[But among the members of the Boston Gymkhana Sports Club, there was no palpable unease as they gathered on Sunday evening at Mr. Singh’s comfortable home in Norfolk, about 40 minutes southwest of Boston. Mr. Singh, who had just returned from a vacation to India — his trip home took some 51 hours, because his flight had to be diverted to avoid Pakistani airspace, he said — wore a saffron-colored vest and sipped whiskey. Vegetable fritters and other appetizers were laid out, and club members and their wives and a few teenage children greeted each other with hugs.]
By
Kate Taylor
 |
|
Bikram Singh, right,
during his birthday party in Norfolk, Mass. Mr. Singh is
the founder of the Boston
Gymkhana Sports Club, a cricket club.
Credit M. Scott Brauer
for The New York Times
|
In recent days, as India and Pakistan came
almost to the brink of war, the members of the Boston Gymkhana Sports Club — a
cricket club that, like many in the United States, has members from both
countries — did not interrupt their usual social calendar.
Some members were on edge about the
escalation between the two nuclear-armed nations, which began two weeks ago
when a suicide bombing in the disputed region of Kashmir killed more than 40
Indian soldiers. And many had sharply different perspectives on the conflict.
Rajiv Shah, 46, who emigrated in 1999 from
the Indian state of Gujarat, was approving when the Indian government conducted
airstrikes in Pakistan, claiming to kill a large number of terrorists.
Others felt that India’s prime minister,
Narendra Modi, was exploiting the situation, intentionally ramping up tensions
in hopes of solidifying his support in the coming elections.
At least a couple of members gave some
credence to conspiracy theories that the Indian government itself might be
behind the terrorist attack.
And yet, there was a birthday to celebrate:
The club’s founder, Bikram Singh, was turning 53. The club members, accustomed
to setting aside their differences and carrying on with their friendships at times
of heightened hostility between the two countries, were planning a party.
“No matter what, we live and play or interact
with people that we completely disagree with sometimes, but we still manage,”
said Mr. Singh, whose family is from the northwestern Indian state of Punjab.
The past week has seen some people in India
and Pakistan openly root for war, while others have urged the country’s leaders
to find a way to end the crisis. (Pakistan’s prime minister, Imran Khan —
himself a former cricket star — made a move in that direction, and gained an
international publicity coup, when he released an Indian pilot whom Pakistan
had captured, reducing tensions somewhat, although shelling continued along the
disputed border.)
In the United States, sentiments were
similarly mixed: Some Indian-Americans protested outside the Pakistani
consulates in New York and Chicago, accusing the country of harboring
terrorists, while others joined marches for peace.
But among the members of the Boston Gymkhana
Sports Club, there was no palpable unease as they gathered on Sunday evening at
Mr. Singh’s comfortable home in Norfolk, about 40 minutes southwest of Boston.
Mr. Singh, who had just returned from a vacation to India — his trip home took
some 51 hours, because his flight had to be diverted to avoid Pakistani
airspace, he said — wore a saffron-colored vest and sipped whiskey. Vegetable
fritters and other appetizers were laid out, and club members and their wives
and a few teenage children greeted each other with hugs.
The roughly 40 guests were a subset of the
cricket club’s membership, which Mr. Singh said is between 150 and 200,
depending on the year. The majority are from India; Mr. Singh estimated that
about 10 percent are from Pakistan.
Overall, several members agreed, the club
members do not discuss the decades-long conflict between India and Pakistan
much.
“Some of it is deferential, so you obviously
try not to hurt the other person’s feelings,” Nafis Ahmad, 51, who is from
Karachi, explained the day before the party. He added: “Our club is kind of
gentlemanly in a sense. We try not to delve into topics that are too
controversial.”
This is striking given how much time the club
members spend together. Games last some six hours, and afterward, the club
members will often spend another six hours eating dinner and drinking together.
In the winter, when they don’t play cricket, they play poker in a large
upstairs room in Mr. Singh’s home, decorated with dozens of cricket trophies
and nearly as many bottles of liquor. (The amount of socializing has led the
club to adopt an unofficial motto: “We also play cricket.”)
There have been times when geopolitics have
briefly intruded on the club’s bonhomie, and early on, one episode led to a
member being ejected. That was in 1999, shortly after Mr. Singh had founded the
club, and when it had only one or two Pakistani members.
That spring and summer, India and Pakistan
briefly went to war in Kashmir. Mr. Singh said he received a phone call one
morning from an Indian-American club member demanding that the Pakistani
members be kicked out.
Mr. Singh said he was stunned. “I said, ‘You
know what? You’re not going to play in our club anymore — that’s not the kind
of club we are.’ ”
On Sunday, at a reporter’s request, a group
of the party guests agreed to move into the poker room to discuss the most
recent escalation. There was no one from Kashmir, the region at the center of
the rivalry, whose residents are often left out of the debate about the two
country’s actions. It wasn’t long before differences emerged.
Omar Virk, 28, who grew up outside Lahore and
came here three and a half years ago to study for his bachelor’s degree at the
University of Massachusetts Lowell, said he believed that India’s prime
minister was purposefully stoking the conflict.
“Modi is trying to push into this one,” he
said. “You know how he won the last election, right? He was anti-Pakistan from
the start.”
“I disagree with that,” said Moin Ghouse, 38,
who is from the Indian state of Hyderabad.
“I think Modi is politically savvy enough to
understand the risks involved in going for an all-out war,” Mr. Ghouse added.
Mr. Virk began talking about theories he said
were being discussed on Indian television suggesting that Mr. Modi himself was
behind the terrorist attack. “Nobody can prove that,” he added, though he said
he had been thinking the same thing.
Others said the idea was absurd.
Mr. Shah, the club member from Gujarat — Mr.
Modi’s home state, where he was chief minister in 2002 when deadly religious
riots took place in which roughly a thousand people, mostly Muslims, were
killed — said many Indians were thrilled that Mr. Modi had taken a stand and
attacked Pakistan in response to the suicide bombing.
As competing conversations broke out, Mr.
Ahmad, the club member from Karachi, said he had been worried in recent days
about the possibility of war, because he believed that India increasingly saw
itself as a superpower.
“I was a little unnerved that we may be — on
the other side of the border, some of our brothers may be a little bit too much
trigger-happy, and they would say, ‘O.K., these guys have been doing these
shenanigans for us for many, many years, let’s show them.’”
One of Mr. Singh’s close friends, Parak
Ananta, began reminding the group that dinner was getting cold downstairs.
Eventually, everyone went down to eat.
Asked when club members last had a
conversation like this, Mr. Singh said that it had been years ago, when he
started a Facebook group for club members and others to discuss a series of
India-Pakistan cricket games. Mr. Ananta had thought starting the group was a
bad idea — that passions would run too high, and people would say things they
would regret. Looking back, Mr. Ananta said that he felt he had been right; the
conversation had damaged some friendships.
“We have to be real sometime,” Mr. Singh
insisted. “We can’t just be in a cocoon all the time.”
Mr. Ananta disagreed. “Even between wife and husband
there are certain things that are taboo,” he said.
