These little envoys say Sharif was very nice

“We stayed at the Pearl Continental, a five-star you know. There were gun-toting policemen who escorted us all over the place and in the morning, we got to meet Nawaz Sharif,” says Richa Pant, adding that after being pampered so much, it would take a while getting back to the normal routine.

Like her, everybody was completely floored by Nawaz Sharif. Their brief meeting with the Pakistani Prime Minister was the highlight of their trip. And they have unanimously given Sharif the “nice man” title. “He was very nice. He talked to us about the Indo-Pak situation and was very honest about it,” says Nandita Surendran.

Even though the students had been told not to discuss politics and religion, they indulged Prime Minister Shrif a bit. “He said it was high time we found a peaceful solution to the ongoing problem. He also felt that the youth could do a lot, though he didn’t really spell out what,” Nandita adds.

They also met other Pakistani ministers and the Indian High Commissioner invited them over as well.

They returned with a whole lot of perceptions. They all found the absence of women on the strets medieval, the restrictions on them harsh and the newly opened motorway between Lahore and Islamabad “awesome”.

“The students we met at the Lahore Grammar School for Girls were so much like us and yet so different. When they asked us whether the boys were staying with us in the same hotel, we were taken aback. They were so envious of the fact that back in India we could go to the movies, wear skirts and had so much freedom,” says Devika Loomba.

Her friend Mandakini Gupta adds: “Apart from the warmth and hospitality, the most remarkable thing was the grand motorway between Islamabad and Lahore.” The students were amazed by the fact that their being Indian generated so much interest. “Shopkeepers, people on the street, everyone knew we were the visiting Indians. In fact, when we went into the markets for the second time, someone stopped and returned a package one of us had left behind during the previous shopping trip,” Surendran says.

But having gone with only salwar kameezes and chudidars, and sporting bindis through the entire trip, the recognition was not unexpected. “Right through the trip we wore bindis. Even the girls who never wear bindis wore them. In every possible way, we projected ourselves as Indian,” says Meenakshi Tandon, one of the teachers.

Comparing the lifestyle of their “friends in Pakistan” with their own, some of the students were glad they lived in Delhi and not Lahore. This is despite the fact that most of them feel that the two cities are very similar.And the only place they had trouble was at a local newspaper office, where they were dogged by questions on Kashmir.

They had so much to talk about, so much more to share, so many memories. They had visited the country they had heard so much about and come back with some of their misconceptions cleared and some “beautiful Lahori jutis.”