This store sits on Devon Avenue in Chicago, a street that has been central to one immigrant group after another for almost a hundred years. Now, please notice the middle line in the large sign: A Complete Pakistani & Indian Grocery Store.

Considerable numbers of Indians and Pakistanis began coming to Chicago in about 1977. But just 30 years prior, as British India was divided, these two groups brutally killed one another. A couple of million people died that way, and just 30 years later, memories were fresh.

But while Indians and Pakistanis have lots of problems in the old country, here on Devon Avenue… free to mingle or not… they began to get along; to the point were they willingly live and work together. They even hold joint concerts.

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Before going back to the mundane, please consider that humans are more cooperative than we’ve been led to believe… that once they are neither forced together nor kept apart, they begin to cooperate.