North-West region was in news because of Taliban infestation when I first travelled to Pakistan in the year 2014. However I had a strong desire to visit the Jamrud Fort that was built by Hari Singh Nalwa to guard the entrance to the strategic Khyber Pass.
At Peshawar, I gathered that some local Pashtun Sikhs travel daily to Jamrud to operate their shops. Excitedly I asked if one of them could take me, but was disappointed as they advised I should not venture any further west.
Restless, I woke up at 5:30 am, wondering if Talibans were not humans? Weren’t they also required to perform morning ablutions before getting active for the day? What if I went to Jamrud in the early hours? The plan resonated and in just 30 minutes, we crossed the Khyber gate.
On return, we observed young Sikh boys arriving from Peshawar to open their shops. As I sipped tea with a young Sikh grocer, my mind reverberated with the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore,
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake
Photographed in Oct 2014, during the research for the book “LOST HERITAGE The Sikh Legacy in Pakistan”
