It was a Friday afternoon at Wagah- the first working day after Eid holidays. The group of travellers from Amritsar, tired and impatient, knew their journey was not yet over. It was lunch time and on a Friday it meant a longer break as officers had two devotional duties to perform- praying and eating. Fatigued by the April heat and an endless wait, their exasperation swelled a bit more as a rumour started doing the rounds that just one officer had showed up for the duty. With unwavering spirits, over fifty pairs of weary eyes kept looking at the unoccupied immigration counter, hoping, wishing, praying that the Saviour with the seal would make a magical appearance. Their prayers were surely answered when a young officer, with the official seal took over the counter. Waiting for their turn in a clustered queue, people gripped with the hope of meeting their loved ones, calmed and contained their agony-no word of irritation was uttered and no sign of annoyance was shown. The fearful thought of any last minute rejection, was strong enough to muffle remonstration of any sort.
Handling baggage and babies, the ladies, tired of standing, had occupied chairs and a string cot kept in one corner of the hall. Men whiled away time moving in and out discussing, finalizing the travel plans once cleared from Wagah. With no electricity, the desolate waiting area with its poor infrastructure appeared even more unwelcoming – the static fans tested the endurance of the people and made the long wait even more unbearable. It illustrated a miserable picture, where each entity had a distressing story to narrate. To me it appeared as if the place was grieving over the separation and anguish suffered by people gathered there. “I am going to meet my brother after 35 years” said a woman, heading toward Quetta. Another woman had an almost similar account, just some variation in the number of years she had spent hoping to visit her family. Their stories reminded me of my own Indian cousin who relocated to Karachi after marriage- when she went back after 11 years to meet her parents in Bangalore, the father nearly fainted seeing her as he had given up the hope of meeting the daughter.
It is strange to see how the travelling procedure, though tough and harrowing, fails to break the spirits of the resolute travellers, as they take up the drudgery to revisit the charm of their birthplace, return to the memories of childhood and feel the fondness of friends and relatives.
It was perhaps the same emotion that filled an octogenarian woman on a wheelchair who sat uncomplainingly, waiting for the moment when her Dark Blue passport would get the immigration seal. She appeared to be the matriarch who had experienced the pain of living away from the near and dear ones, but was strong enough to take up the daunting task to travel to Karachi to attend a wedding with her son, daughter in law and grandchildren. It would not be wrong to think that she was the doyen trying to keep the family together, unscathed by the hostility that divided the countries beyond the separation caused by the Redcliff Line.
Indo-Pak travelling present stories that are a strange blend of love, resilience and helplessness. En route to Atari from Amritsar airport, I felt a familiar delight and excitement as I caught the road signs showing how far, no close, I was to Lahore. Visiting Pakistan is like craving to get the bite of the forbidden fruit, which you can only grab if you have the grit to fulfil the formalities, paperwork and brace up for a convoluted itinerary. For me, it started from Bangalore with a three-day stopover in Delhi, followed by a flight to Amritsar then a taxi ride to Atari- From Wagah I headed to Lahore airport and my journey finally ended when I landed in Karachi, my final destination. In the absence of any direct flights from Delhi to Lahore or Karachi, Wagah is a tedious but a cheaper route however, if one is willing to splurge then indirect routes via Bahrain, Dubai or Sri Lanka can save one from the travails of travelling.
“There should be direct flights from Delhi to Karachi,” Can’t they introduce visa on arrival system?” I found myself hoping for apparently the most unlikely options in a state of frustration after spending hours at various check posts and counters, lifting luggage and pushing trollies. The perennial hostility between India and Pakistan prevented me from further painting the canvas of my hopes with thoughts that would make Indo-Pak travelling swift like the breeze. However, if there is one thing that happened smoothly was getting the visa from the Pakistan Embassy. It has been a couple of months, but I still find myself pondering over the words of an officer there who in reply to my concern if I would get the visa retorted “doomed we would be, if we don’t give it to you.”
Source: The Times of India