As someone who has worked on writing stories on the interconnectedness of the world for the last decade, now researching kinship in East and West Punjab through material cultures, I was immediately drawn to Pakistani-origin writer Shueyb Gandapur’s inspiration to travel the world, particularly ‘the other side’ - my home country, India, at the Khushwant Singh Festival held at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, in June 2025. 

I was also drawn to his quest for making connections through intergenerational knowledge and passed-on memory as he speaks about his grandfather’s trading business in pre-partitioned India and his fascination with oral stories and popular culture, which resonated with my personal story and connection to the ‘other side.

Later, over a coffee chat, I found many other similarities between us – creating art, collecting maps, photography, and seeking spiritual meanings in these explorations. This made me more curious about his perspective on a subject matter that’s close to my heart. 

VIDEO: Author Shueyb Gandapur (left) discussing his book Coming Back: The Odyssey of a Pakistani Through India at the Khushwant Singh Literary Festival London May 2025. 

I finished reading the book, Coming Back: The Odyssey of a Pakistani Through India, in a day, over a long tube journey and a lunch break. I could immediately visualise the references Gandapur makes and contextualize them, from the cities of Delhi and Jaipur, where I have spent a significant part of my life. He refers to winter afternoons in the old city of Chandni Chowk and ‘Shehr’ in Delhi and Jaipur, respectively, where the Mughal and Rajput Empires thrived. They continue to be layered districts of many old architectural gems, but also cultural spots for food and oral histories even today. 

I took pleasure in the small details Gandapur mentions, and found myself almost taking mental notes to give travel tips for next time. I wanted to tell him how he missed having a particular samosa on a street that’s my favorite, or my favorite gallery that he should have gone to. 

In his book, he shares a complicated visa process and waiting period of months; after which he was permitted to travel for two weeks. He was able to visit Varanasi and Agra also, making it an ideal first visit to North India. 

The book details the everydayness of India through the writer’s curious eyes. He notices things that are lost in the beautiful chaos that South Asian cities tend to be. It reminded me of the experience of revisiting my childhood home in Punjab, which I left almost two decades ago. When I visited after many years, I had the same curiosity to document every little detail. 

What creates this sense of belonging for us in this familiar distant place of the past? Why do we, after all, want to go back to where we came from?

Curiosity

Gandapur’s curiosity to find a community of refugees in Delhi, India, from Dera Ismail Khan, now in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, felt a bit like a chapter from Paul Coelho’s 1988 novel ‘The Alchemist’, where the protagonist connects the dots to make meanings by putting the pieces together. This made me think about the homogeneity of our South Asian societies, but it could be argued the other way by some. Or maybe my knowledge of the ‘other’ in my home city, Delhi, India, is limited because all the communities blend so well.

There is a process of demystifying in this book. Gandapur mentions the similarities in the cities of Pakistan and India visually. I wonder if the ‘romantic otherness’ I have built up for the cities I wish to visit in Pakistan would also feel similar and not so mysterious after all, if I were to actually go there? Which four cities would I pick when asked by the visa authorities? Will I also be searching for the ones who are more ‘mine’ than ‘others’?

What creates this otherness in us, Indians and Pakistanis? The curiosity for the other, for the similar, yet noticing every small difference? How are our multiple identities mobilized in different contexts? Do these identities get reinforced in these contexts? How do we form these perceptions about the other? Are there subconscious biases we feed ourselves that tint our perspective? Can we replace the word ‘different’ with ‘diverse’ in our South Asian vocabulary? Does that change the undercurrent of emotion we bring when we meet each other?

I often say ‘familiar in comforting’. I can’t stress enough how linguistic commonalities have created safe spaces and acquaintances in many ‘third places’ for me, and how commensality has always been a factor in coming together. In today’s global context, the emergence of these ‘third places’ can be seen in the digital space where communities divided by borders can find a space to interact through common visuality and pop culture. 

Countries outside of our national boundaries become third places for us, partitioned ones to interact over food and other cultural commons (‘New Networks of Kinship in East and West Punjab,’ Sayali Goyal, unpublished thesis, Goldsmiths University of London, 2025). It might be safe to say that sometimes things are quite simple and fundamental to humanity, so why do we make this complicated? 

Differences

Gandapur mentions the lukewarm sentiment of many he met on his trip – because of his religion and nationality, thus creating a point of difference. His mention of the religious and nationality-based differences he experienced makes me wonder what creates the ‘ours’ and ‘theirs’? Can we judge a billion by a few and narrow them to a nation’s representation? Or are there parallel narratives in all spaces? Do people have the agency to change narratives and critically question these hegemonic complexities? I wonder what makes him create these comparisons between India and Pakistan and see this ‘foreign’ land from a lens of religion.

As he says: ‘A concern repeatedly raised in India during my visit was the rising wave of intolerance, instigated by the majoritarian politics of Hindu nationalism. This is not very different from what has happened in Pakistan in the past four decades. The seeds of fundamentalism sown in the 1980s keep bearing the fruits of conflict. Is India going on the same path? When I told a friend from Srinagar how, at various places, I was mistaken as a Kashmiri, they told me that being thought of as a Kashmiri could be more detrimental to my safety in today’s India than being known by my real Pakistani identity. On the other hand, I met Pakistani Hindus and Sikhs, Sindhis and Pashtuns, at foreigners’ registration offices, seeking asylum in India. The two states have failed to give their minorities a sense of security and belonging. The difference is only in the degree. The myriad stories one has heard about Indians and Pakistanis opening their homes and hearts to strangers from the other side seemed to belong to another age. One has heard many anecdotes of strangers being invited for meals into homes and not being charged for goods and services. For me, the number of such experiences was zero.’

I wonder if I would notice this ’difference’ when I ‘went back’. 

India – and I would think Pakistan too – is a land of paradoxes that becomes pretty apparent in Gandapur’s subjective narrative. But what speaks most to me is the regional affinity that creates kinship across religious and political borders. As I read his quest to find ex-residents of Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan in Delhi, India, I think about how I gravitate to Punjabis from across the border in a third place. I wonder what changes outside our nations when, inherently, these ethnic groups have been together over millennia. Could a few decades change these connections?

Identities are many things. As an anthropologist, I think critically about this. I wonder what makes Pakistani and Indian sentiments so exclusive in the global climate of religious and national divides? Do we confuse cultural diversity with religious differences too often? How do structural kinships that seem to rule the major narratives, feel bigger where symbolic kinships sit with us every day? I wonder if we have conditioned ourselves to think of religious and national ‘otherness’ due to these hegemonic narratives, and whether these borders are merely imaginary?

I see the power in these bottom-up narratives that bring the experience of the common man compared to colonial institutional records or now political and media narratives that create hegemonic versions of what India and Pakistan's relations stand for. I can safely say that popular television from Pakistan, or the work of oral historian Aanchal Malhotra from Delhi, India – whose book, ‘Remnants of Separation’, features multiple interviews of people from both sides – did more for the diaspora than any institutional effort to diplomacy. Connections created through these stories of human experiences from across borders have power in creating alternate narratives. 

Gandapur’s concluding remarks end on a suggestive, reflective note, adding to the pool of right-brain thinkers who see hope.

(The writer is the founding editor of Cocoa and Jasmine, a print magazine and global cultural platform, and the author of ‘Everyday Indian Aesthetic’, a visual ethnography of India’s multiple visual and material identities. She is currently researching ‘Kinship in East and West Punjab through textiles’ at the University of London and running a creative residency in Chandigarh, India. She can be reached at Sayali@cocoaandjasmine.com. By special arrangement with Sapan)