This was a piece I had done on request of my school newspaper’s editor for our Independence Day Issue that went beyond the borders, not only of the country but of time as well.

Ms. Shazia Singh, leant heavily upon her walking stick, her daughter under her arm as she stumbled over the threshold of the old home. It was her mothers death anniversary in 8 days. She was returning to clean up the last of her possesions. 11 years had passed since her death in 2036 at the ripe age of 94. She was now 65, and she missed her mother dearly. She shuffled through the photographs and old documents silently, while her daughter, Harlene, dusted the windows lightly with a cloth and opened up the drapes. Her hand falling upon a withered yellow paper, blank ink staining it. She opened it delicately reading the familiar handwriting that she had read so many times before.

14th August 2029 New Delhi, India

Dearest Farah,

It has been a long time since we last spoke and I miss hearing the amusing anecdotes and stories that you tell me about your life back in Karachi. I miss hearing the laugh that you bring to my lips and the smile that you stretch across my face, it is perhaps the uniqueness brought about by the relationship of two sisters.

I am writing to you today because a strange reminiscence has settled upon me. Like a thick fog sitting upon my shoulders, thickening in front of my eyes, I am feeling nostalgic. I don’t know whether it is because I am writing to you upon the brink of a new day of importance to me or because it is a day of importance to you, which is now ending. I am writing to you on the brink of independence. You sit in Karachi and I sit here in Delhi, and how I miss you my darling sister. I am an old maid now, 88 years of age and you are 85, I haven’t seen your face in 82 years and the memory of your three year old face has vanished from my memory. We do not share the relationship that most siblings share. You with our mother and I with our father, separated at childhood and never reunited. Our rela- tionship has been forged upon phone static and bad signal. We have lost each other to a broken sisterhood of two countries, too scarred to move away from our own comfortable settlements and I am saddened by the fact that I know your wrinkled smiling face only through the black and white of pictures.

This is unlike most of my rather formal letters to you because today I had a startling realization. It was brought about by a line of skipping school children outside the bungalow in the narrow galli, making faces at the wrinkled darzi and mustached paani-puri seller. They were singing patriotic songs, and I wondered why they would sing on the 14th of August instead of the 15th. So I draped my shawl around my head and slipped on some chappals before hurrying behind the wavering line of noisy children. When they finally stopped, I was panting with the exertion, for as much as I may boast of my still slender body and strong bones I am quite unfit. So I walked, bent over, breath catching in my throat and asked their teacher why the children were singing these nationalistic songs on this day instead of the next, the actual day of Indian independence. She gave me a warm smile and beckoned over a little girl to answer my question.

Now to add to the drama of my letter, I would say that this girl shared the face of your three year old self, toothy and pale, but I would not know for I do not remember your face except in flashes. It is the curse that old age brings. She had a head full of thick air, lovely dark skin and a full set of teeth. And her answer startled me. It is hard for me to explain her words so I shall quote whatever I remember.

‘Madam ji! Hum aaj aazaadi ke gaane isliye ga rahe hai kyunki aaj India kee behen Pakistan ka indeependens hua! They are also our seester no madam ji!? Aur Bharat kaise behen hogi eef she does not sing for her seester’

I bought that whole group of children ice cream. The chaos of a partition has separated us both from each other. We Indians consider you to be another world altogether, yet we are forgetting that the same mother gave birth to your nation as she did to our India. A sisterhood separated in their childhood giving rise to a chaos that clouded or senses. Just like you and me. We behave not like sisters should but like distant relatives. Separated at childhood. We are a sisterhood torn asunder much like our own two nations. It is but our folly to treat you as though you are a distant world not worth our time, patience or respect. I remember loving the cities in Pakistan, running around as a young child of 6 in the crowded streets not too different from Delhi. We were wrongly torn apart, the same way you and I have been snatched away from each other. A wall has been put up between us and our nations. A border.

We are a sisterhood torn asunder much like our own two nations.

Still they fight. It has improved greatly since fifteen years ago. Yet still they spit at each other. Hindus and Muslims, the many exchange programs and Kashmir campaigns going futile with a few dirty words and stares. I so hope that one day, I will get to see this rift being stitched back together. One day soon before the breath ebbs from my body and my eyes are unable to see anymore.

And so in hopes of that dream, today I too sang patriotic songs and donned a white and green kaftan. The way we sing on the birthday of our loved one to convey our respects and our love, I will sing both today and tomorrow. I will sing border anthems to show my love to my nations sister torn away from her in her childhood. I sing these anthems to strengthen a sisterhood that I could never experience, this anthem if sung in unity could forge a relationship so strong nothing could ever break it. I will sing in remembrance to our relationship. On the brink of independence I sing for you and your nation and me and mine.

Love Always,

Yasmin Aapa

Shazia controlled tears. She wondered why, her mother had never sent the letter to Farah Khaala. And she smiled, in times of crisis and the current plebiscite, she could see the end of the turmoil her mother and aunt had lived with all their life. The scars of partition constantly being opened with the knives of religion and the strife in Kashmir. She was envisioning it end, and she smiled knowing that her mother and aunt would be reunited far above somewhere in the world in 2047, a hundred years since they had last seen each other. Holding hands cradled by the joint contentment and peace of two sister nations…