A memory project by artists from India and Pakistan shows that peace is an art

It is 10 PM some 12243 km away in Vancouver when the weekday sun is still up and bright here in Mumbai Filmmaker Fahad Naveed is talking to us about a city he has decrypted in his imagination a city he has never set foot in a city he may never be allowed to visitmdashMumbaiNaveedrsquos rendezvous with the Maximum city has been through glitch pirated Bollywood movies that he watched growing up in the rsquo90s in Karachi Is that the real Mumbai he asksIn Srinagar Onaiza Drabu repeats the Punjabi saying Jis Lahore nahi dekhya O jameya nai the one who hasnrsquot seen Lahore cannot be said to have been born on loop She reimagines Lahore a physically unfamiliar city referencing postcards photographs literature and poetry Together Drabu and Naveed create DuurPaas A week after Union Home Minister Amit Shah said ldquoI have a clear mandate I donrsquot want to talk to Pakistanrdquo in a public rally in Baramulla the crossborder artistic collaborative between Indiabased Daak Vaak and Pakistanbased Mandarjazail Collective released Separations Geography The art project takes its cue from KashmiriAmerican poet Agha Shahid Alirsquos poem By the Waters of the Sind which explores partition and personal loss Drabu and Naveedrsquos DuurPaas is one of the projects within Separations GeographyldquoThere is a memory of Lahorerdquo Drabu tells midday over the telephone ldquoan image of it in my head even though I have never visited the city This recollection is based on what I have read in books and poems seen in art and while talking to friends with some connection to the city I asked friends and family for archival material took cues from literature and history did some calligraphy and put photographs all together as a blur of images which is also how I have Lahore in my mind like a blurrdquoPakistani filmmaker Fahad Naveed captures a glitchy image of Mumbai from his Bollywood memories The artworks are part of a sevenwork collective project Separations Geography by 12 IndoPak artistsTwelve artists from either side of the border have put together seven collaborative projects for Separations Geography which started taking shape in 201819 It was originally envisioned as a physical exhibition to open simultaneously in Karachi and Delhi but with COVID19 disrupting the world and its plans it went online The website will be live till August 2023 after which it could become a publicationInside the project yoursquoll also find Lafzi Muammamdasha word puzzlemdashcrafted by Richi Bhatia and Hira Khan as a memoir for the digital era Chasing Conversations a collaborative quest by Mahvash Masood and Numair Abbasi records a travelogue not of a physical journey but a temporal one across borders and lost memories The Bed by Veera Rustomji explores the many ideas around the piece of furniture through distance and displacement while Shahzaib Arif Shaikh and Nusaiba Khan in Remember Remember built a thesaurus of memory and sensory experiences Shanzay Subzwari and Abhishek Thapar document their nonverbal meeting across the IndiaPakistan border in scribbles photos sketches and mail trails Her Pandaan by Affan Baghpati explores the many versions and stories of pandaan an ornate box holding betel leaves nuts and implements of paanmaking across Karachi Lucknow Allahabad and CanadaFahad Naveed and Onaiza DrabuldquoGrowing uprdquo says Naveed ldquoall our heroes were from Bollywood You would go to a local barberrsquos shop and Shah Rukh Khanrsquos photos would be all over When Tere Naam released all the boys in Pakistan copied Salman Khanrsquos middleparting hairstyle We flirted in filmi style All things good and bad came from there Even with the distance we shared a culturerdquo He is currently in Vancouver pursuing a PhD and is also one of the curators and editors of the project along with Drabu Hira Khan and Pracha Jha ldquoThen came the ban and actors on either side were not allowed to participate with each other creativelyrdquo he adds ldquoWe realised the space for collaboration is shrinking and we need to bring it back There is no commercial angle to our project Getting together India and Pakistan on any platform is anyway a political actrdquoDrabu says that now that the project is out there they might also coordinate exchange of postcards across the border organise an artist meetandgreet or help people in the two nations become digital penpals ldquoWe did a poll to see if people would be interested in getting on a Zoom call with the artists and there was much enthusiasm That will be our next steprdquo she says