{"id":479,"date":"2017-05-09T19:04:31","date_gmt":"2017-05-09T13:34:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/museumofmaterialmemory.com\/?p=479"},"modified":"2017-11-19T23:44:50","modified_gmt":"2017-11-19T18:14:50","slug":"toto-and-nasreen-and-thirty-five-long-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/museumofmaterialmemory.com\/toto-and-nasreen-and-thirty-five-long-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Nasreen and ‘Toto’ and the promise of friendship"},"content":{"rendered":"

WORDS BY NASREEN SULTANA<\/strong>
\nTEXT IN URDU BY FARJAD KAMAL<\/strong>
\nTRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH BY RIMSHA KAMAL<\/strong>
\nPHOTOS BY UMAIR KAMAL
\n<\/strong>Karachi, Pakistan\u00a0<\/em>
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

The first time I went to India was in the winter of 1982.\u00a0 My brother and I travelled via train from Karachi to Lahore, crossed the Wagha Border into Amritsar and finally- though it wasn\u2019t our final destination- stopped in Delhi. I remember staying at my brother\u2019s friend house located in the Balli Maraan Chandni\u00a0Chowk area of Delhi. And after a few days there, we headed towards the state of Rajasthan.<\/p>\n

Before the Partition, my family hailed from Jodhpur, which is where my aunt still lived- in Shastrinagar, a place in Sardarpura. Our month long vacation was to be spent with her. The house had Punjabi neighbours living on one side, and a Muslim family on the other side.<\/p>\n

Luckily, I became friends with two sisters in the Hindu household, Kavita and Sangeeta. Kavita was older and was getting married in the days that we were there. When I was leaving Pakistan, I could have never imagined that I’d ever get to attend a Hindu wedding! Though all the rituals were new to me, I thoroughly enjoyed every bit of it. The guests who had come over from other parts of India also treated us very nicely, and amongst those guests, I even made a new friend \u2018Toto\u2019.<\/p>\n

Toto was tall and had beautiful long hair. We got to spend a lot of time together in the wedding; she even taught me how to wear a saree and at an event- hers was yellow and mine was magenta. One night, the Sangeet function was to take place at a venue quite far away. I was hesitant to go but Toto being her jovial self, dragged me along with her.<\/p>\n