Chapter: The Dream
(For Eklavya - http://mool-dhara.blogspot.in/2014/10/the-dream-that-wasnt.html)
It was morning.
I opened my eyes slowly. At first, there was too much of light for my
iris to take in. But it adjusted itself soon enough.
There was a unique calmness in the room, or perhaps it was just a state
of my state of mind; it was a kind of calmness you experience after having been
dreaming deep in your sleep. And when you wake up, it takes a while before your
mind can differentiate between what is real and what is not.
The only sound that my ears could gather was the awful din created by
the rotating fan hanging from the ceiling of my room. The old brown leather
suitcase was lying on the top of the almirah right in front of me. My
house-owner had told me once the suitcase belonged to his father’s friend who
had lived in my room 50 years ago. When I occupied this room in their
house, he had taken this suitcase out from under my bed and kept it on the top of the almirah
to make more space for my own luggage.
I raised my neck a little bit to look at the textured fostered glass of
my room’s window right above my head. It was white and bright, an indication
that the clouds of the previous night had given way to the sun this morning.
It was raining heavily in Chennai last night while I was leaving the
office, an unusual setting for this time of the year. Hoping that the rain
would drowse down in a while, I continued to stay in office even after the
regular working hours. But the rain gods didn't oblige for a long time.
Next I remember that it was already midnight when I finally left my office.
As a result there was no auto or bus or any other kind of public transport
available on the road, walking back home was the only option for me.
My office and home are separated by 3 kilometres; as a result I was
drenched completely by the time I reached home. My bed was still moist in the
morning, I could feel it. My wet clothes were lying on a chair near my bed,
still dripping some drops of water in the pool created right below the chair.
It was Saturday and a holiday for me, I wanted to sleep for some more
time. I looked for my pillow. It was lying near my feet. I pulled it closer and
squeezed it tight between my arms. A tag stitched to the pillow, popped out of the pillow cover. I noticed
the words “Recron” written on it in big black letters and “Lahore, India” in
the next line.
I had never noticed that tag before. I closed my eyes for a moment and
opened it again to check if I read that right first time. It was still there in
the second line - “Lahore, India”.
I wondered why anyone would write India when Lahore is in Pakistan. Or
was it a misprint in the hands of pillow makers? I was having a heavy head and
so I chose to ignore the mistake and close my eyes to sleep for some more time.
I woke up again sometime later. The tag was still there with the mention
of Lahore and India side-by-side in the second line. It must be a major
printing error, I took it for granted. I grabbed my wrist watch lying on the
bed. Even that had rainwater inside but the needles were still ticking. The
time was quarter past 9.
I got out of the bed, went straight to the toilet to carry out with my
daily morning customary. After freshening up, I took my wallet from inside
the poly-bag and keys of the house. I locked the house and started walking
towards the idli-vada shop where I
have my daily breakfast.
As I approached the shop, I saw its owner fighting with an unknown man
who had apparently parked his big black Scorpio right in front of his shop. I
noticed Mahindra’s brand symbol on the bonnet was a bit different on that car.
It wasn't the usual two-way-road-narrowing-down-to-infinity. Rather it had something
that seemed to me like triple M put one over the other. I doubted if it was
really Mahindra’s Scorpio.
I took a walk around the car and reached the rear end
of the SUV. The car was indeed a Scorpio, but the makers of the car were meant
to be ‘Mahindra &
Mohammed’. It was strange because for I had always known the company as 'Mahindra
& Mahindra’.
The owner of the car must be some nut, I thought, trying to give a fancy
touch to his car. I clicked a picture of the same and uploaded on Facebook.
Then went inside the shop and ordered for a masala
dosa. While my masala dosa was
getting ready, I went to buy a copy of The Times of India from the next shop.
The front page of the paper read:
“AFRIDI’S SIX HELPS INDIA REACH FINALS OF T20 WORLD
CUP”
Now this was the third weirdness of the day and the day had just started! What was bloody wrong with this day? How could TOI do
such a blunder mistake on its front page headline? How could they write that
Shahid Afridi, a cricketer actually from Pakistan, supposedly batting for
India, scored 9 runs of the last 4 balls to help India reach finals of T20
World Cup!
I snatched a copy of The Hindu from the stands. Even Hindu had a similar
article about “The Comeback Man Shahid Afridi”. It also had a photo of Shahid
Afridi wearing the blue Indian jersey. I picked up Indian Express and Deccan
Herald as well. They were no different.
Indian Express alongside also reported that India was planning to invest
Rs 1000 Crores to build a new port at Gwadar, in Baluchistan, 100 kilometers
from the border India shares with Iran. Deccan Herald carried pictures of the
new Islamabad Airport inaugurated by Airport Authority of India. It said this
was supposedly the 5th major airport-after Hyderabad, Bangalore, Delhi and
Mumbai-to be built on PPP model.
I was chewing the last bite of my dosa
still confused by the strangeness of the day when my phone rang. It was
Prateeksha. I was thrilled that she called me up. I so desperately wanted to
share with her the weirdness in my life today. I quickly swallowed my last
bite, even before breaking them down into tiny bits inside my mouth.
“Did you see today’s newspaper?” I spoke up in excitement ignoring
hello(s) and hi(s).
“Is the news of Sana Khan and her car crash already in the newspaper?”
“Who is Sana Khan now, Prateeksha? I am talking about Shahid Afridi
playing for India in yesterday’s match... it is in every paper today”
“So? What’s the big deal about it?” she sounded indifferent.
“It is a big deal. He doesn't play for India, he plays for Pakistan
yaar”
“What? What’s Pakistan?”
I ignored her reaction because I know she rarely follows cricket. The only
cricketer she knew about was Virat Kohli and MS Dhoni because I had written
about them in my articles on mool-dhara. And of course she knew of Dravid,
Ganguly and Tendulkar as well. I told her I would speak to her later.
I went back home. Opened my laptop and connected to the internet. Yahoo,
my homepage, was displaying the news about the death of the same female whom
Prateeksha had mentioned to me sometime back. Yahoo reported that Sana and
Babar Khan, apparently India’s most popular Bollywood couple, were on their way
from Mumbai to Lonavala in a car when the vehicle, driven by Babar, went out of
control and crashed. I had never heard of neither Sana nor Babar Khan before.
But they seem to be someone really admired in Bollywood. NDTV website
had uploaded some photographs of other Khans and Kapoors from Bollywood, everyone
dressed in white, visiting her home in Mumbai to pay condolence. Tweets from
Anupam Kher, Shashi Tharoor, Gul Panaag among many others also kept flashing on
the upper right corner of the page.
I googled Shahid Afridi. It threw up several links. I opened the Wikipedia
link. It said Shahid Afridi was an All-Rounder from India. I searched for Wasim Akram next; even he played for Indian cricket as per cricinfo. I
checked for Imraan Khan. Google offered images of him standing next to Aravind
Kejriwal wearing the traditional “main hoon
aam aadmi” topi. Shoib Akhtar
was too an Indian.
These men were actually from Pakistan, but none of the website showed
them as Pakistanis. Every page on internet claimed they were Indians. I searched
for Pakistan next. Google returned no result.
This was unbelievable. I searched for India on Google. It threw up a
million search option. I navigated the cursor to maps-the first link in the
list. The maps page showed that the boundaries of India extended from Afghanistan-Iran
in the west to Myanmar in the east, from Kashmir in the north to Kanyakumari in
South. I was shocked.
Where did Pakistan disappear? Was I spelling it right? Or was I missing
some alphabet?
I tried various spellings of Pakistan; nothing but only one yielded
result.
As per a document with the National Archives of India, in 1933, an
activist Choudhry Rahmat Ali published a pamphlet titled “Now or Never”
demanding a separate Muslim state, distinct from India as a solution to the
Hindu-Muslim problem that had surfaced during that time. There he first coined
the term “PAKSTAN”.
“I am enclosing herewith an appeal, on behalf of thirty
million Muslim brethren who live in PAKSTAN, for the demand of the recognition of their national status, as
distinct from the other inhabitants of India”
He was referring to the
names of the five northern states of British India: Punjab, Afghania Province (North-West Frontier Province), Kashmir, Sindh and Baluchistan that had the maximum
concentration of Muslims outside the Bengal region.
On a little more digging I discovered an article that claimed two of the
tallest leaders from Indian National Congress-Nehru and Jinnah-who were too
ambitious to get the top job after British left India-supported Ali’s idea. The
article claimed that if the country was divided they would not have to compete
against each other in the race for pradhaan
mantri ki gaddi; a race that was already becoming ugly every passing day as
the British had started giving hints of leaving.
But there was one rising-star within the Congress, a defiant patriot, who
ensured that personal ambitions of the two stalwarts-one supposedly a favourite
of Gandhiji and other the head of All-India Muslim League-would not let the
foundation of the nation crumble where millions lived, at least till the time he was alive. Hence he
took it upon himself to make sure the country is freed as a united India.
But perhaps it was the influential Gandhiji who made the most crucial decision when he chose
wisdom over nepotism. Unlike Dronacharya of Mahabharat, Gandhiji chose Eklavya
over Arjun. Thus country was spared of a division and PAKSTAN was never created.
And it was true because there was nothing on Google regarding the 1947, 1965, 1971 or even 1999 Kargil war. Kashmir was never terrorised. India wasn't spending
Rs 2 Lakh Crores on the military expenses to protect its borders. Even the
relations with China were cordial since China recognised the influence India
had in South and South-East Asia region because of its historically enriched
trade-cultural-political relations with its neighbouring countries. And its
influence over Muslim dominated middle-east nations considering India housed
the biggest population of Muslims in the world-Shia and Sunni.
There was no history of Indo-Pakistan cricket ties. Rather we had the
best cricket team in the world. We were No. 1 in hockey too, winning the last 3
of the 5 World Cups. Legends like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Nazia Hassan belonged
to India. Jal, Strings and Adnan Sami, were all Indians.
King Edward Medical College of Lahore and AIIMS in New Delhi were
pioneers in medical research. Cotton Industry of Punjab was the biggest cotton
market of the world, giving us a lead in the world market that was nearly
double to the second biggest market. Port in Chittagong, Vishakhapatnam, Chennai,
Kochi, Mumbai and Karachi gave India a strategic advantage over the Indian Ocean
in South Asia. Nothing could bypass us.
Manufacturing and investments bloomed and so did tourism. India offered
everything from archaeological sites of Mohenjo Daro in Sindh dating back to
2600 BCE to present day financial and industrial centres of Gurgaon in Haryana.
I paused and wondered what happened to Bangladesh then. Was it ever
created? Google had no answers for Bangladesh, even after trying all possible
combinations with the alphabets that made up Bangladesh.
I could not believe this alternation of history at first. But slowly it
all made sense to me. Everything was so neat and real. I was beginning to get convinced
that there was no Pakistan; that there was no division that took place, ever.
But then, I had read about Pakistan in my school books. I had heard my
grandmother narrated the horrific stories of partition. I had spoken about
Pakistan during cricket world cup matches with my friends. I had seen films
made on Kargil war with my family. What did they mean? Or even if Pakistan never existed from where
this idea of Pakistan creep into my mind? Was I
hallucinating? Or was I dreaming all these years? Or was I dreaming now?
My phone rang again. There was a message from Prateeksha.
“Btw when are you planning to come back to Lahore? We are waiting”
* * * * * * *
It was morning.
I opened my eyes slowly. At first, there was too much of light for my iris to take in. But it adjusted itself soon enough.
There was a unique calmness in the room, or perhaps it was just a state of my state of mind; it was a kind of calmness you experience after having been dreaming deep in your sleep. And when you wake up, it takes a while before your mind can differentiate between what is real and what is not.
The only sound that my ears could gather was the awful din created by the rotating fan hanging from the ceiling of my room. The old brown leather suitcase was lying on the top of the almirah right in front of me. My house-owner had told me once the suitcase belonged to his father’s friend who had lived in my room 50 years ago. When I occupied this room in their house, he had taken this suitcase out from under my bed and kept it on the top of the almirah to make more space for my own luggage.
I raised my neck a little bit to look at the textured fostered glass of my room’s window right above my head. It was white and bright, an indication that the clouds of the previous night had given way to the sun this morning.
I
tried to recollect what happened yesterday.
I wanted to reach home early last night (it was a Friday) and wanted to
write a new article for mool-dhara. I had thought of something - "What if India
was never divided at the time of Independence?"
It was raining heavily in Chennai last night while I was leaving the
office, an unusual setting for this time of the year. Hoping that the rain
would drowse down in a while, I continued to stay in office even after the
regular working hours. I planned to utilise my time by doing research for my
article. I came to know many things that I never known before. Like the history
of Mahindra & Mahindra, which was initially steel trading company started
by K.C. Mahindra and J.C. Mahindra in partnership with their friend Malik
Ghulam Mohammed who later moved to Pakistan during partition.
There were a lot of articles on the cotton
industry in erstwhile Punjab and how it flourished in its heyday courtesy to
the Grand Trunk Road that offered the traders a free passage from Chittagong,
now in Bangladesh to Kabul now in Afghanistan via Kolkata, Varanasi, Delhi in
India and Lahore and Peshawar in Pakistan. I had even read articles on the
leadership tussle between Nehru and Jinnah too.
I remembered I was so engrossed and astounded
by my historical discoveries that I didn’t realise that it was already midnight. My curiosity had multiplied with every new article. The layers of
history were uncovering before me and I wanted to dig deeper and deeper.
The rain hadn't stopped yet and I knew I won’t get any public transport as
well. I will have to walk three kilometres distance from my office to home on
foot. I found a poly-bag lying on the table of my colleague’s desk. I safely wrapped
my phone inside it and started walking back home. I reached home completely
drenched. I remember I reached at 1 AM.
As I washed my face after cleaning my teeth, the scenes from the dream of last night flashed before me. What a dream it
was!! It had put all the pieces of information that I collected during my research at the right places and given me an apt story
to write. I had the perfect plot and all the information to begin
writing my next article for mool-dhara. I had all the information but one.
Who was that defiant patriot, the Eklavya, whom Gandhiji chose in my
dream over his favourite Nehru?
None of the articles on net could confirm me about his real identity. Perhaps I would have to reopen history books to find that out. I wasn't in a hurry because the second part can wait. For now I had the first part and I decided to give it the title “The dream that wasn't”.
I started writing.
* * * * * * *
