the end I could not help complimenting the owner about the food. I also added that I had a similar good experience in another Pakistani restaurant in Zurich. I said I have started liking the Pakistani style of cooking. To which he replied you will be surprised to know that our cook is Indian. Also he could recognise the owners of the Zurich restaurant and told they too have an Indian cook. We had some talk and he left us till outside of the restaurant and it was a nice experience.

The above was normal. Two days later another friend of mine had come down to meet me and he wanted to have Indian food and so I gave him this address. I had to leave back so I told him that he could go an have it. My friend was quite talkative and as it learn from him that when he went, the owner and he had a good discussion about how India and Pakistan are hardly different outside of India and how our politicians keep pulling the countries apart. And on top of that the owner did not even take the money from him. Pakistanis are hardly from rich backgrounds in those parts of the world and leaving some 30 euros for a lunch, just for a healthy discussion with an Indian is seriously moving.

Overall what I learn is that we on both sides of the border share quite similar feelings, have the same language, have the same food but yet even if I could go to all the places of the world but crossing the border would be the hardest thing an Indian could ever do.