India, May 31 -- War is a time that brings back many myths, sparking earnest and sometimes intense debates by people of Pakistan on the myth and reality of this small but volatile community of Hussaini Brahmins. Some challenge the very term 'Hussaini Brahmin,' asking how Brahmins can ever be Hussaini. And this is not without reason because traditionally Brahmins are a rigid high-caste Hindus who consider themselves the purest of the pure and shun even the shadows of other creeds. Well, truth can be stranger than fiction and myths are always stronger than reality.

As a little girl at my elder brother's wedding I recall my mother making a huge dish of halwa and calling it "Khwaja di karhai". Who is Khwaja, I asked her. "He is the lord and ...