The pain of Partition that lasted a lifetime
My grandma was barely seven when she migrated to India from Pakistan along with thousands of refugees with nowhere to go. Seventy-three years ago, Partition forced the family to leave behind almost all that it had as it undertook one of the biggest exoduses in history.
Four years ago, grandmother narrated the ordeal to a social media platform that shared stories of Partition from both sides. As she spoke for the programme, Bolti Khidki, the pain was palpable.
She recalled that it was fine morning at Bura Mandi near Multan in August 1947, a few days before Partition, when her father, Kanhaiya Lal, a grocer popular as Sethji, received a message from a trader friend. The friend asked him to leave for India immediately as a local Muslim leader had announced, “Aaj Seth ki baari hai (Today is Seth’s turn)”.
Anxious, he rushed home and asked his wife to pack for the journey to India. Their eldest son, Bade Bhaisahab, who was married at that time, took the responsibility of his three younger brothers and two sisters, including my grandmother.
Just when they were ready to leave, Sethji decided to join them later as he had to arrange a caretaker for the shop, godown, and house besides making arrangements for the gold bricks buried under his room, a deposit he had kept for his daughters’ weddings.
At Kasur station in Pakistan, trains arrived packed to capacity but the trail of violence had the family numb and worried about leaving a member behind, forever. But Bade Bhaisahab kept his promise to take everyone to India safely.
On reaching Kapurthala in India, they spent a few nights at a rented accommodation waiting for Sethji. My grandma would run to the station along with Bade Bhaisahab and his junior, Kakaji, every time they heard the announcement about a train from Pakistan. Hours, and then days, passed by as the three kept counting the bodies that arrived in the trains, mostly butchered. Sometimes, grandma said, the trains brought only blood.
Clueless, two of them would return but an enraged Kakaji would stay back longer, seeking revenge. Just a day before they were to leave for Jalandhar, Sethji reached Kapurthala with a few gold bricks and a radio set.
The family was a family again. What followed was common to all refugees: A quest for food, work and a pucca house. From Kapurthala to Jalandhar and then from Delhi to Saharanpur, finally the family settled down in Karnal. Sethji was a grocer again, now with his three sons.
But the trauma of the horrific sight of the trains from Pakistan never left grandma. Decades later, movies revolving around Partition such Sunny Deol’s Gadar would bring back the horror for her.
A few days before she breathed her last on January 31 this year, she was so unwell that she was barely able to ask for water. Yet one night, we heard her sob and murmur, “Kakaji nu bachalo; Bhabhiji piche reh jaangi; koi gudiya nu chakko! (Save my brother, Bhabhiji may be left behind; someone pick up my sister).”
No one from the family understood what she was saying but I followed every word, and felt the pain of Partition.
THE THREE KEPT COUNTING BODIES THAT ARRIVED IN THE TRAINS, MOSTLY BUTCHERED. SOMETIMES, THE TRAINS BROUGHT ONLY BLOOD