She was attending an Urdu reading – a series of hard-hitting and cynical anecdotes and observations about human nature – set in the backdrop of the India Pakistan partition. The narrations rang out with the religion-tinged, communal haze characteristic of the period – dividing people on the basis of the faith they were born into.

The intellectual audience, comfortably ensconced in the distance that history creates, felt safe in the present.

She scanned the place and noted with mild, yet genuine surprise that the group was predominantly comprising cultured Muslim intelligentsia.

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