The year 2038.
Taraksh Chauhan, in charge of the Indus Saraswati Project by the Department of Archaeology and Museum, Pakistan, stepped out of his government car at the Partition Museum. He was greeted by his counterpart from the Archaeological Survey of India, Mr Shukla, and was led into the conference hall where the press awaited the much-hyped news about the deciphering of the Indus Valley Scripture. He was handed over the documents necessary for his signature as his eyes scanned the crowd of unknown faces among a few of his colleagues.
“Who is in charge of your script restoration department?” He asked Mr Shukla.
“Oh, that would be Mrs Khan.” He looked around for the person he was referring to in the crowd.
“Hoor?” The name made Taraksh’s hand stop at the point where the signature was needed. He looked up to follow Mr Shukla’s gaze as Hoor Inayat Khan pushed through the crowd and finally froze at his gaze.
“This is…”
“I know.” Taraksh made him stop. “I should have known.” A smile formed in the corner of his lip. “It was you.”
“I heard that your department corresponded a lot with my subordinates.” She smiled, extending her hand as he shook it firmly. Even after all the years, she realised she remembered his touch. It wasn’t somehow oddly alien to her. Hoor became conscious of her realisation. Taraksh broke the silence.
“So you just disappeared. I tried to establish contact.” He smiled as she nodded.
“I guess it was for the better.” She managed as his smile faded slightly.
“Right,” he nodded. “How is Mr Khan?” He made her look surprised.
“How did you…”
“Shukla Saab called you Mrs Khan,” he shrugged, as he took out his phone and held out the lock screen for her. “That’s Mrs Chauhan, Mira and Kabir.” Hoor smiled at the picture and back at him as she searched her purse for her phone. She unlocked it and searched her gallery, scrolling down for a while.
“And that is Mehr and her Abbu.” He nodded. He couldn’t help but observe how similar her daughter looked.
“So, shall we address the press now?” Taraksh asked as Hoor nodded, picking up the files. “After you.”
“As many of you know.” It was Mr Shukla who addressed the press as they sat side by side on the chairs arranged behind him “We have been trying to decipher the language of the Indus Valley for more than a hundred years now. On the hundredth year of the discovery of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, we decided to go beyond borders and join hands with our neighbours in the quest to find answers together. I would like to thank the Prime Ministers of both countries for agreeing to this…”
“So, we were right?” Taraksh leaned in and whispered. “They were letters?”
“And journals. We were right.” Hoor nodded. “My team has put some of them together to present before you.” She made him nod in approval.
After the press meet, the teams selected for the project were gathered in a private conference room where they were to give their own presentations to the other teams. Hoor nodded at her intern, who started the slide shows.
“So here we see… a series of letters that were discovered, and addressed by the same person.” She pointed at the similarity of letters. “We wondered if that meant that, like the ancient Sumerians, Egyptians, Romans, Greeks and all other ancient civilisations, the Indus people too exchanged contracts, letters or even kept accounts.” She stopped in the silent room and continued, “We have not been able to yet decipher all possible combinations of letters and script, but from what we have gathered, this looks like a letter from someone who addresses a person moving away.”
“Hijr,” Hoor murmured under her breath, as Taraksh eyed her with a frown.
“What was that, Mohtarma?” He made her smile.
“I said Hijr. It's a word that means the distance between lovers. When the pain of separation…” She stopped as the light of the projector shone on his eyes in the darkness of the room.
“I see…” He nodded, making her look away. “Sometimes it's choices and sometimes it's fate.” Hoor looked up at his words with a silent nod. The presentation continued.
“We don’t know if these people ever met again or not, but this piece of evidence can help us understand the movement of the natives and the Aryans through the different stages of the civilisation.”
“It's a rather sad thought.” Mr Shukla leaned in and whispered, “Maybe these were lovers who never met again.” Taraksh nodded. “I wonder what happened to them.”
“A poet would say their love didn’t care for reciprocation or distances, somewhere in a corner of their heart, it lived on.” Taraksh made Mr. Shukla smile.
“You seem like quite the Shayar.”
“But a practical head would say they forgot each other like we forget memories that were never to last and moved on,” Taraksh added. Hoor inhaled.
“Which one are you?” She asked as Taraksh smiled intentionally at her.
“Always the Shayar, Mohtarma, how about you?” He asked. Hoor smiled back.
“I guess someone I met once made me a Shayar too.”
The conference ended in two days. Due to tension between the two countries' political leaders, the high security didn’t allow any of the delegates to meet each other except at work. It was finally time to shake hands and bid adieu. Hoor walked up to Taraksh, who eyed her luggage. At that moment, he felt a strange deja vu. His heart sank as he felt like he was losing her all over again. Hoor smiled a smile that didn’t reach her otherwise sad eyes. He extended his hand for a shake, as Hoor slipped her card into his palm. Taraksh looked a little surprised as she read her card, which contained her phone number and email.
“If there is anything I learnt in two days, it is that some connections are not worth leaving to fate.” Hoor smiled melancholically. “Someday I would like our families to meet, and who knows, we can all be friends.” Taraksh nodded in silence.
The convoys with the tricolour and the green and white flags separated once again. But this time, two hearts knew they had started afresh, stronger than ever, and borders, destiny, and everything else man-made to separate them weren’t enough to keep their hearts apart even after all these years. They had a hard time accepting what they felt because it was against the norms of normal, even when they were loyal partners and good parents, yet meeting after years made them realise that some people, some stories and some feelings, no matter how alien to the world, were worth holding on to even at a distance.
