Beyond Borders

26th November 2008, I don't think any Indian can forget the Mumbai attacks. I cannot. I was not in India. I was doing my MBA in Dubai. It was a US based Business school and had students from all over the world. More than 30 nations were represented in the school. I was having lunch in the cafeteria alongwith 2 other colleagues of mine, when the screen in front of us went live with the news of the Mumbai attacks.The channels continuously flashed news which mentioned Pakistani terrorists. It would have been a normal outburst at the lunch, but this lunch was special. I was eating with a Pakistani student and an Indian student. My Indian friend immediately got off and started to dial his family back in Mumbai and as he spoke he gave some sort of hatred looks to this Pakistani student. My Indian friend then left the place. I and my Pakistani friend sat there in silence listening to the news. He didn't know what to say or where to start and neither did I. He looked at me after some time and said, I am sorry yaar, I don't know who is doing this or why, but I can tell you there are innumerable people in my country who do not want all this. I got up and hugged him and asked him to relax. I was angry, very angry that my country was under attack, but I was not angry with my Pakistani friend. Why should I be? I thought. Neither did he advocate such thoughts and nor did he disrespect my country in any way. He still remains my friend. He is in Pakistan and works for a bank.
Sometime last month we went to a restaurant. I stood at the counter to order my food and the attendant did not understand English. So I started speaking in whatever Swedish I knew, and then the guy suddenly asked me, which county do you come from? In Hindi. I promptly replied India. Then we started conversing in Hindi. He took down my order and I asked him, where he came from. He looked at me and asked will you still stand here and talk to me if I told you which country I came from. I said Ofcourse I would!!. He then said he came from Afghanistan. I told him I was pleased to meet him. He then narrated to me how he would hide his identity from people who came there. Sometimes he said he was from Dubai or other Middle Eastern country and sometimes he simply said he was from India. He gave me an extra bottle of drinking water and made a very special salad for me. When I left he told me it was a pleasure that he was able to speak in Hindi.
We leave our own countries and move to other places to work and study. This is a sign of progress and human growth. For ages mankind has been on a move, on a lookout for greener pastures. So when we come to lands other than our forefathers and we meet people from other lands as well, there is so much emotional high. You see them you talk to them, you feel like one. Religion, borders and politics doesn't seem to matter then. In both the above incidents I was fine talking to these guys and so were they. It makes me think, why is our vision so limited? Why is it that our vision is limited to the borders? There is a line and we are not able to see beyond it. Why? Because if we did, I think we would see something more than what we often made to believe. We would see similar emotions and feelings like ours. When in some other country the borders do not matter, then why does it so much matter when we are in our own land? Borders were created to stop encroachment of land, to have a clear demarcation of territory, but what it actually has done is, it has encroached our hearts. Borders have fenced our feelings with guns and spades.
Only if we could raise these fences to ground, we could see what exists beyond borders is Reality, reality that you and me could see and feel, unlike someone else giving us the details. Someday I wish we all are able to walk past these borders with arms stretched and open with love without a sense of doubt or fear. I pray may it be that beyond borders our eyes see. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal. I love this statement and I really hope it starts with looking and stretching our vision and sight Beyond Borders!!!