India and Pakistan ease tensions

By Adam Mynott BBC South Asia correspondent

India and Pakistan have taken the initiative to try to improve relations. One way to do it is to restore transport links that were abruptly severed nearly a year and a half ago.

In the stifling Indian summer heat, the paint from Vishnu's brush dries almost as soon it touches the roof of the Delhi Transport Corporation bus.

A Pakistani worker gets a new sign for the cross-border Samjhauta Express ready

Vishnu is splattered with white spots. He works with intense concentration as he shuffles barefoot across the roof of the bus applying a thick layer of paint as he goes. Occasionally, he wipes off a smear with a rag clutched in his left hand.

The bus is getting a thorough overhaul at Delhi Bus Station. An engineer is under the bonnet poking away at the engine with a spanner and a pair of pliers. No-one will confirm it, but everyone knows that two buses - the air-conditioned pride of the fleet - are being prepared for a route which was closed suddenly nearly 18 months ago: Delhi to Lahore in Pakistan.

It went via Haryana to the north of Delhi, across into the Punjab to Amritsar and then on to the border crossing point and into Pakistan. The journey took 12 hours.

Samjhauta Express

It's about five minutes' drive through Old Delhi from the bus terminal past the 17th Century Red Fort to the railway station.

Hundreds of passengers heaving suitcases, with bundles wedged under their arms, are struggling towards the platforms. Some are clutching the hands of young children as they peer up at the train timetables.

Men with wiry, muscular arms dressed in their uniform of dirty red shirts shout, "Porter, porter" loudly, clustering around as they pull into the station car park.

I make my way to the station master's office. He is not available, I am told, and there is no comment about renewed train services to Pakistan.

The last train crossed the border nearly 18 months ago

"That is a decision for the government," a sub station master tells me. "And, anyway, there will be no direct service from Delhi. You will have to change at Amritsar and then at Attari station to catch the Samjhauta Express".

The Samjhauta Express summons up the image of a mighty engine thundering through the barren spaces of the sub-continent. But this express chugs just three kilometres between Attari and Wagah just over the border in Pakistan.

The service started in 1976, but for the past 18 months not one single item of rolling stock has moved though Attari. Inactivity has allowed virile weeds to push their roots deep into the gravel on which the rails sit. The sun and wind have loosened large flakes of paint, which have fluttered down onto the platform from the boarded roof above. There is thick dust everywhere.

But now there is a buzz at Attari once more. Without any official instruction, railway staff are back, sweeping, checking electrical junction boards, greasing the points and painting white lines on the platform.

Diplomatic omens

It is almost as though preparations on the ground are racing to get ahead of the diplomacy. There's a feeling among many Indians and Pakistanis, that while they remain deeply divided on a solution to the Kashmir issue, they've had enough of 50 years of squabbling.

The diplomatic omens are good. In the highly charged atmosphere between Delhi and Islamabad, a phrase out of place or an ill-considered reaction can put the process of rapprochement back to square one. But, so far, it has been well and delicately handled.

The station in Lahore is spruced up ahead of possible renewed links

It's all come too late, though, for Maqbool Ahmad. "My life was ruined," he says, "by the parliament attack." He lives at Qadian near the border, and in 2001 he had become engaged to Tahira who lives in Faisalabad in Pakistan.

They knew the transnational marriage would present difficulties, but this was a love match and, though he is Indian and she Pakistani, they are both Punjabis.

The closure of the border, the cancellation of the Samjhauta Express, put a sudden halt to contact between the two young loves.

"It became impossible to telephone her," he said, "because they blocked phone calls between here and Pakistan as well."

As relations last summer between the two countries worsened and war looked more and more likely, Maqbool thought their relationship was doomed and he travelled to England to speak to members of Tahira's family.

"I went to tell them that I could not hold Tahira to her promise to marry me. I had to release her from that vow - to tell her family she is free to marry another person of her choice. I am a broken man," he said.

I called Maqbool to check a couple of facts and I am very glad I did. I hardly recognised the voice of the down-hearted young man I had spoken to a few days before.

"We are to marry after all," he blurted out. "When the border reopens, and I am sure that will be soon, we will see each other again. I thought I had lost Tahira, but she wants to marry me still."