At Riyadh Airport

Few days back, I was waiting for my turn in check-in line of Jet Airways at Riyadh Airport. Incidentally, Pakistan International Airline’s (PIA) counter was at the left hand side and British Airways’s counter was at the right hand side of me. Timings of Peshawar, Mumbai, and London flights were at similar time and hence check-in of all these three flights was going on simultaneously. As usual Jet Airway had some technical problems in check-in and I was standing at the same location for almost 1 hrs. What do you do for one hour standing in line? Observe the crowd!!

PIA’s check-in lines were moving very fast.  All the passengers were in typical Pathani white attire. Majority of them were over 6 FT tall and very good build. Everyone had typical Pathani beard. People in my line were looking like they were facing acute malnutrition. There was not a single woman in the entire crowd! Everyone was carrying lot of luggage, no suitcase, luggage were tied with nylon rope.  Almost everyone was carrying 20 L water bottle wrapped in plastic bag. I was surprised to see that. Come on all these guys are going out of desert and not going to desert!! I was very curious about those water bottles and started observing keenly. Then, I observed that “Zam-Zam” was written on it. There was a picture of Mecca mosque on some of the bottles. I thought there must some connection between Mecca and these water bottles. Subsequently, I confirmed from Wikipedia that the water from holy mosque is called Zam-Zam and has very interesting story about it in full of desert!! I felt very embarrassed about myself and felt that how little I know about other religion.

Incidentally, cabby who dropped me at the airport was also a Pathan and was from nearby Peshawar. I tried communicating with him while coming to the airport. He was very simple, innocent, humble and under educated person (Nowadays, I am afraid of calling someone illiterate as day by day I am realizing that education and literacy do not have any relationship). There was no trace of traditional hatred of India and Pakistan. After some conversation, I asked him in which language you are talking to me? He immediately replied me “in Urdu”. Then I asked him, what do think, in which language I am talking to you? He was little confused with my question and didn’t answer. I told him “in Hindi”.  Then, I asked him do you see any difference in these two languages?  He said that they watch so many Hindi movies so they understand all the Hindi words. Then I asked him “What is your mother tongue?” He replied, “Pashtun”. He added, he speaks in Pashtun with family members and in Peshawar and can speak in Urdu as it is their National Language. Then I asked him which part of Pakistan speak Urdu as their mother tongue. He was completely surprised with my question and started murmuring Sindh speak Sindhi, Punjab speak Punjabi, their region speaks Pashtun. As an innocent person, he started wondering why is Urdu their National Language? Then I asked him one more question. Do you know where did Urdu born as a language? He was completely speechless. I thought let me not answer him these questions and got down from taxi as we were already at the airport.

My conversion with cabby few minutes back and looking at those 500 odd Pathans , 2000 years of history of Indian subcontinent ran through my mind in a flash. I remembered Taxshila University, I remembered Chanakya and  Chandragupt Maurya, I remembered defeat of Alexander, I remembered republic of Malav and Shudrak, I remembered Vir Savarkar’s book named “6 Golden Pages of Indian History”. I remembered Savarkar’s theory of “Sadgun Vikruti” (virtuous perversity), remembered the perversities like Sindhu Bandi (Social prohibition if someone crosses Sindhu River), Shuddhi Bandi (Social prohibition to return to Hinduism, if someone converts to any other religion). If these perversities would have not been prevalent in Hinduism, today all those Pathans would have been called White Hindus under Hindu Kush Mountain. Then, I remembered one more theory of Savarkar; religious conversion leads to partition of nation. If our ancestors would have been wise enough and not allowed religious conversion or taken efforts to bring back our brothers to Hinduism, today we would have seen Undivided Bharat! Just imagine if these Pathans were to be part of Indian Military; who could defeat this country in the world!! Just imagine if they were to be part of our Cricket or Football Team; where would have been our nation in the sports today!! But then I suddenly came back to present and felt very embarrassed because it is easy to blame our ancestors but what are we doing today!!!!