What we need are soft borders and hard drinks, suggests the actor-director from Pakistan, contemplating all the friends he has made in India, thanks to one peace initiative or another.
This was the time before turbo-props and jets. At Lahore's Walton airport an aircraft with two large piston-engines placed on wide wings sat on its tail and looked up at the sky wonderingly.
What I boarded was a DC-3, the Dakota. To get to your seat you had to be a minor acrobat, walking uphill along the narrow aisle. If my mother had not supported my rump as I negotiated the incline, I could have easily rolled into reverse. But a mother in need is a mother indeed and mine proved to be a truly supportive one that day. Before long, I was seated and strapped and peering out of the flat-paned rectangular windows as the engines roared into life and we taxied out.
As the plane lifted into the air, its fuselage straightened out to level. Before long, flying east, we had crossed over the Pakistani to the Indian Punjab.