A HISTORY OF FAITH

“Aap Hindu hain?” our guide asked, his eyebrows knit together. ‘Are you Hindu?’ “Ji haan,” I responded. ‘I am.’ “Phir toh aap apne hi ghar aayi hain,” he said with a wide smile. ‘Then you have come home.’

looked around the exquisite landscape of ochre yellow buildings and blue-green waters. The poignancy of his words was not lost on me, since we stood at one of the most sacred sites of Hindu pilgrimage, the Katas Raj temple complex, situated in a lush embrace of the salt ranges of Kallar Kahar in Punjab, Pakistan. I was visiting the country as a part of my book research, recording the oral histories of the generation who witnessed Partition. This was, of course, a few years ago—at a time when tensions weren’t so flared