My Indian Phuppa Jaan

My Phuppa Jaan, Naseemuddin Ahmad Qureshi, passed away in Aligarh last month. He was a gentle soul who shared many wonderful stories with us during his visits to Pakistan. He was my father’s first cousin who had married my father’s older sister Araish Khatoon, my Phuphi Jaan. They all grew up together in India till my grandfather decided to move his family to Pakistan after Partition. Phuppa Jaan’s family stayed in India, except for one of his sisters who moved with her husband to Pakistan. Thus the family was divided on either side of the border.

They kept in touch and visited each other every two or three years or so. But political tensions between the two countries led to years it would be next to impossible to get a visa for the other side. And so, he could not be there when his sister in Pakistan passed away in 1978. None of her bereaved siblings in India was able to make the trip. “It was really hard on them,” recalls my Indian cousin Fauzia Khan.

My father visited him in India in 1960. In those days, “It was easy to get the visa in those days, you could get it in Karachi,” said my father comparing this to the visit he later made in 1998 with my mother, when they had to go to Islamabad for the visa.

My father and Phuppa Jaan regularly wrote letters to each other and growing up we would often hear about this correspondence. I remember the excitement we all felt when we got a letter from him every couple of months. His witticisms made everyone smile and would elicit a chuckle from my father. A special thing about his letters was that he always had a message for all the youngsters.

With time the letters were replaced by telephone calls. Making those calls was not easy either. I remember having to book the call, which would be limited to the number of minutes the caller asked for. Then would come the waiting by the phone, sometimes for hours, until the operator ran back with the connection. I am sure the process was as tedious from the other side. Reflecting on the past I acknowledge the efforts that the family made to keep in touch. It is sad to think how they yearned for each other but couldn’t meet very often.

My Phuppi Jaan was the only one of her siblings left in India. Phuppa Jaan and Phuppi Jaan travelled to Pakistan quite often till the 1960’s to visit my grandmother who, being sick, was unable to travel. My father remembers those visits with great fondness. “Naseem Bhai always made the effort to bring Apa to visit Amma,” he said.

There was a long gap after that, and I first got to spend a lot of time with Phuppa Jaan and Phupphi Jaan as a young adult, in 1989, when I was about 19. They were able to visit Pakistan for a family wedding. It was those encounters that left indelible memories for me. Phuppa Jaan generously shared his life stories with us. An Inspector of Schools, he loved children and made sure to spend time with all of us youngsters as well as with his contemporaries.

He regaled us with stories from his past. Watching him and my father share stories from their childhood and listening to the adventures of his hunting expeditions we could experience the thrill, the fear and the joy of the hunt. He brought to life for us the forests in India that he visited and the village he grew up in.

More than just sharing his past Phuppa Jaan made India an interesting place for me. His stories of the Hindus and Muslims living together in harmony and sharing each other’s joys and sorrows, celebrating different festivals together and being a part of each other’s lives created a very different image of India than the one we had grown up hearing about in the news and through textbooks in Pakistan.

In Phuppa Jaan’s India, people respected each other’s beliefs and co-existed in peace. I remember thinking, “Indians can’t be all that bad, after all he is Indian too”. Listening to him talk, I wanted to visit India.

He told us that people on the other side didn’t hate us as projected on television. It was a power game that a few hate mongers were playing to hold on to their dominance. His India was a place of happiness, a land of generous people willing to welcome visitors from Pakistan. I resolved to visit India and then luckily I had a chance to do so that very year with my aunt.

It was by spending time with him and my aunt that I learned about the similarities we shared with people on the other side of the border. He made us realize that we are essentially the same people, with similar problems, who have been separated by a line drawn on a map. Both sides were battling the same demons of poverty, discrimination, access to health facilities and education to name a few.

The last time I saw Phuppa Jaan was nearly ten years ago in 1993 when he joined us in Karachi for another family wedding. We were all crushed when he and my aunt were refused a visa to come for my wedding in 1996.

Applying for the visa was always quite a process for them. They would have to go to Delhi for the purpose, and would pack beforehand so they could leave right away. But that time, Phupha Jaan called me on the phone saying that they had been all packed and ready to come as before, but were denied the visa. He gave me his blessings and love and expressed his sadness for being unable to join us.

I am glad that the governments of both countries are now starting to relax the visa conditions at least for the elder people of our countries. Divided families in both countries may now be spared much heartbreak.

My Indian Phuppa Jaan was an epitome of love and grace. He was our elder just like all the other uncles and aunts we grew up with in Pakistan. He shared the same passion for poetry and literature that they did. He offered us the same love and affection that they showered us with. He was an effective ambassador for India who relayed to us, the next generation, that we would find our neighbours to be people just like us should we manage to make the trip across the border. He was proud of his homeland, loved it with all his heart and conveyed that love to us, his Pakistani relatives.

He was a true symbol of Aman ki Asha, who wished for people to be able to visit each other, discover the truth for themselves and dismantle the myths of “enemies across the border”. His legacy is to nurture the bonds of family and love on either side and a vision for peace and prosperity in our part of the world. May he rest in peace and may this dream be realised. Aman ki Asha!

The writer is an educator fromPakistan based in Sydney, Australia. Email: humahmar@yahoo.com

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Naseemuddin Ahmad Qureshi, Aligarh: Applying for the visa was always quite a process

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