We're staunchly religious. Humanity, our religion.

I might be a little shortsighted on this one. But I'd rather be.
I might just be seeing what my eyes want to see, or hearing what my ears want to hear, but I know I am seeing what should be seen, I am hearing what should be heard.
Why does India hate Pakistan? Or vice versa...
I am generalising this because people like you or me are few whether we agree to it or not. We're probably just a handful who seincerely believe there are humans living across the border.
Believe me I have come across people who have said Pakistan should be wiped off the map, and India should be the one wiping it off.
Believe me I have covered a Madarassa preaching class in a small location of Delhi where young kids, who don't even understand what is right and wrong, good or bad, are being taught and made to repeat, that "Hindustan Kaafir Desh Hai".
I covered it, I had it on tape, but before I reached the newspaper office where I worked, I destroyed the tape, I erased my memory to it and told my editor, "The information was wrong. There's no story there."
I didn't write that story. I couldn't. Because I am not a Muslim or a Hindu. I am not an Indian or a Pakistani. I am human. And so are the rest of us.
Here in Qatar, when I sit in a cab and ask the driver wearing a Pathani suit where he's from. He says Pakistan. And when I tell him I am from India, he smiles. He's happy. He asks me if India is very very different from Pakistan. He asks me what life is like there.
All I can manage to say is, which is a fact, that, "Ek hi Desh hai dost. Bas lakeer khich gayi hai."
Here, Qatar, where there are people from probably all countries, boundaries are none. It's ironic that people crap about this place that it's a Muslim country or a restricted country. No, it's not. For the zillionth time Qatar is everything but that. It has certain traditions, which are beautiful and they don't want modernisation to corrupt those few certain traditions like praying five times a day.
In their prayers here they pray for Kashmir too. They pray for you and me.
They're believers. They believe in their religion and their God. They surrender to Him/Her. Unlike us, who remember God only in times of need or pain.
But then why back home do we hate. If a small country like Qatar, border to border of which you can do in an hour and half, can house people from all walks of life, from all religions and all nationalities and still smile at each other and voice "Asalaaam Aalekhum (Peace be with you)" to each other, why can't we in India or Pakistan house two, just two, communities?
Why does my cousin in Chicago have to tell me before I even saw this place that I should "be careful because it's a Muslim country" and I should not get castrated or get shot? Why does he, who's an Indian in America, have to tell me that he hates Muslims? The stink of 9/11 still coming through his breath.
How do you tell people like those that it wasn't these innocent people who hijacked that plane? They were terrorists. Not Muslims. You can't tell them, you can't tell people back home in India and Pakistan that hatred will serve nothing but your false egos.
It's not their fault. The reason why Pakistanis and Indians don't hate each other here is because there are no politicians here to make them.
It's the politicians and the politics back home that's causing all the trouble. Britishers started the 'Divide and Rule' policy, and Indian and Pakistani leaders are taking forward the legacy. The Britishers ruined us, because we were there to be ruined.
I hereby solemnly swear, I am not the wall that divides, I am a crack in that wall.
Main sarhad par khari deewar nahi, main toh us deewar par bani daraar hoon.
And as these cracks inscrease, the wall shall one day crumble, never to rise again.
A new world shall rise with the sun.