Book Title: Dear Zahira, With Love: Love Letters Across Borders
Author: Sachin NG
Publisher: Grapevine Books
Number of Pages: 255
ISBN: 9378716040
Date Published: Jun. 20, 2026
Price: INR 189 / $19.99
Book Excerpt
1.
Dear reader,
Publisher’s Office Lucknow, India
To know Ghulam was to love Ghulam. Some admired his resilience, others the quiet dignity he carried into his work. I loved him because in a time when women were spoken over and easily dismissed, he listened in a way that made me feel that I mattered. He had known hardship, but it had not made him careless or bitter. It had softened him in ways the world rarely notices. He was attentive without being possessive, principled without being loud, and when he loved, he did so with a steadiness that asked for nothing in return.
It is a cruel thing to forget people like him. And yet the world has done it easily, as if he and his love never mattered. But I remember the waiting weeks for his word, reading his letters again and again, searching for what he could not always say. I remember the days we spent apart, and above all, I remember how far he went for love. The world may have moved on, but I will not let it forget him. He lived and he loved me and because of him, this story must be told.
The first time I saw him, I was sitting in my office at the passport department. It was the summer of 1957 and the heat in Lucknow had settled into the building and refused to move, clinging to the walls, to the wooden cupboards and to my desk. The work felt the same way. I finished one file and reached for the next, only to find another already waiting.
I could see through my room’s open door that outside, the office was crowded and tired. Files were piled across my table, spilling onto chairs pushed against the wall and even onto the floor near my feet. Applications for new passports and permissions. Some files were new, while others were soft at the edges, opened and closed too many times. One lay on top of the pile with a faint stamp that read Pending – 1949.
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The ceiling fan creaked as it turned slowly above my head, pushing hot air from one corner of the room to another. Peons and clerks moved in and out, carrying thick files pressed to their chests. Rubber stamps hung from their wrists, tapping softly as they walked. Someone asked for a signature, while another wanted a form rechecked. The room smelled of old paper, ink, and bodies that had been standing in queues since morning. My tea sat untouched at the corner of the table.
It was sometime in the middle of that long afternoon that someone knocked on my door. I looked up. A tall man stood at the threshold. He bent slightly to avoid the doorframe. Slight silver had started to appear in his hair, though the rest of him was no different from a young man just out of college. There was something disarming in his demeanour, an ache of vulnerability beneath the control.
“Kya main andar aa sakta hoon, Madam ji?” he asked. Not sir or bibi or my least favourite: madame sir. Madam Ji. Before answering, I noticed his gaze move briefly to the nameplate on my desk.
Zahira Raza, Deputy Director
“Ek minute,” I said, finishing the file I was working on. By now, I knew that he would respect my request, unlike most others. A part of me might have enjoyed the respect and wanted to test it. But just then, another visitor knocked sharply.
“Bibiji, yeh Deputy Director saab kaha milenge?” the other man said.
“Mai hi –” I began to say but the tall man replied sharply.
“Can’t you see the board says Zahira madam is Deputy Director?”
This new man had already begun to enter the room without asking me, but Ghulam Ji’s tone made him stop. I realised in that moment how it felt when someone stood up for you. It wasn’t a feeling I had known before.
“Isme time lagega, aap baad mein aaiye,” I told the man and he stepped out reluctantly, shoving Ghulam Ji aside.
I nodded and gestured to Ghulam Ji to come in. He stepped inside and closed the door part of the way, careful not to shut it fully. When he walked up to my desk, I noticed how straight he held his shoulders, as if his body had learned discipline. He placed his papers in front of me, aligned them once, and stepped back.
That’s when I noticed his scars. Thin lines marked his hands, while another ran along his neck and disappeared under the collar of his kurta. They were old scars. His clothes were clean and neatly pressed, but his skin was rough, darkened by the sun. When he lifted his head, I saw a faint scar near his forehead, half-hidden by shadow. His beard had begun to grey at the edges.
“I need an Indian passport,” he said. “I have a Pakistani one.”
I reached for the file and opened it. My mind began to think of the shelves I would put it on.
Lucknow.
Proper Files.
Ex-British Army.
“This will take time,” I said and explained the process to him. The affidavits, the verifications, the waiting. As I spoke, he listened closely. When I paused, he asked one question. Then another. Only what he needed to understand.
I mentioned temporary permissions, arrangements some people accepted to move things faster, even if nothing was certain beyond that. He shook his head.
“No,” he said. “I want to return permanently.” Return.
I looked up from the file. He sat steady, his hands resting at his sides. I told him which documents he would need, which offices to visit, which details mattered and which ones would slow the file further. He listened as if he intended to remember each step. When he stood to leave, he waited until I looked up.
“Thank you for taking the time,” he said.
After he left, the corridor noise returned. Another file was placed on my desk and I picked up my pen and continued working. But my hand paused once, mid-signature. The novel feeling of not being spoken to, mistaken for a chai server, or asked to fetch something like an errand girl stayed with me. Respect was not something I expected. So when it came, I did not recognise it immediately. I knew I was going to see him again soon. And for the first time in many years, I was looking forward to seeing someone.
When he came to my office three days later, I realised I had unintentionally been counting days. He arrived with all the papers I had asked for and placed them neatly in front of me. I picked up his Pakistani passport and began turning the pages. I asked him where he had got it made, who he had met, and what the procedure had been. He answered each question carefully.
I paused at the information page and looked again. The letter D in the name of Station Officer Danish Akmal looked wrong. Danish Ji wrote his D in a particular way. No one has been able to copy it properly so far. It was a good forgery, one of the better ones, the paper was right, the stamps were placed well, but the signature was definitely not made by the hand of Danish Ji.
I closed the passport but did not speak. When I first joined the passport office, I would have rung the bell at once. I would have told the person that carrying a fake passport was illegal, that the police would be informed. With time, I had learned to wait.
“There is a problem,” I said. He looked up. Meeting my eyes for the first time since he sat down. “There is no way out of this. The file will not move.”
He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “There was no other way.”
I said nothing. I explained what the rules allowed, what they did not, and what could happen next. He listened without interrupting. When I finished, he did not argue or plead. He only asked one question.
“If I return to Pakistan,” he said, “how long before I can apply again?”
Instead of answering, I reached for the bell and rang it once. Then again. The sound echoed and faded but the peon did not come. Ghulam Ji remained seated, his hands resting on the papers he had brought so carefully. When I looked up, I saw that his eyes were fixed on the edge of the table. I wanted to say something that was not part of the process but my hands stayed where they were. I waited a moment longer. Then I reached for my crutches and tried to stand to call the peon. The movement caught his attention at once. He looked intently at my crutches. For a brief moment, his expression changed, as if he had been called back into the room.
Excerpted with permission from “Dear Zahira, With Love”, by Sachin NG, Grapevine Books.
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