Visa to make people miss train to Pak

Barmer: The Khokrapar-Munabao link will reconnect the people of India and Pakistan, who have been divided by the western border for the last forty years, with the rolling of the Thar Express from next week.

However, a lot of people who want to make the journey might actually miss the train to Pakistan.

CNN-IBN Correspondent Swati Vashishtha met one such 80-year-old woman who listens to the taped voices of her grandchildren in Pakistan.

Babri Bai has never seen her grandchildren who live in Pakistan's Amarkot, a place she left forty years ago to never go back.

Three months ago, she received a tape from a visitor who had come to India from Amarkot and the memories came rushing back.

Now, she listens to the tapes and weeps and listens on.

Babri Bai had lost hope of ever getting in touch with her family again many years ago.

Then her family tried to get back in touch with her and sent her a letter, pictures and the tape - to which she is now addicted. The letter requested her to come to Amarkot and meet them all at least once.

For Babri Bai, life was never the same after the 1965 war between India and Pakistan. Married to a man from Sindh at 16, she crossed over to Barmer during the war just a month after her husband died. Later the border was sealed.

Now that she's heard about the Thar Express she wants to be on it and go to Amarkot so she can be reunited with her family.

"I'll be on the train and get off at my in-laws house. It's been such a long time since I have seen anyone. I will meet my loved ones and they're all waiting for me. I know they will welcome me with all their heart," says she.

Her family who live with her in Barmer, however, say that for a poor family like theirs, making numerous visits to Delhi for the visa, putting up in hotels, traveling for the passport and getting the tickets from Jodhpur is next to impossible.

Mangu Khan Babri Devi's grandson, who lives with her in Barmer says, "Where will we get the visa from? We do not have money, my grandmother wants to go but I do not know what to do."

Hope has chugged into Babri Bai's life with the news of the Thar Express.

It's one ride she doesn't want to miss but her children say the procedure of getting a visa and a passport for her is just too complicated for them. It's a dim chance that Babri Bai will ever make it to the train to Pakistan.