ABSTRACT
In November 2013 an Indian television advertisement for Google entitled “The Reunion” went viral on YouTube, garnering over four million hits from India, Pakistan, and the wider world in just ve days (Associated Press; Google India). The advert pivots on the friendship of two boys from different religious backgrounds who were separated due to the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947. Now an old man living in Delhi, the Hindu boy Baldev Mehra reminisces to granddaughter Saman about his younger years ying kites and stealing sweets in what is today’s Pakistan. He recalls his best friend Yusuf especially fondly, and so, aided by the Google search engine and associated apps, Saman traces this fellow septuagenarian and brings him to Delhi to be reunited with Baldev on the latter’s birthday. The ad generated largely positive reactions on both sides of the border, although Associated Press quotes one second-generation partition migrant’s observation that it is not so easy for ordinary people to travel between India and Pakistan in the ongoing climate of hostility between the two countries.
