The Other in the Mirror: Stories from India and Pakistan
Edited by Sehyr Mirza
Folio Books, Lahore
ISBN: 978-9697834471
209pp.

The great divide of 1947 left memories that continue to haunt millions of families in at least three countries of the Subcontinent: Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. A tremendous amount of literature was spawned during and after Partition and the intensity of the events of the time has continued to prompt more new writers to pen stories that present the human sense of belonging as a recurrent theme.

Sehyr Mirza, editor of The Other in the Mirror: Stories from India and Pakistan, is a creative writer, journalist and peace activist with impressive credentials and contributes regularly to leading national and international media outlets. She has done a marvellous job of compiling 21 deeply moving stories built on the events of Partition, by writers — both Pakistani and Indian — who have the openness to appreciate the goodness in people, no matter which belief system they ascribe to.

Much of The Other in the Mirror challenges the one-sided accounts peddled on both sides of the border, which justify the atrocities committed then and rationalise persisting violence against each other now. There is no dearth of people — be they Hindu, Muslim or Sikh — who blame the ‘other’ for the tragedies that unfolded during those eventful days and nights of 1947.

This collection, however, highlights the compassionate side of the individuals who helped one another, disregarding religious differences in favour of simple humanity. Sadly, even though 75 years have passed, the children and grandchildren of those that Partition displaced are unaware of the other side of the story.

A compilation of 21 deeply moving short stories built on the events of Partition, by Pakistani and Indian writers, challenges the one-sided accounts peddled on both sides of the border

The absence of peace in the region, enduring acrimony between Pakistan and India and certain ‘ideologies’ that shroud the truth must be countered by questioning state narratives in the two countries. Unless the younger generation learns to see through the ruse of established ideologies, any hope for peace will be minimal.

All storytellers in The Other in the Mirror are masters of their craft and deserve applause. Opening the collection is the inimitable poet and Bollywood lyricist Gulzar, a master at weaving the fabric of a tale. In Gulzar’s story ‘Crossing the Ravi’, we meet Darshan Singh, a young Sikh man caught in the midst of Partition riots.

Darshan’s father is dead, his mother is missing in the aftermath of their gurdwara’s destruction and his wife has given birth to twins just as they are attempting to cross the Ravi river. They are leaving behind their homeland and their memories that span generations. As they slowly chug away, huddled on the roof of a train, one of the newly born twins dies. The father, Darshan Singh, must throw the dead baby into the Ravi’s waters. But does he?

Another author in the collection, Dushyant, is also a lyricist and scriptwriter for Hindi cinema with a couple of short story collections and novels to his credit. One of those thinkers and writers who are prepared to raise their voice and call a spade a spade even at the cost of putting their own life and survival in danger, his longer dystopian tale is titled ‘Mind Your Language’. Set in the year 2040, it is about an India that has fallen to the level of passing laws that limit certain languages to certain religions.

If a Hindu speaks Urdu, or a Muslim talks in Hindi, it becomes a punishable crime. The premise seems unimaginable, but it is a scenario that may become a reality if India’s current government, run by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under the leadership of Narendra Modi and his coterie, remains in power for long. A society that the Subcontinent’s Congress party foresaw as secular and tolerant is now gradually sliding into an extremist abyss, glossed over by tall statues and economic growth.

Pakistan’s Mirza Hamid Baig has penned dozens of books, critical essays and research papers enlightening his readers. In ‘Lala Jaswant’s Haveli’ [Lala Jaswant’s Mansion] he takes us on a nostalgic trip to a Lahore that has otherwise changed so much after Partition.

Baig’s young Sikh visitor to the city is eager to see all that his Bapu [father] has told him about good old Lahore. The young man must fulfil his father’s wishes by visiting all the places Bapu used to frequent before his family was forced to flee to India. It is a story of longing and yearning for one’s birthplace that has lost its old charm, but the young visitor pretends to his father that everything is just as the now-elderly man remembers it.

One of the best tales in the collection is Pakistani writer Saeed Ahmed’s ‘A Snowful Desire’, about a boy mesmerised by a range of snow-capped mountains barely visible in the distance. Often, he forgets to eat as he spends hours gazing at them. His eyes turn red from the strain, but he doesn’t budge. He pesters his father to take him there and, finally, when his great desire to walk up the mountains seems to be coming true, they find the area barricaded by a barbed wire fence.

These are the mountains of India-held Jammu and Kashmir, and the fact that the boy’s father was born there is of no consequence when nations are divided and opposite nationalities must be kept firmly in their place.

Another story that has become one of my favourites is ‘The Ghost’, written by the book’s compiler, Mirza. A Hindu ghost and a Muslim ghost traumatise people on either side of the border. Charlatans and ghostbusters, claiming to have the skills to purge their land of the spirit belonging to the other faith, arrive to put a stop to the ghostly shenanigans, to no avail.

“As days turned into weeks and weeks into months, the accounts of ghostly presence reached adjoining villages and, from there, they spread deeper into smaller towns and several big cities. And that’s how, gradually, the fear of the ghost became larger than the ghost itself.” With this conclusion, Mirza beautifully sums up the trauma this region has been going through for three quarters of a century now.

Most stories in the collection are less than 10 pages long, but all have the potential to jolt the reader. There is ‘The Enemy’ by Asghar Wajahat, ‘Unsistered’ by Shahbano Bilgrami, ‘Boundary Line’ by Naeem Baig, ‘A Spy! A Spy!’ by Farrukh Nadeem, ‘Paper Boats’ by Atif Aleem, ‘Saathi’ [Companion] by Shazaf Fatima Haider, ‘Love During Armistice’ by Anirudh Kala and ‘New Directions’ by Uma Krishnaswami.

The Other in the Mirror speaks of the need for more such collections. Teachers of South Asian history and literature must take note of this book and use these stories as learning material to disabuse the younger generation from the falsehoods of officially sanctioned textbooks.

The reviewer is a bibliophile, columnist and educator. He tweets @NaazirMahmood and can be emailed at Mnazir1964@yahoo.co.uk

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, June 25th, 2023