The path breaking bus ride

 

 

I boarded the New Delhi-Lahore bus on October 4, 2006, on the Sada-e-Sarhad bus ride that started in 1999. I could have gone to Pakistan by air but I preferred the bus because I wanted to feel the irony and agony of partition. To cross the border physically and feel the no man's land symbolically was an awesome experience. No doubt, this bus service caters to those from the lower socio-economic strata of both sides and establishes people to people contact. We got to Attari at around 3 pm and we passed by a ruined mosque in a hamlet outside the town, just a few kilometres from the border. The thought of the tens of thousands of Hindus, Muslims, Dalits and Sikhs who must have waded through rivers of blood and passed by the mosque in 1947 on their way to the newly-created states of India and Pakistan swirled in my mind, and filled my heart with pain and sorrow. (1999)

Yoginder Sikand, specialist author on Islamic issues