You’re from Bombay? So what? You are like my brother!” Our guide’s voice rasps out through the lobby of the Eagles Nest Hotel in Pakistan’s Hunza valley. We had got through another Pakistani military checkpoint on our 1,250 km drive on the Karakoram Highway, from Islamabad to the Chinese border at Khunjerab, and I had just told him to keep my origins to himself.
The noise drops as the information travels. The attendants turn to look at us: “You’re from Bombay?”
We encounter this question often. But my concern over being identified as Indian in what I know as Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir was slowly replaced with the comforting knowledge that my inquisitors were just like gossiping neighbours back home.
