Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive!
Saturday, November 9, 2019, will go down in the history of the subcontinent not only as a milestone but also a sterling reminder of what is possible when the human spirit soars over manmade borders and barriers in an all-conquering flight of imagination. 
The day, closer to home in Kartarpur — the last resting place of Baba Guru Nanak Dev, the founder of Sikhism — also represents perhaps, Pakistan’s biggest and now its most celebrated peace initiative in the 21st century, completely overriding tense relations with neighbouring India, which also signed to pave the way for his disciples to cross over into Pakistan. 
The 9-km corridor links Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Narowal district of Pakistan’s Punjab province, Guru Nanak Dev’s birth and final resting place, to Dera Baba Nanak shrine in Indian Punjab’s Gurdaspur district.
For this past week, emotionally charged stories of reunion or simply return to roots following seven decades of separation that followed the bloody Partition of 1947 — the harbinger of the single largest exodus of humankind in history — continue to dot the media landscape. Several videos have since also gone viral; some funny, others sober, but nearly all endearing.
Previous attempts to build a corridor and open the religious shrine for Sikhs, particularly from India, which is home to the largest population of faithfuls, often became a collateral for the up-and-down nature of the bilateral relations. 
As has been described several times this past week, it was a classic case of ‘so near yet so far’ — with Sikhs able to merely spot the holy site some 4km from the international border but, tragically unable to cross it.   
Since living up to his promise of opening the Kartarpur Corridor in less than a year after laying the foundation stone, Prime Minister Imran Khan has been hailed as a peacemaker and showered with love even across the border in India, with a rare public note of thanks also coming from his counterpart Narendra Modi. 
This was amply demonstrated by a stirring speech at the Kartarpur inauguration delivered by Navjot Singh Sidhu, former Indian Punjab minister and current MLA, who roused the audience with his signature poetic depiction, only this time it had a sweeping tremolo. 
Describing Khan as a “lionhearted” peacemaker immune to the idea of counting political gains and losses and concerned only with uniting people, Sidhu thundered: “For four generations, our people paid the price of the partition-wrought bloodletting. In 72 years, no-one did for our nation what Imran Khan has done”.     
Turning to his one-time cricket adversary, Sidhu said: “Khan Sahib, you have made history and nobody can deny your place in it. You are the sikandar (conqueror) of hearts. And while Sikandar (Alexander the Great) had won the world with fear, you have conquered the world by winning hearts.”
Prime Minister Khan in his speech reiterated the peace offer he made to his Indian counterpart even before assuming office in August last year and hoped one day the two countries would find their calling as neighbours coexisting in peace.
Khan said he was humbled by what he could do to facilitate the world Sikh population and likened their long decades of yearning to how Muslims would feel if they were able to see Madina, the last resting place of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) from a distance, but not being able to visit it.
Another prominent presence at the Kartarpur ceremony was former Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh, who made a poignant return to the land of his birth. The journey took Singh 72 years; despite remaining in office for 10 years and receiving several official and unofficial invitations, he could not make it, which again, is put down to political compulsions.  
Last Saturday, Singh led the first delegation of Sikh pilgrims as they entered Pakistan through the Kartarpur corridor. Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi warmly received him and his wife Gursharan Kaur, and recounted to him how the former first lady herself made tea for him when they last met.
The ex-Indian premier called the Kartarpur opening a “big moment” and even before entering Pakistan had stated at a special session of the Punjab Assembly to mark the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak that the “Kartarpur model” had the potential to resolve future conflicts.
“Peace and harmony is the only way forward to ensure a prosperous future. The Kartarpur model may be replicated in future, too, for lasting resolution of conflicts,” Singh said at the session.
For the uninitiated, Kartarpur marks the most significant and constructive phase in Guru Nanak’s life. It was here, on the banks of the Ravi, that he laid the foundations of a new faith. Nanak came to the town between 1520 and 1522 after he had travelled extensively across continents.
He spent the formative years of his life at Talwandi, a town 90km west of Pakistan’s cultural capital Lahore, where he was born in 1469. It was later renamed Nankana Sahib in his honour. Today, it is the capital of Nankana Sahib district.
Guru Nanak spent the next 10 years at Sultanpur Lodhi where he attained enlightenment. And for the next 20 years, he travelled across many countries and continents before coming to Kartarpur. 
Interestingly, Pakistan hosts the three most important shrines that directly connect Sikhs to Guru Nanak and therefore, the ‘land of the pure’, which is what Pakistan literally means. The first is the Nankana Sahib, where he was born 550 years ago; the second is Panja Sahib, which marks the site of a major episode during his travels; and the third Kartarpur Sahib, built on the banks of the Ravi, where he spent the last 18 years of his life.
Notably, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi in his speech said the Imran Khan government was now moving to work on the restoration of 400 Hindu temples that had been identified for the purpose and open them to religious tourism in the future as well.

The writer is Features Editor. He tweets @kaamyabi
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