Several years ago, I spent a few days sending an email appeal to everyone in my inbox who might have been able to help. Some folks did, and some wheels turned, and the result was that a certain Major crossed a border for the first time in over six decades.

And on that October morning, I was there to receive him. And I felt humbled and thrilled at the same time, at the small part I had played in making this happen.

Habib Ahmed spent his youth in Kapurthala, Punjab. Come 1947, come Partition, his family chose Pakistan and settled in Lahore. Later, he joined the Pakistan Army and fought three wars against the country of his birth and youth. But the warring did not mean, as I might naïvely have thought it would, that he developed and nurtured a hatred for India. Instead, the memories of his younger days stayed alive, and he longed to see Kapurthala once more. As the years passed, the longing, it only deepened.

I heard about this from his daughter, whom I met on a visit to the USA. "Any way you can help?" she asked idly. So that's why the email appeal. That's why, on a sunny October morning, I waited at the Wagah Border for 85 year-old Major Habib to walk from Pakistan into India. And that's why I spent a day-and-a-half with him on his return, six decades on, in Kapurthala. The moment he met his childhood friend, Rattan Chand - the tears in their eyes, their hands unwilling to part, their inability to speak for several minutes - that moment lives in my heart, these years later.

And that very day is actually Rattan Chand's 94th birthday. His present is his friend from a lifetime ago. But the local senior citizens' club also has an evening function to celebrate Rattan Chand, and Major Habib's presence doubles the celebration. People cheer, garland them both, give them shawls ("tokens of our love", says one) ... and I'm watching and wondering: when will the hatred for the enemy country surface? Especially with this soldier come here from there?

But there is no hatred. There is instead endless curiosity, emotion, warmth. Someone recites couplets he has composed for this moment, rhyming "Habib" with karib ("near"). Someone speaks of his feelings about this moment, and slowly, almost inevitably, chokes up. Someone sings into the dusk, and I think: this is about the loveliest dusk I've spent in my life.

Then Major Habib rises to speak. He tells his story, and talks of the laxman rekha ("line that cannot be crossed") between India and Pakistan. He says: "I travelled all over the world. But I never came home. I've tried to cross this laxman rekha for years, but I just could not come home. I'm so happy that I've finally crossed it today, on my friend Rattan's 94th birthday."

The next day, I left them to each other's company and returned home. Rattan Chand died just before his 95th birthday, a year later. Major Habib died at 96. They never met again.

Some years later, I heard about another border crossing. It began this way: a small group of us gathered in a tiny room to watch a half-hour South African documentary, Beyond Forgiving. It's about a woman, Ginn Fourie and a man, Letlapa Mphalele, who formed a bond I would think was impossible. That's because in 1993, Mphalele gave the orders for a massacre which killed Fourie's only daughter, Lyndi.

Digest that. A border crossing, come to think of it, right there.

Yes, I find it hard to imagine two such people meeting, let alone forming a friendship. Yet that happened. "[F]or a long time," Mphalele explains in the film, "I had demonized the people I was fighting against, but when [Fourie was] reaching out ... it was like an opening of a world that was, until then, closed to me."

Given that Mphalele was directly responsible for her daughter's murder, Fourie expected him to be a certain kind of man, and says as much in the film. To her astonishment, she found herself increasingly impressed with his integrity and humanity. (Watch the film.)

Their unlikely bond led them to form the Lyndi Fourie Foundation, working towards broad reconciliation in South Africa. I don't know if the foundation and its two remarkable founders are still active. But read more about their story here. And again, watch the film. The blurb on the flyer for the screening I attended said this about Fourie and Mphalele: "Through their work, they try to bring a new spirit of community and forgiveness, in their country and beyond."

For me, there was a closer connect in that tiny room. Also in the audience was a 60 year-old Pakistani writer, S, and after the film he told us his story.

His family is from Punjab. In 1947, like Major Habib, they left for Pakistan. That is, and I need to say, what was left of S's family left for Pakistan. For before they could leave, a mob descended on their home and slaughtered many of them.

Some years before our film screening, S managed to get a visa - no, I played no role in that one - and visited India, Punjab in particular. In his wanderings, and via a series of contacts, he ran into someone he could never have expected. This was a man who remembered watching the slaughter of S's family members. The man even described for him how the men climbed to the roof and tossed a baby boy off. He even pointed out to S the roof in question.

But there was more to come. Via some more contacts and circumstances, S found himself drinking chai one evening with someone still more unexpected. This was one of the men who actually killed his relatives, including that baby boy.

Again and again in the telling, and especially at this point, S had to stop to wipe his tears. But through the tears, he also described for us the tears the killer shed when they met. Six decades of guilt and remorse for what he had done that day in 1947 will do that.

Some borders, they must be crossed.

Confession: I've actually told these stories before in different forms. But separately. For some time, I've wanted to combine them.