Love Across Borders

LOVE, CONNECTIONS AND RELATIONSHIPS
ACROSS THE INDIA-PAKISTAN BORDER

Published by Indireads at Smashwords

Copyright Naheed Hassan and
Sabahat Muhammad 2013

ISBN:
978-1-927826-20-1

Cover Design by Sabahat
Muhammad

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STATEMENTS OF SUPPORT

It is wonderful to see an effort that harnesses
the power of words, stories and contemporary writings to create
positive change in society across two countries. Efforts like these
help us all create a better future, in which we learn to respect,
understand and empathize with each other. I wish the team well, and
I hope it succeeds in its mission.

Javed Akhtar
Poet and
scriptwriter

Today more than ever before, it is critical that
our two nations understand, listen, empathize and connect with ‘the
other’. We know that across the globe, young people are at the
forefront of driving real change; the appeal of initiatives like
Love Across Borders is that it draws in, and engages, young people
across the borders. I am confident that the project will play at
least a small role in helping us move towards our common objective
of a better tomorrow.

Shabana Azmi
Actor and social activist

The common experience of life across a
partitioned South Asia lies scattered throughout its literature. We
do not have enough platforms to present and celebrate these
writings, and Love Across Borders is a commendable effort to bring
the contemporary writings from the region together, and renew the
memories of a shared life and worldview.

Musharraf Ali Farooqi
Author of ‘Between Clay and Dust’

The border between India and Pakistan is sealed
tight against people. I grew up half an hour’s drive away, and I’ve
crossed it on days when I’ve only seen four or five other people at
immigration. But stories can travel more easily. They are reminders
that it isn’t the width of an ocean between us, or some
interstellar void, but rather a line so narrow that if it were
water, it would be less than a stream.

Mohsin Hamid
Author of ‘Moth Smoke’ and ‘The Reluctant
Fundamentalist’

Naysayers have long proclaimed that Pakistanis
and Indians have nothing in common but hostility towards each
other. They may wish this was so but it is not fact. Despite wars
and borders and a line of control, we still share expressions of
hope and fear, love and sorrow, music and poetry, melodrama and
cricket, and much more. Even die-hards will struggle to deny the
enduring commonality of our peoples after reading the stories in
this anthology.

Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy
Professor, nuclear physicist, essayist and
defense analyst

Romance is the beggar that appears at reality’s
door at unexpected hours. We must give it the gift of our
attention. For that reason, I welcome the publication of Love
Across Borders. The reality at the moment, as far as India and
Pakistan are concerned, is of intransigent borders and mutual
accusations of killings. In the stories in these pages, those
shouts are replaced by whispers. This, too, is welcome. Other
stories, other lives. The grave complications of living and loving.
We will all be happier if the borders are breached by trembling
souls.

Amitava Kumar
Author of ‘Husband of a Fanatic’

A wonderful set of perceptions, ideas, feelings,
showing the truth behind the headlines in South Asia. These stories
describe, above all, the power of love, of wonder, informed by the
past, but reaching for the future. Indeed, Love Across Borders
provides us a vision of that future, and it's a future governed by
the heart.

Ambassador Cameron Munter
Professor, International Relations, Pomona
College
Former US Ambassador to Pakistan

This is a heart-warming initiative that
resonates with the poignancy of cross-border relations. At the
human level, Love Across Borders distills the essence of the
emotionally charged India-Pakistan relationship; it also
delegitimatizes the otherization narrative so often manufactured by
the votaries of hate.

Ambassador Sherry Rehman
President and Chair, Jinnah Institute
Former Pakistani Ambassador to the US

ABOUT INDIREADS

Indireads aims to revolutionize the popular fiction
genre in South Asia. As a channel for South Asian writers to engage
readers at home and abroad, we showcase vibrant narratives that
describe the lives, constraints, hopes and aspirations of modern
South Asian men and women.

The books available on Indireads (
http://www.indreads.com
) are
exclusive to Indireads.

Indireads’ books are written and customized
for delivery in electronic format, and are only published
online.

CONTENTS

Foreword

As a newspaper publisher, I accept that words
are powerful tools that are used to understand, inform and debate.
Words effect change—they shift perceptions, opinions and mindsets.
For two nations existing side-by-side, but in virtual isolation
from each other, with a media that is focused largely on internal
audiences, there are limited opportunities for a new mechanism for
dialogue across the border. Differences are magnified and things
are often viewed through a lens of mistrust.

With modern digital media a new paradigm is
possible, as borders are rendered increasingly obsolete.
Technologies and social networks today make new connections
possible, with our own imaginations constituting the only barrier
to acceptance. Love Across Borders is an innovative initiative by
Indireads to harness the power of words and use fiction and
storytelling to open pathways of understanding between ordinary men
and women on both sides of the border.

This initiative serves a strategically critical
function. While governments, media and businesses in South Asia are
working—sometimes together and at other times with dissonance—to
open new pathways of dialogue and engagement, real change will
occur only when people begin to view, understand and relate to
people on the other side of the divide as human beings, with their
own emotions, fears and sensibilities. Love Across Borders is an
important step in reinforcing a foundation for better
understanding, relationships and connections enabling these two
major South Asian nations divided by a border to hopefully co-exist
and prosper side-by-side.

Hameed Haroon
CEO, The Dawn Media Group

Introduction

THE MOTIVATION

Born in the middle of bloodshed, Pakistan and
India have been uncomfortable neighbors for the past sixty-odd
years. Generations have come and gone but the hurt, anger and
acrimony of the past refuses to die down. Even today, most
narratives—fictional and non-fictional—about India and Pakistan
seem to revolve around the partition and subsequent wars between
the two countries.

Granted, such narratives are historically
important, but we need to move beyond them and into the present. We
are all aware of the huge costs—economic, military, social and
human—that our countries pay because of this strained relationship.
If this relationship is ever to improve, it will happen when people
begin to see each other as fully functioning human beings, invested
with emotions, feelings and sentiments.

Love Across Borders is a small step in that
direction. It is a collection of short stories, original works of
fiction by Indian and Pakistani writers that aim to create new
narratives about modern-day India and Pakistan; narratives of love,
friendship, connection and relationships between ordinary people.
We hope to celebrate the similarities between our nations, creating
common threads with which the seeds of peace can be sown. Several
of our stories are collaborations between writers from across the
border, proving that no task is impossible when the collective
energies of people across the divide are harnessed.

We welcome you to read through the selection of
stories we have curated for you, and let the spirit of love stay
with you long after you have put the book down.

Naheed Hassan and Sabahat Muhammad

That 70s Babe

MAMUN M. ADIL

I think I fell in love with her the first time I
saw her. And that doesn’t happen to me too often, let me tell you.
But there was something about her—that lilting voice, those
mischievous eyes and that dazzling smile—that made me fall in love
with her immediately.

Of course, there were many people who ran her
down—namely, my best friends. As we sat in one of the many cafés in
Saddar that Karachi could boast of back in the 70s, they would say
things like “She’s too thin!” (You know what
desi
men are
like, they like their women buxom), that she couldn’t speak Urdu
properly, especially for a Muslim girl, and that she tried very
hard to be like someone else we knew.

But my love was true and my babe and I would
spend many evenings together. Sometimes she’d run on the beach
wearing a swimsuit, publicly. Yes, she was daring all right. And
she’d smoke. It was a habit I hated; I was always worried about her
health. But she didn’t care. She loved shocking people.

Sometimes she would wear tight jumpsuits and
dance the night away. She even openly slept with other men, right
in front of my eyes, sharing an after-sex cigarette with one of
them. And yet I forgave her. Because I knew that this was just a
passing phase. This was just rebellion. It was the 70s after all,
and the flower power of the 60s had come to India a decade
later.

I also knew her better than she did. I came to
realize that she was traditional in some ways. She, like most
desi
women, wanted a man to cook for, to clean for, to take
care of. I could almost hear her saying in that seductive voice of
hers, “This is the way it should be—women should watch their men
eat the meal that they have cooked for them.”