n the eve of Operation Sindoor, someone I once fervently tried to get the attention of shared a piece of fake news on Instagram. The post had a click-bait sounding title, something to the effect of “look how quickly our cities start to look like Gaza…”

The influencer who had posted this (she runs a social-satire page on Instagram), has since responded to audience fact-checks and (much to her credit and unlike many on social media) issued an explanatory correction that began with the phrase, “Listen, your military had just attacked us…”

As a sea of disinformation swirled and whipped an already on-edge population into a cornered and blood-thirsty frenzy, I realised that this person, who I once would have done anything to get the attention of, was simply one of the brain-washed masses; brain-washed by design. The design was perhaps not self-evident to an outside observer, but everyone within the machine, horrified at the brazenness of the lies.

As bits of Rafale tumbled from the sky, my Raphael* came tumbling down from his pedestal. Searching for a narrative to cling to in the face of impending doom, his paralysing terror and human fragility revealed the need to attach oneself to a narrative when all across the information spectrum, from mainstream news to TikTok, was only war-mongering and propaganda.

At a time of crisis, for which the 24-hour news cycle was invented, the public looks to the news more than ever. It is an open secret around here that the media is state-controlled. In India, the media is casually called the “Godi media” on online platforms, given that any journalist not perceived as friendly to the Modi regime has been relegated to the sidelines. That unfortunately includes much of the Left and most peaceniks and secular voices.

Last week, The Wire, one source of fair and accurate reporting from the other side, was banned by the Indian government. Many digital platforms of Pakistani journalists had already been banned in India. The result was a confused and terrified subcontinent — a great and enduring civilisation that faced imminent destruction at the hands of its caretakers.

Both states created echo chambers for their populations, the control of information now expanding to increasingly include digital spaces. The media in both countries was simply repeating the talking points of their respective armed forces, with all channels of finding facts either amputated or discredited.

At this juncture in the subcontinent’s tortured history, it seems that India and Pakistan have a lot more in common than our rich, diverse and multifarious heritage. As the seas swelled, all the people I was encountering in physical or online spaces were parroting easily-debunked bits of ‘news.’ Who has the time for that during an apocalypse?

But you tell the people who matter. Ustad Ashraf Shareef Khan of the Poonch gharana, the man currently responsible for breaking me down and rebuilding me in the image of a sitarist, was meant to arrive in Lahore on May 9. But on that day, the Indian and Pakistani militaries were engaged in blowing up each other’s bases and all international carriers had suspended their operations to Pakistan subsequent to a drone attack ridiculously close to Walton in Lahore.

In the aftermath of the terror attack in Pahalgam, which targeted Hindus and further inflamed the fires of religious strife in India (that has been built up over the years, in no small part due to the pro-Modi spin-machine that is now the Indian media), I had told Ustad ji not to come.

At that point, like most Lahoris I know, he wasn’t seriously considering the possibility of war. But I remembered viscerally the aftermath of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, after which the whole world had come down on Pakistan for “exporting terror,” and which led to the current Cold War where talking to the other side is verboten. He made a joke during an online class that while I was worried about war and scrambling for information (old habits), Lahoris were enjoying their chai pakoray as usual; and that they would only start to pay attention when nihari and aloo chholay stopped being readily available.

“We’re poor countries but our armies are not poor,” I pleaded. “If the war goes nuclear, we could destroy everything… You represent the best of us.”

“Who will I represent?” he laughed.

But I insisted that he switch his classes and programmes to an online model until things were better. “In that case, we will die together, Amar,” he said, a little more serious now. “What will I do here, if my people get destroyed?”

Like any bad marriage, the issues and grievances that have existed since Partition (Hindu-Muslim tensions, the question of Kashmir and the Indus Water Treaty, chief among them) had festered in the silence of this Cold War and finally erupted. Perhaps, people’s apathy can be attributed to the systematic desensitisation caused by all the crises of the past few years: authoritarian repression, an absolutely broken down and controlled information ecosystem, Covid and the post-Covid economy. Or perhaps, they had not (until now) seen through the propaganda. Remember how May 9 (2023) was reported by the post-truth media?

Within the lies, human hubris revealed. As officials on both sides fought over how many drones had successfully entered whose airspace and how many had been shot down, the chest thumping and puffery were exposed to the watching masses who were (by May 8 or 9 at least) holding their children close.

Ustad ji was stranded in transit in Istanbul, looking desperately for a flight to Lahore, as many in Lahore felt trapped by the fact that they couldn’t even fly out of what had become a war zone. “Come by boat, Ustad ji,” I texted him on WhatsApp as I was updating him on the minute-by-minute developments and constantly refreshing satellite maps on news wires I hadn’t checked in years since I quit journalism.

Ustad ji was travelling without his sitar. I don’t think he’s ever gone this long without riyazat. He was watching in horror the devastation that he did not expect on TVs in airport/ hotel lounges.

On the morning of the ceasefire, he finally gave up and booked a flight to Germany. When I forwarded the Donald Trump tweet that congratulated “both Countries on using Common Sense and Great Intelligence,” bigly, he promptly got in line to get a flight. But amid ceasefire violations he was still unsure, as though paltry relief had been ripped away. “Ceasefire will probably hold, Guru ji; it’s ok now. Come back,” I texted him.

Ustad ji is a man of faith, like his father, the legendary maestro Ustad Shareef Khan Poonchwalay. He performs all five prayers of the day with the regularity of his riyaz. I don’t think the two things are disconnected for him. He said, “The whole time I had a feeling that things were going to be okay.”

“Divine intervention,” I responded. I had seen no signs of de-escalation before Trump intervened to score political points in his own country.

I was supposed to join Ustad ji in Karachi from May 21 to June 22. My father, a senior journalist and longtime peacenik, was yelling at me nonstop for wasting money on a ticket that might be non refundable. “If we all die, does it matter if I get a refund, Dad? I’m going to go to Karachi.”

“How are you going to go,” he looked up at me over his glasses.

“I’ll take a train.”

“And if the trains are not running?”

“I’ll take a car, I’ll take a donkey! I don’t know. But I get so little time with Ustad ji and our arts are passed on orally from master to disciple.”

He laughed for a considerable while and then said, “I think in the end both you and your ustad will be going to Karachi by donkey.”

On Sunday, I went to the Anarkali Book Bazaar. The streets of Lahore were uncharacteristically empty but the weather was unseasonably pleasant. There were rain clouds and the sun beamed behind them like Raphael himself was smiling down on us. Even me of little faith felt that there were greater forces than we understand at play, and that the farce of two highly militarised states that use propaganda to manufacture consent for war and have been in an arms race since time immemorial, while many rural areas in both countries still lack access to basic healthcare and education, has been forced into the light.

Ustad ji arrived in Lahore on May 15, so that we could fly to Karachi together and share the magic of these ancient strings with as many people as we can. All things considered, I feel optimistic that truth does not die a natural death. History has a long memory.

*Raphael is the archangel of healing and patron saint of the blind in the Babylonian Talmudic tradition. In Islam he is Israfel, the sweetest voice of all creatures, who will blow the trumpet that signals the Day of Judgment. Referred to in Edgar Allan Poe’s eponymous poem on the angel as he “whose heart-strings are a lute.”

Amar Alam is a writer and sitarist living in Lahore. She can be found on Instagram @amar.alam_literally