Google ad reignites hope for easier Indo-Pak visas

The latest advertisement by Google depicts two elderly friends who reunite for the first time after the partition of India and Pakistan, capturing the entire process in less than four minutes.
If only it were that simple in reality.
For several people across the border, this is a dream that might just remain unrealised thanks to the stringent visa regulations that both countries impose on each other.
Even though both countries have moved forward by introducing a liberalised visa regime, which includes visa on arrival for senior citizens, the truth is that it remains quite a task for the common man.

Take 98-year-old Sardar Mohammed Habib Khan, a former Pakistani government official, for example.
While he hails from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, as a forest official he worked in Srinagar and Baramulla in the state of Jammu and Kashmir in the 1940s and had applied to visit the cities three times over but with no luck.

"I have such fond memories of Dehradun because that is where I was trained to be a forest official," he says.
"But now, at the ripe old age of 98, it's almost impossible to travel, chips in his son who is in 60s.
It is wishes like these that seem impossible to grant.

For Indians too, with roots in Pakistan, there is a certain wistfulness that creeps in every time they talk about the city they were born in.
"I find it ironic that I can travel the world over but can't visit Lahore without someone standing surety for me. I don't know anyone in Pakistan now but want to visit," says 87-year-old Visharda Dhawal, who moved to India during the partition.
Ashraf J Qazi, former Pakistani High Commissioner to India, stresses on the need for easier visa regimes.
"People-to-people contacts are necessary otherwise we will live in ignorance. While the elite, businessmen, students, journalists and others get to visit, people from all classes should get a chance," Qazi told PTI.