I keep coming and going in and out of Pakistan quite frequently so as the plane touched the Pakistani soil yesterday, it was nothing new. Nothing exciting. But as soon as the plane made first contact with the runway, a few people started frantically celebrating and screaming in their innocence.

Never in my life had I witnessed such a scene before. They were celebrating, some in tears, some looking towards the sky and thanking the Lord and you could repeatedly hear people say, ‘Pakistan aa gaya’!

For an instance, the scenes took me back to the passion and the emotion we’ve all witnessed in those black and white video’s of 1947, when people migrated to Pakistan sacrificing everything they had. “Haan, Pakistan Aa Gaya!”

Who were these people? They were people being deported from Abu Dhabi on temporary passports. I got to sit with them because my seat was occupied by some family.

Their innocence was such that before the plane flew, they were talking about how it flies and how it is different from a ‘launch’ in which they were brought to UAE. They asked me ‘where’ to put the headphones, I told them it was for the ears :P

Yes. The joy was theirs!