In the US, I met my enemies. And we became friends

As India and Pakistan mark their respective Independence Days, it occurred to me, yet again, that one of the many wonderful experiences in the US has been meeting people from India’s “enemies”—Pakistan and China—and becoming their friends.

As a kid, I was convinced by news reports that Pakistan and China were sworn enemies.  After all, by then India had fought a total of four wars with them.  One of the wars, in 1971 when I was barely seven years old, resulted in Bangladesh becoming an independent country, instead of its previous status as East Pakistan.  During this war, there were nights when we were required to shut off all lights and maintain darkness—even though our small town was hundreds of miles from the battlefront itself. 

Thus, it was no surprise that in schoolyard war games during the breaks between classes, many of us boys delighted in pretending that we were in the Indian army fighting the good fight against the Pakistanis and Chinese.

As the wars wore down the countries, Pakistan and India decided to embark on “cricket diplomacy” which made possible for the teams from both the countries to play against each other.  It also coincided with the slow spread of television in India. 

I had just about stepped into the teenage years when for the first time I watched on live television one of those cricket matches while on a visit to the big city of Madras.  

The Pakistani players were nothing like what I had imagined and, in complete contrast, looked and behaved pretty much like the Indian players.  I could not figure out how they could be so much like most of the Indians and yet be the enemy.  And, yes, they played a wonderful game, too, which made it all the more difficult not to applaud them!

That cricket match on live television alone completely demolished the simplistic formula that Pakistan equaled enemy. 

A few years later, a Pakistani was one of the first students I met as a new graduate student in Los Angeles.  Like me, Siddiqui was also a first year graduate student, but in engineering.  As we started talking, I realized that he was no different from me in many ways.  There was no doubt that my elementary school buddies and I had seriously erred when we caricatured Pakistanis, and fired imaginary bullets in Siddiqui’s direction.

It was a similar story with students from China.  Rongsheng routinely brought me Chinese snacks that either he had picked up from the stores or his wife had made.  Tibet and the Dalai Lama were the only real issues over which we could not agree.  But, friends we remained, even as we progressed from being students to fellow interns at a planning agency in Los Angeles. 

India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, used a rhetorical phrase of “Hindi-Chini bhai bhai” that means Indians and Chinese are brothers.  However, it took coming half way around the planet for me to quite easily realize that idealism of brotherhood among neighbors. 

Over the years since, I have lost contact with the Siddiquis and Rongshengs from graduate school.  There is a good chance that I would never have met such “neighbors” had I not emigrated from India.  And what a terrible loss that would have been!

Of course, territorial disputes among between these countries persist.  All is not well in the land of call centers that we imagine India to be.  The simmering discontent in the disputed Kashmir flares up periodically, which is the current state of affairs up there in the Himalayas.  On India’s eastern front, which neighbors China, most of the area is off-limits to foreigners because of geopolitical tensions, some of which are internal and others are related to China.  It is quite an irony that I would need a special clearance from the Indian government if I decide to visit those scenic areas—because of the American passport that I carry. 

As we mark the 65th birthdays of India and Pakstan, here is to hoping kids in these countries will not grow up thinking of their neighbors as enemies, and that the younger versions of Srirams and Siddiquis and Rongshengs will become very good friends.