The Dream That Wasn't

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. I would have stayed more if it was not for the watchman who wanted to lock the office.

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.

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