Midnight when I became a foreigner to my motherland

Iwas born at Vihari on February 23, 1942. Vihari is a small township about 11 miles from Multan, now in Pakistan. had an elder brother, Harpal, and a younger sister. Our neighbours were Muslims. They too had two children, Rabina and Shaukat. Rabina was my age and Shaukat four years our senior. Shaukat and my brother played together in the ground in front of the houses, while we, the younger ones, were not allowed to move out of the houses. But when everyone was away during the day, fathers to attend to their duties, and Harpal and Shaukat to school, Rabina came to our house to play with me at the swing in the doorway of our house. We often took turns at the swing. Our parents told us that we were brother and sister, and our brother-sister relationship went beyond religious boundaries.

Rabina’s father, Uncle Hamid, was a nice man. He loved all five of us equally. Every evening, father invited him to come and play chess with him. During the game, mother served them tea with biscuits as many times as they asked for it. The bond between the two families strengthened with each passing day. We felt like one family.

Time passed. When I turned five, I often heard about partition, but I could not understand what exactly it meant. Father too thought that we were safe where we were. Both uncle Hamid and he continued to play chess in the evenings. It seemed that the sense of togetherness between the two families would go on for all times to come. But Partition changed everything.

On the evening of August 14, 1947, when they were at a game of chess in the outer room of our house, suddenly we heard rioting outside. Nearly 50 men, wielding long sticks, swords and other weapons, rushed through the passage outside, raising Pakistan zindabad slogans. Uncle Hamid immediately bolted the doors of our house from inside and then, after some time, hid all of us in the store of his house and told Shaukat and Rabina not to talk about it to anyone. Uncle Hamid went out to assess the situation. When he returned, he said that there was danger to our lives.

Either we must convert to Islam or leave that very night to go across the new border by a special arrangement made by the army. Father decided to leave. He asked us to pack whatever essentials we could to take with us. At 10pm, Shaukat and he took us to the nearby temple where five army trucks were stationed, each guarded by two armed soldiers ready to shoot. Our luggage was thrown into one of these and we too were somehow bundled into it. A short while after midnight, the trucks started off towards the Indian destination across the new border. The next day, we reached some railway station. We boarded a train and then I remember being in a refugee camp at Ludhiana.

Even today when I look back at August 14, 1947, when before midnight I was a native of the place of my birth and immediately after midnight I became a foreigner to it, and the neighbours I spent my childhood with and who put their own lives to risk to see that we reached safety, tears flow from my eyes and my heart cries out:

My Pak (sacred) motherland has today become Pakistan.

She is on that side of the border and I on this side.

To meet my motherland, tears flow non-stop,

If you make a row of these, they will go across the border.

O my motherland!

Why are you on that side and I on this side?

FATHER DECIDED TO LEAVE. HE ASKED US TO PACK WHATEVER ESSENTIALS WE COULD TO TAKE WITH US