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I traveled to Pakistan two weeks ago as one of five Indians who were invited to meet with six Pakistani leaders from various walks of life as part of an effort by the Asia Society and the Jinnah Institute in Pakistan to continue cross-border dialogue. Meanwhile, the Indian and Pakistani governments had, once again, been engaged in their characteristic rhetoric on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.

We were a motley crew of 11: artists, journalists, parliamentarians, policy advisers, doctors, lawyers and entrepreneurs. As a “track 2” soft-diplomacy effort, our yearlong fellowship with the Asia Society required us to explore the conditions that kept Indo-Pakistani relations from improving, and suggest concrete measures to make amends. Four of us were visiting Pakistan for the first time.

I arrived a few hours before dawn. After passing through several checkposts, I found myself at the Marriott Islamabad, the very hotel that had been bombed five years ago. Over 250 people had been injured and 59 had died; most victims were Pakistani. The receptionist gave me a warm welcome and the bell boy, on learning that I was Indian, was full of predictable questions: Had I met Shah Rukh Khan? Had I seen the Taj Mahal? How did I like Pakistan? No, I hadn’t; yes, I had seen it; and the thick humid scent of the Islamabad airport reminded me of home. After all, it was a little like home, wasn’t it? Millions in Pakistan faced the same challenges of corruption, impunity, poverty, depravation and exploitation that we face in India on a daily basis.

Later that day, when our group first met, we began by gingerly talking about our work and our struggles for justice, for sanity, for equality. But by nightfall, sitting on charpais in the garden of Faiysal Ali Khan, an Asia Society fellow, we talked about broken hearts and happy marriages, about our children and our parents, about our fears, our angst, our addictions, our hopes, our desires, our ambitions, and our dreams.

Priti Radhakrishnan, who hails from a family of Gandhians and has chosen to dedicate her legal training to fighting Big Pharma to deliver life-saving medicines to millions, looked at me and said, “I was surprised to see that not every woman in Pakistan was wearing a hijab, and those that did, rocked it.” Priti was referring in particular to Mehmal Sarfaraz, a renowned Pakistani journalist whose writings have focused on religious freedoms, women’s rights, minority rights and interfaith harmony. Mehmal, who after the assassination of the governor of Punjab, Salmaan Taseer, in 2011, decided that she would dedicate her life and work to her country. Mehmal, who rocked in her hijab.

The more we talked, the more we agreed; the more we agreed, the more we lamented the lost time, the lost opportunities and the futility of hatred. Our diverse team was in unanimous agreement that the common Pakistani and the common Indian would gain much from learning about the other. They would see the commonness of their struggles and the commonness of their shared history, their culture, their songs, their food and indeed, their love of cricket. They might even like each other — if only they were allowed to meet.

Our conference had been postponed several times over five weeks. High-level, off-the-record political intervention finally brought us our visas – the kind of intervention that not all would have access to. Tridivesh Singh Maini, an independent columnist who has written extensively on Indo-Pakistani relations through the Partition of 1947 and wars, reminded us that an Indian Sikh on holy pilgrimage to the Golden Temple in Amritsar in India cannot pay obeisance at Nankana Sahib, the birthplace of the founding guru of Sikhism, which lies beyond the border. And were he to apply months in advance and be granted a visa, he would have to report to the police station on arrival, as did I — first, to register entry, then to seek permission to exit.

We agreed that the restrictive visa regime begged for urgent change. Allowing the citizens of the two countries to meet, to mingle, to trade, to visit and to tour would go a long way in ameliorating the political and military posturing that has consumed Indo-Pakistani relations since Partition. Millions on both sides have families and friends on the other side whom they have not visited in decades. Millions on both sides would like the opportunity to visit historical and religious sites from their shared past – a past that stretches back thousands of years, sharing the birth of religions, cultures and languages.

However, as densely woven as this past, our present realities are different. It is high time Indians accept the fact that today’s Pakistani youth have a distinct identity – one that has evolved far beyond that of “not India.” More than 60 percent of Indians and Pakistanis are under 30, and yet those that represent us are twice that age. Their priorities, as the last six decades have demonstrated, seem to be the perpetuation of current power structures, continuation of cross-border hostility and the decimation of our peoples by spending billions of rupees on defense.

The cross-border tension helps distract citizens in both countries from more pressing issues at home. India continues to reel from caste and sectarian politics. The chief minister of Gujarat is the poster child of the Hindu right wing and has been accused of complicity in the 2002 riots that left hundreds of Muslims dead and thousands displaced. He is now anointed to be his party’s prime ministerial candidate for the next general election. The rival Congress Party-led government is mired in stupendous corruption charges and accused of decades of weak governance.

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Pakistan faces different, but no less stifling challenges, as the country continues to grapple with terrorism on multiple fronts. On our second day in Pakistan, also the day that young education activist Malala Yousafzai was being honored at Harvard, a car bomb ripped through Peshawar, killing over 40. The Pakistani Army, until now preoccupied with control over Kashmir, has been forced to deal with increasing volatility at home. At a time when Pakistan could use a reprieve on the Indian border, cross-border jingoism between the two countries has been at its shameful worst.

While both governments have often expressed a desire for peacefully resolving border issues, including the dispute over Kashmir, the two countries have repeatedly come precariously close to war. Commerce, we all agreed, may hold the key to Indo-Pakistani peace. When both sides have a stake in the other’s prosperity, the alarming need for flexing their nuclear power will rapidly diminish.

We acknowledged the complexity of issues before us and noted the many geopolitical powers at play, but we also recognized the absurdity of continuing this hostility. The cost of inaction is borne by the people of India and Pakistan – the hundreds of millions who live below poverty line, who do not go to school, who have no access to health care and who will never know their full potential, much less ever reach it.

Some of my fondest memories of the weekend will be my late-night conversations with these formidable young leaders, like quiet, gentle Saba Shaikh, who has sought to better the lot of women. Sarah Husain’s poetry and writings on nation, violence, terrorism and the female body have stirred communities across the Muslim, Arab and South Asian worlds. Thoughtful, astute, Donya Aziz had already served two terms in the Pakistani Parliament. The youngest member of our team, Rohit Kumar, sacrificed a mainstream engineering job to dedicate himself to public service. As head of the policy team for one of India’s most progressive member of Parliament, Rohit’s sharp analysis and perceptive critiques enlightened us all.

And then there was Aaysha Amaan: the exuberant, intrepid entrepreneur who ran away from home at the age of 14 to build a real estate empire. The nonprofit she also started now works with some of the most disadvantaged HIV-positive children in the region. She wondered if we could work with children on both sides of the border.

When we talked about our lives, we recognized that we all were no different from those of urban youth anywhere. We liked to read, we liked to write, we liked to laugh, we liked to sing, we liked music and dance and theater and film, we enjoyed good food (and some of us good wine) and, of course, we liked Facebook.

Basking in our common purpose, reveling in the similarities of our different lives, probing to learn even more about the other, I asked Samar Ata Ullah, an inspiring media management consultant, if she played an instrument. The ukulele, she promptly replied. “I started to learn how to play it,” she said.

“And then?” I asked, cocking my eyebrow. “And then, they blocked YouTube,” she said.

But restless Yaseer Latif Hamdani won’t let that YouTube ban last long. A firebrand human rights lawyer, he has petitioned the highest courts of Pakistan to reclaim what is rightfully his, what is promised by the Constitution.

It is time for the political narrative between India and Pakistan to be re-imagined. Ultimately, cross-border movement for trade and commerce, for tourism and travel, and for health care and education, will go far in ameliorating the longstanding distrust between neighbors. Neither can bear the burden of inaction any longer.

Satchit Balsari, an emergency physician in New York, was born and raised in Mumbai. He visited Islamabad as a fellow of the India Pakistan Regional Young Leaders Initiative, organized by the Asia Society.

