The Breeze IS in Lahore

One day – quite unexpectedly, a refreshing and cool breeze from the city of cities – Lahore (or so I thought) came our way thousands of miles away from the sub-continent.

Through the thick and thin of the sub-continent’s politics, bomb blasts, accusations, rhetoric and anger, somehow our collaboration, respect and friendship keeps growing.  I am certainly not the best practitioner of the art (as much as Rubab is), but the world does need people who can accept each other’s prejudices – even expressed with passion and conviction – and yet accept that it is their right!  THAT is not easy.  The prejudices have a strange way of creating rifts and hatred.  Often our minds become slaves of our prejudices and we lose reason even when we can see its utmost and critical importance.

When I first wrote that post when Rubab had visited us, she had argued that she was from Gujranwala and not Lahore.  Being a pseudo-Lahoriya (both my parents came from Lahore – although I wouldn’t be able to point its location on the map properly!), I couldn’t find the difference!  Gujaranwala is about 150 km from Lahore.  After all, I have heard even those from Faridabad say they are from Delhi and there was a time when Gurgaon was a separate city but its all one big Delhi (or National Capital Region – NCR – now).  So, I had smilingly remarked – same difference.

World is strange and its ways are even stranger.   Well, a few weeks back, Rubab actually moved lock, stock and barrel with her family to Lahore.  And told me “The Breeze is finally in Lahore”… maybe I wanted her to be from Lahore so much that within a year of my characterization, the breeze changed her direction.

There are many good bloggers on all the sides of conflicts who need to come together and collaborate.  It is not necessary to artificially seem “good” by suppressing your prejudices, but acknowledge those of others and accept them.  That you disagree (even passionately) does not mean that you cannot be friends.  The worst nightmares of our own minds are somewhere deeply embedded in our own thoughts.

Let us have the courage to take on our ownselves a bit more so we can be have a functional humanity.