The only time I met the late Om Puri was in 2004, when he came to participate in the Kara Film Festival in Karachi. That was his first visit to Pakistan. I was introduced to him at a dinner hosted by Sultana Siddiqi, chairperson of Hum TV, in honour of the visiting delegates at her spacious Bath Island residence.
“I was warned by people back home that it would not be safe for me to come here. Tell me where have you hidden the enemy?” he asked in chaste Urdu.
“Maloom hota hai aap se dar ke bhag gaya,” (It seems he ran away because he must have been scared of you) I quipped.
Om had a hearty laugh before he shook hands with someone else waiting for his turn to meet the Indian celebrity.
The brief meeting strengthened my feeling that lack of contact between Pakistanis and Indians within the subcontinent gives birth to misunderstandings. Outside South Asia, they make best of friends normally.
During my childhood, when I heard a lot of one-sided stories of Sikhs killing Muslims during Partition, I became mortally afraid of the bearded and turbaned community, until I met Khushwant Singh whose writings I admired. Our paths crossed in 1976, when he was editing the popular journal The Illustrated Weekly of India.
I was introduced to him by his assistant editor, Raju Bharatan, who was also my guru as far as his knowledge of film music was concerned. Khushwant greeted me with a loud and disarming Assalam-o-Alaikum, as he showed me a poster he had gotten designed in support of the release of Pakistani prisoners of war in 1972.
The lesson that I learnt was that one should greet people with their own customary salutations. I found Sardarjis particularly pleased whenever I greeted them with Sat Shri Akal.
Interestingly enough, the most hospitable hosts I met were the Delhi-based Pami Singh, a nephew of Khushwant, and his sister Geeta. Pami was, pleasantly enough, a far cry from the fierce image of Sikhs that had been created in my mind due to Partition stories.
I am happy to divulge that now I have a good number of Sikh friends.The youngest of them all is Aman Jaspal, a turban-less Sikh, who is married to a comely young lady from New Zealand.
Aman (whose name means peace) divides his time between Chandigarh and Attari. He runs Sarhad, a restaurant-cum-museum about a kilometre from the Wagah border.
On the way back home, some of those who attend the senseless flag-lowering ceremony on the Indian side, try either the vegetarian food served on what is known as Amritsar thali or the non-veg fare termed Lahore thali. They get to see a small museum that has architectural, culinary and cultural artefacts from pre-Partition Punjab and visit the souvenir store selling Pakistani ladies dresses.