<p>When I got into a taxi in Barcelona, when through the abstraction of the rear view mirror, the driver looked me straight in the eye, when with some deliberate action, he pushed a latch meant for children and enemies to lock me in, when he asked me where I was from, when he declared his origins and drove like it was my last ride, in this most inopportune of moments I recalled Voltaire on his deathbed. When asked by the priest to renounce Satan, Voltaire guffawed and said, “Now, now, my good man, this is no time to be making enemies.”</p>.<p>But in its place, I told the cabbie, I’m very sorry for the floods in Pakistan. He looked at me, his eyes again biting in the reflection. He slowed down. He nodded and said that he had lost family members. I was terribly sorry when I heard this. My destination forgotten and left behind; we aimlessly roamed the streets and chatted like we were long-lost chums, lamenting about our loss of brotherhood but also celebrating its presence in neutral, foreign lands. Over chai and samosa at his home, he enquired about the recent drought that had devastated parts of India. His wife offered her condolences.</p>.<p>Again, when I dropped a few pounds into a collection box in a corner shop in London run by a Pakistani, when I was once more embraced and judged based on my humanity and not my ethnic group or faith, I began to speculate about the shared and blanket loathing that seems to exist between the same people divided by a border arbitrarily created 75 years ago by an Englishman sitting in London. A task that was supposed to take no less than three years was completed in five weeks. Is the notion of rancour just that, a dark and untrustworthy inspiration planted in our heads by resourceful and persuasive interest groups? Or are these just thoughts of a benighted flowerchild, consciously overlooking sincere differences that lead to the creation of individual states? After all, this remains the criteria for partings and the conception of nations.</p>.<p>The two nations are, of course, divided by religion, or we are told that this is the case. One is an Islamic republic and the other a secular republic, though this is now briskly challenged where governance is guided by the sanctification of a majority group. Leaving wide-eyed liberalism and dreams of a unified world of milk and honey behind, if we access the situation on the ground, it is indeed serious and very real.</p>.<p>The biggest challenge facing the two nations is the indeterminable problem of Kashmir. Without going into the origins of this conflict, it may be beneficial to consider the acrimony that surrounds it from a contemporary worldview, as seen by the nations’ diaspora. The cabbie in Barcelona and the shopkeeper in London acknowledged that detached from the hotbed of hostility, and in crucial times when the future of all Pakistanis, all Indians and all of humankind is under threat from the planet heating up, isn’t it time that the two societies, abandon directions and dictums from tilted and opportunistic factions and uncover solutions that advance the community? In times of grave danger, we don’t kill each other at the sight of an external threat; we gang up to take on the adversary. When faced with the peripheral enemy of climate change that we shaped and is now at our doorstep, do we not need to join forces?</p>.<p>The issue of Kashmir may never get resolved, but the cab driver said progress can be made by acknowledging previous misguided steps. State-sponsored terrorism should stop, said the shopkeeper in London. And I concurred, the army’s heavy-handedness in Kashmir and marginalisation of minorities was also just that -- extremism. On the seventy-fifth anniversary of India’s partition, which caused nearly a million deaths, in the face of climate doom which, without heed to borders or artificial differences, scorches and floods both sides, can the two nations extrapolate and espouse the humanity that exists outside of the breeding ground of geopolitics? Maybe Voltaire was right, now is not the time to make enemies.</p>.<p><em>(The writer is a journalist. He was a recipient of the Guardian Intl Development Journalism Award for reporting on northern Kenya’s drought. He is part of the BBC Writers Room Programme.)</em></p>
<p>When I got into a taxi in Barcelona, when through the abstraction of the rear view mirror, the driver looked me straight in the eye, when with some deliberate action, he pushed a latch meant for children and enemies to lock me in, when he asked me where I was from, when he declared his origins and drove like it was my last ride, in this most inopportune of moments I recalled Voltaire on his deathbed. When asked by the priest to renounce Satan, Voltaire guffawed and said, “Now, now, my good man, this is no time to be making enemies.”</p>.<p>But in its place, I told the cabbie, I’m very sorry for the floods in Pakistan. He looked at me, his eyes again biting in the reflection. He slowed down. He nodded and said that he had lost family members. I was terribly sorry when I heard this. My destination forgotten and left behind; we aimlessly roamed the streets and chatted like we were long-lost chums, lamenting about our loss of brotherhood but also celebrating its presence in neutral, foreign lands. Over chai and samosa at his home, he enquired about the recent drought that had devastated parts of India. His wife offered her condolences.</p>.<p>Again, when I dropped a few pounds into a collection box in a corner shop in London run by a Pakistani, when I was once more embraced and judged based on my humanity and not my ethnic group or faith, I began to speculate about the shared and blanket loathing that seems to exist between the same people divided by a border arbitrarily created 75 years ago by an Englishman sitting in London. A task that was supposed to take no less than three years was completed in five weeks. Is the notion of rancour just that, a dark and untrustworthy inspiration planted in our heads by resourceful and persuasive interest groups? Or are these just thoughts of a benighted flowerchild, consciously overlooking sincere differences that lead to the creation of individual states? After all, this remains the criteria for partings and the conception of nations.</p>.<p>The two nations are, of course, divided by religion, or we are told that this is the case. One is an Islamic republic and the other a secular republic, though this is now briskly challenged where governance is guided by the sanctification of a majority group. Leaving wide-eyed liberalism and dreams of a unified world of milk and honey behind, if we access the situation on the ground, it is indeed serious and very real.</p>.<p>The biggest challenge facing the two nations is the indeterminable problem of Kashmir. Without going into the origins of this conflict, it may be beneficial to consider the acrimony that surrounds it from a contemporary worldview, as seen by the nations’ diaspora. The cabbie in Barcelona and the shopkeeper in London acknowledged that detached from the hotbed of hostility, and in crucial times when the future of all Pakistanis, all Indians and all of humankind is under threat from the planet heating up, isn’t it time that the two societies, abandon directions and dictums from tilted and opportunistic factions and uncover solutions that advance the community? In times of grave danger, we don’t kill each other at the sight of an external threat; we gang up to take on the adversary. When faced with the peripheral enemy of climate change that we shaped and is now at our doorstep, do we not need to join forces?</p>.<p>The issue of Kashmir may never get resolved, but the cab driver said progress can be made by acknowledging previous misguided steps. State-sponsored terrorism should stop, said the shopkeeper in London. And I concurred, the army’s heavy-handedness in Kashmir and marginalisation of minorities was also just that -- extremism. On the seventy-fifth anniversary of India’s partition, which caused nearly a million deaths, in the face of climate doom which, without heed to borders or artificial differences, scorches and floods both sides, can the two nations extrapolate and espouse the humanity that exists outside of the breeding ground of geopolitics? Maybe Voltaire was right, now is not the time to make enemies.</p>.<p><em>(The writer is a journalist. He was a recipient of the Guardian Intl Development Journalism Award for reporting on northern Kenya’s drought. He is part of the BBC Writers Room Programme.)</em></p>