The road to Pakistan is paved with good intentions. It’s the return journey that almost always smacks of betrayal.

Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had a taste of this sub-continental truth in 1999 when General Pervez Musharraf’s boys encroached on the Kargil Hills soon after he went to Lahore in a bus with a message of peace and a hand of friendship.

As it turns out, the new escalation in Indo-Pak relationship, too, has a story of a betrayed bonhomie behind it.

News18 has found out that over the last seven months, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif himself went out of the way to make the Indian establishment extremely comfortable only to turn the tables later. The high point of this story of unmitigated affection was the trip of External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj to Pakistan in December 2015. Sharif specially invited Swaraj to his family mansion, to break bread with the extended Sharif clan.

File Photo of Sushma Swaraj with Advisor to Pakistan PM Sartaj Aziz

The invite was personally given to the External Affairs Minister by Nawaz Sharif’s daughter. Swaraj was also informed that Ammi (mother to Nawaz Sharif and his brother and Pakistan Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif) was particularly keen to meet her.

Swaraj reached the place in time for lunch, and at the lunch table, she was pleasantly surprised to see four generations of Sharifs at the dining table - from his mother Shamim Akhtar to his wife to his daughter to his granddaughter. Word is that his mother got so emotional at seeing Swaraj that she hugged her and cried: “Tu to mere watan se hai, maine to aaj tak udhar se aanewale kisi ko gale hee nahin lagaya" (You are from my land, I haven’t hugged anyone from the other side so far).

What followed was a perfect mother and daughter bonding between Sharif’s Ammi and Swaraj. A moved Sharif is tipped to have carried the bonhomie straight back to the Prime Minister’s Office. Apparently, he even directed his National Security Advisor Sartaj Aziz that the joint statement should be drafted completely keeping in mind Swaraj’s concerns.

Now, when was the last time a Pakistani premier got so overawed by an Indian politician to go to this extent? Obviously, Swaraj must have felt the BJP-led government could turn a new corner in Indo-Pak relations.

So she escalated it to the next level. Swaraj convinced Prime Minister Narendra Modi to go to Pakistan. That there was an atmosphere of trust that could be worked on to better the relationship between the two nations. This then is the story behind Modi’s sudden stopover in Lahore on his way back from Afghanistan to wish Sharif for his birthday. From here on things could only get better between the two nuclear powers, no?

Apparently, it could only get worse. Because what came next was the Pathankot attack when Pakistani terrorists stormed into an Indian Air Force base. That was Modi’s Kargil moment.

Indian security personnel stand guard inside the Indian Air Force (IAF) base at Pathankot (Reuters)

The whole of Thursday, CNN-NEWS 18 exposed the hypocrisy of the Hurriyat leadership in Kashmir: A bunch of people who call themselves separatists, who say they don’t respect or believe in the Indian constitution. Yet most of their children are employees of Indian state living off the state’s salary while they themselves instigate unemployed youth to pelt stones at the symbols of Indian state. As it turns out, the Hurriyat hypocrisy is just another thing they have copied from their Pakistani masters.