My Story: Most Of Us Moved To India Before Partition; We Used To Survive Just On A Bottle Of Water And A Few Biscuits

“Religion, caste and land all are man made divisions. Why do we fight? 2 out of 3 of us here are born in Pakistan and moved here before partition, but not once we felt we do not belong here. We all are one..and at our club we meet every evening. Around 50 of us spend couple of hours talking to each other and it is the best time of our day.

There are times when people ask us about Partition. You know there is so much about those times. We have seen blood, dead bodies, constant fear, attacks and what not.

We used to here sirens and had to go underground till the next alert. We used to survive just on a bottle of water and a pack of biscuits. At times there were kids too and they used to cry aloud. These holes were so suffocating but we were helpless. Announcement of partition brought violence. Neighbours with whom we had extremely cordial relations attempted to create a dispute. Later we heard some of the houses were burnt as well. Religious objects were destroyed and suddenly there was so much of hatred for each other amongst people with just a word -“partition”.

Dead bodies were lying on railway tracks and Hindu Muslims were killed inhumanly. Those things still bring tears in our eyes. Then we moved to Delhi and there were common kitchens. We separated from our relatives and we miss those old golden times. We started from scratch in India as all our belongings were in the other side of border. We lost so much across the border and will always cherish the good old times. If we could change something, we really wish we could change the ‘partition’.

The incoming refugees tried to agitate the local population to incite violence and the families were eventually forced to leave. I heard one of my friend sharing his experience saying that one of the recent migrants had called a meeting in those times and tried to ignite violence in people, provoking them to kill out of revenge.

There were mobs at some places that announced that if they leave their homes with all the possessions left behind they would not be hurt. However, just as they started leaving, shots were fired. In these horrifying riots many people lost their family members. The partition memories are daunting.

Times have changed..there is such a huge transformation. People are so busy in their own lives. We used to have so much of time and we balanced our personal life well. Today there is no time for one another. Kids today are so tech savvy, they don’t like human interaction. At times when we meet youngsters at the park and while interacting we realise how unaware about partition and life before partition.

We are happy with our senior club members. We don’t use phone and at times we still prefer letters. Reliving old times is so much fun so we often go back to the memory lane and reminisce our childhood. We keep making plans and one of our wishes is to meet our relatives and celebrate the love. We used to play-there was no hatred. There was so much of affection for each other. We’ve not been able to visit Pakistan after Partition so we keep describing our houses and share our special memories.”

The movie is releasing on 18th of August 2017, watch the trailer below:

Story By – Mansi Dhanak

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