Does it really matter, which side?

"Where you going?", he turned around and asked me. He was fair, clean shaven, with black hair, and was wearing dark shades. He was particularly interested in the update on the Italy - Ukraine match on the radio. From his accent and look, it was easy to guess that he was either Italian or Punjabi, and that he hadn't stayed that long here. Ten minutes into the ride, his phone started ringing, and he answered, "Abhi customer ke saath hoon, aadhe ghante ke baad milana."

Now, there are very few people of Italian descent who might have said that in a Punjabi accent (Sonia Gandhi's accent is not Punjabi). So, after concluding he was from the Punjab region, the only question was which side of the border was he from. I asked him where he was from.

"Lahore, Pakistan", came the reply. "Aap kahaan ke hai, sir?"
"Dilli."
"Lahore - Dilli to sirf teen ghante ki drive hai."

Well, not exactly three hours, except if both were in America, where 'a mile, a minute' is the norm. But I chose not to tell him, lest he thought I intended to ridicule his seemingly inept knowledge of Indo-Pak geography.

"Raat mein Amritsar ki lightein dikhti hai." He seemed to want to correct his faux pas. His phone rang again. This one was just about a minute long, but long enough for him to change the topic.

"Derh saal se yahaan reh raha hoon. Par dil nahin lagta yahaan. Do dafaa vaapas bhi jaa chuka hoon."

"Cricket ko follow karte ho?" He asked me. Ensue twenty minutes of discussion on next year's World Cup, and India's and Pakistan's chances in it. England sucks, we both concluded, and that they'll be whipped in the Ashes later this year. He was quite a well-informed guy, I must concede.

The conversation set me thinking when I got back home. I could tell he was a Pakistani only when he told me he was from there. He could well have been from Delhi, or any place in North India.

I'm sure Indians and Pakistanis don't hate each other. It's just these politicians that aggravate things, and incite feelings of hatred to stay in power. And both sides have made mistakes in the past, so don't go by your NCERT history textbooks. Even Bollywood movies which involve Pakistan show war. Can't filmmakers also show movies that make us realise how alike we are? We're essentially the same people. At the end of it all, does it really matter which Punjab he was from?

Now, I'm not saying India and Pakistan should unite and become one right away. Maybe the damage has been done and it's too late. But East and West Germany reunited, and so did North and South Vietnam. But those reunions were different. Their people were separated only because they happened to live in a particular part of their country. This is a little more complicated. Maybe there is still a way. So many problems (like Kashmir, and PoWs) might be solved or be made progress on. But some new problems could also arise.

I'm not requesting you to start making up lyrics for some "Badalaav ki hawa" song. (India's and Pakistan's answer to East and West Germany's Wind of Change) But what you can do, however, is insert the following line suitably in John Lennon's Imagine.

Imagine the cricket team that we'll make.