Fayes T Kantawala crossed the W agah border to inquire after the age of his soul



In what turned out to be an investigation of what a region without militarized borders would feel like, I crossed the Wagah border on foot and spent a night in India last week. Isn't that marvelous? The idea of spending a night in India feels wildly subversive, like going to North Korea for Dim Sum. Lahore is closer to India than it is to any other major city in Pakistan, and it always struck me as terribly sad that we live so close and yet so far away from so many Haldiraam stores.

My parents were in India for a wedding, and were due to be in Amritsar for a bit on the tail end of their journey. When they suggested I cross the border in the morning and join them for an afternoon of astrology and thaalis before heading home the next day, I couldn't resist. I'd been to the Wagah border before to see the changing of the guards (love the fan kicks) or to fetch a friend, but I had never gone through the scary-looking immigration terminal or crossed that ominous-looking gate. Now I arrived at Wagah on a crisp Saturday morning to find I was the only traveller. After showing my visa and passport at the shiny new immigration terminal, I walked about 100 paces to the next security checkpoint.

The guard gave me a smile and a stamp and directed me to the gate to his left. I had barely walked three steps when an Indian soldier jumped out of nowhere and asked for my papers.

"That's it?" I asked, looking back and spotting the absurdly symbolic thin white line I hadn't even noticed. "That's the border?"

"Yes, just that line," the guard said with a smile. "Welcome to India."

This was so cool. Facing me was a giant gate repeating the earlier phrase under a huge portrait of Gandhi. I turned around and saw Pakistan had a replica with a portrait of Jinnah. But it's so close,was all I could think to myself. A bus was waiting for me at the other side to drive me to the Indian customs terminal, which looks like an expensive airport (by comparison, our own looks like a bus station that believes itself to be chic). Again, there was no other passenger and so I found I had the undivided attention of the entirety of Indian border patrol (yay for me). They were kind, if a bit curious. I don't think that many people cross over for a day, and even fewer ever admit to it. 20 minutes after arriving at Wagah, I was now in India, barely 30 miles from my own house in Lahore. My parents picked me up, and once we'd made a quick pit stop for kaathi rolls ( parathas -meet-wraps) it was on to Hoshiarpur and the Bhrigu Shastra.

Let me explain. The Bhrigu Shastra is an astrological reading done at certain sites in Hoshiarpur, about a 3-hour drive from Amritsar. Legend has it that a kindly sage put down predictions for all those poor souls who have to deal with life in the future, and ambitiously decided to leave a record for everyone who would visit in the future. They claim an ancient lineage, and have an archive of patras (from the sankrit patr, incidentally intact in current Punjabi, meaning 'tree of life'), which are detailed predictions specific to one person. You tell the astrologers at the Bhrigu Shastra your birthdate, time of birth, and which day you'll be coming, and they comb through their exhaustive, ancient and now digitized archive to find your personal scroll. The reading of the scroll, many of them centuries old, can take up to three hours. The day you arrive is mentioned on your scroll, so it has to be in your "fate" to see it that day. It's all very mysterious and celestial.

On the drive over I was glued to the window, watching a parallel dimension of Pakistani Punjab whisk by: the same eucalyptus trees, the same deep yellow fields of mustard and wheat, the same dusty grey sky. And yet all so very, very different. Road signs and shop adverts were in Hindi, little pictures of Krishna and Guru Nanak would peek out from behind pharmacy shop windows, women wore jeans and saris and drove around on Vespa's (even in thick, congested I'm-gonna-kill-someone-soon traffic) with no big fuss; and there were Sikhs everywhere. Curiously, water tanks in Amritsar are shaped to look like lions or giant birds, which is a nice touch.

Thanks to some white-knuckle driving, we arrived in Hoshiarpur within a few hours. It's a small town and takes about five minutes to drive through. I imagined the place where the Bhrigu Shastra were done to look like something out of the Lion King: old saffron-robed ancients bent double under a massive banyan tree as they communed with nature and the spirits of the future. In reality, it looked like a house in Model town. The guru met us at the gate, an imposing, tall Punjabi man in his late 30s dressed in white with a clipped beard and fabulous hair that cascaded down to his waist. He really looked the part.

We waited around for two hours while they tried to pull out my horoscope. By late afternoon, it seemed unlikely they would find it, so we drove back to Amritsar empty-handed. I was put out because I wanted to find out what I was in my past lives. The only thing I was told was that I am an "old soul", one that is on its last incarnation and shan't be coming back for no more, which was mildly depressing but does explain my chronic cynicism. My Indian friends tell me that I should celebrate since I have achieved what the Hindus called Moksha, or salvation, and am now free of the cycle of repetitive birth.

Hotels were all booked up in Amritsar, so we stayed in a place where I think prostitutes were killed recently. I tried not to touch anything. The next morning we had some hours to kill (pun, pun) before crossing the border again, so I went to the Golden Temple, holy of holies for Sikhs. It's very beautiful (the same can't be said for Amritsar generally, which is ambitiously unattractive in parts) and also very moist, given all the bathing in the great pool. The whole way into the temple, I wasn't scanned for explosives or searched once. Living like we do now in Pakistan, it's a shock when you are reminded that not everyone is under an abstract, free-floating death threat. For your own sanity, you should remind yourself of that regularly.

I crossed the border at noon, and made it back into Pakistan in 15 minutes. On the way there were hundreds of trucks laden with goods waiting for the trade gate to open. Coincidentally, as I approached the white line, I saw an Indian acquaintance crossing the other direction into India. We hugged and air-kissed and for a brief moment made a tableau of world peace. Then both sides asked us for our papers and the daydream came to an end.

The Friday Times
April 12-18, 2013