by VINAY LAL
Driving Directiosns from Amritsar (India) to Lahore (Pakistan), a distance of 53 kilometres IMAGE/Google Maps
India and Pakistan are so close and yet so far apart. One is tempted into saying that no two countries are so similar, and yet the two countries have gone to war, and have been nearly lured into war, on several occasions. The distance from Amritsar to Lahore, the two greatest cities of the undivided Punjab, is a mere 53 kilometres. A super-fast train, of the kind found in Japan, China, and in most of western Europe, would have traversed this distance in 10 minutes. However, approaching the border from either end, travelers must navigate the shoals and eddies of the modern nation-state system at Wagah. On the Indian side, the last station is Attari; from here, it is a mere 3 kilometres to Wagah; and, in between, one might say, is “no man’s land”, where the “formalities” that are necessary at border crossings are transacted.
The distance from Wagah to Lahore is 29 kilometres, and a tad less is the distance from Wagah to Amritsar. But this is one crossing that is not meant to be navigated at will, and certainly not in a vehicle of one’s choosing. One might cross on foot, provided one had a visa; more commonly, the crossing is attempted on the Samjhauta [Agreement] Express, as the train that ferries Pakistanis and Indians across the border is optimistically if not gallantly named. But supposing one was looking to take a journey from Amritsar to Lahore in one’s own car, as one might from, say, Seattle (Washington State, USA) to Vancouver (British Columbia, Canada). Google Maps tells me that on Interstate 5, I can cover the distance of 147 miles in less than 3 hours. However, when I put in Amritsar and Lahore into Google Maps and sought directions, I was advised, as would anyone else who cared to undertake such an exercise, that the distance between the two cities by car is 5,385 kilometres and would ordinarily be covered in 110 hours! If, like most drivers from South Asia, one cannot be even remotely bothered by posted speed limits, one might perhaps knock off a few hours, though I suspect that the continuous transgression of such limits, in certain parts of Tibet or the PRC, may pose some hazards. Why, however, mention Tibet at all? The stated route takes one not due west, but rather south to New Delhi (as if in tacit acknowledgement of the fact that no such trip would be possible without the mandarins that staff the corridors of power at the Secretariat), and from there southeast to Uttar Pradesh and thence to Nepal, and then west and largely north through Tibet and China to just east of the eastern border of Tajikistan before one makes one’s descent through Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK, though, naturally, it is known as Azad Kashmir in Pakistan), Islamabad, and finally through Pakistan’s province of Punjab to Lahore. What else need one say about the impossible distance that intimacy often creates?
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