An encounter at the Wagah Border

I stood in my own land and looked at the others’ from a distance. A line of soldiers and the weapons with the potential to single-handedly destroy the world separated us from them. Patriotism and pride lingered in the air as shouts of “Jai Hind” and “Pakistan Zindabad” competed to overshadow each other. I stopped chanting to catch my breath when I noticed the only silent woman amidst the cheering crowd.

I maneuvered my way to her. She was a small, frail woman in a modest cotton sari. Wisdom and age had formed folds on her forehead and her eyes scanned the place as if looking for something beyond the Indian border. I started to introduce myself but a loud drumroll overshadowed my voice. The soldiers stood still now. The marching had stopped and they were bringing down the flags that proudly embraced the wind. I caught her eyes following the decline of the flags. As the soldiers folded and exchanged their respective emblems of national identity she finally closed her eyes and her already wrinkled face scrunched up a little more. I think that was a hint of a smile. She whispered a quick Sikh phrase that I recognized as a prayer. I had been so consumed by this stranger that I missed the part where the chanting stopped and I found myself getting overwhelmed by the deafening silence. Before I could introduce myself, she turned to me, skipped the disliked convention of small talk that our generation has imposed upon the world, and dove right into a personal monologue. The partition had been harsh on her. Her brother went missing and she spent weeks at the border hoping for his return. He never did. That line had been drawn carelessly, ripping families apart and leaving behind a great deal of hostility. My voice decided to go on house arrest and words of condolence were far from my thoughts. Instead, I wondered why this line existed at all.

My mind wandered the fabrics of a borderless world but nowhere in that world did I find me. The nineteen year old with a lust to travel didn’t exist in that world. Without borders there was nothing to cross over and explore. Without borders there was no reason to chant and compete. It was a monotonous place that lacked the spirit of the real world. It made no sense. That day, at the Wagah border ceremony, the dichotomy of the borders in our world hit me all at once. The border destroyed her family, but it defined me. Lines are known to divide things. I think they do more than that. They diversify things.