As I walked over the narrow strip of No Man’s Land that separates India from Pakistan at the Attari Wagah border in Punjab, a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi just behind me, a portrait of Mohammad Ali Jinnah right in front me; I thought of the acutely surreal quality to reporting on the equation between India and Pakistan.
Indian Foreign Minister Jaishankar was to arrive in Islamabad for a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), making him the first external affairs minister to do so, in nearly nine years. Though he had made it clear that his visit was for a multilateral forum, it had generated huge curiosity because of the backdrop: relations between India and Pakistan remain broken.
In Lahore, I was scheduled to call on Pakistan’s 3-time former Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif at the office of Maryam Nawaz Sharif, his daughter and the first woman Chief Minister of Punjab. Formalities at the border crossing took longer than expected and I was already running an hour behind my appointment time. To make matters worse, no Indian phone can work on international roaming in Pakistani territory. Effectively, the moment you cross you enter a communication black hole. I borrowed the phone of a Pakistani rangers guard to find the driver of the local car we had hired. And then used his phone to try and place a call to the Sharif’s. As we raced to make it, our driver was hauled over by cops and challan-ed for speeding, adding hilarity to the urgency.
