At the stroke of midnight on August 14, 1947 India and Pakistan became two independent nations. As Pakistan celebrates it's 60th independence day on Tuesday CNN-IBN’s Shreya Dhondial brings this special report from Lahore and Delhi on a pair of twin brothers born on the day the two countries were separated by the Partition.
In the last 59 years Azhar Sherwani and his twin brother Zafar Hameed have never celebrated their birthday together. And their 60th birthday is no different as Azhar in Delhi gets down to write a birthday mail to Zafar, who is having a little family party at Lahore with their 84-year-old mother Talat.
The story of these two brothers is much like the story of India and Pakistan that began on August 15, 1947.
As the clock struck the midnight hour, 24-year-old Talat Hameed went into labour in Lucknow, a few hours later she delivered identical twins – Zafar and Azhar, who is seven minutes older.
But the babies, just like the two new nations, shared their birth date but were never destined to live together.
Talat's brother who was childless requested her to give him Azhar and a month later Talat’s family decided to move to the newly created Pakistan.
“With a broken heart I had to leave Azhar behind. I couldn't sleep or eat I cried all the way to the railway station,” Talat remembers.
However, it's been a relatively smooth ride since the days of Partition but meeting each other was never easy due to acrimonious relations between India and Pakistan, which often meant no visas.
“When we were growing up especially in my teenage years I missed him (Azhar) the most. There are things you want to discuss and talk about and there was no one I could share it with,” says Zafar.
In fact when Azhar got married soon after the 1971 war, Zafar and Talat couldn't make it to Delhi because the borders were sealed and had to fly down to London to see each other.
“It's sad that we had to live separately. I wish the country had never been divided. We all could have lived together,” says Azhar.
But today if they had the choice could they live with each other? “We can't live together now after so many years,” Azhar says.
While Zafar says, “We have grown up in different societies. Our ideas are now fixed.” But then he hastens to add, “We can't change the past but we would definitely want to spend much more time together. I don't know how much time we have left.”
Born of the same parents, yet destiny has taken the two brothers in different directions. Born at the same time, yet living in totally different times, they are in many ways an embodiment of a partitioned subcontinent – brothers who have a common past yet are unable to share the future.
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