The Point Of No Return
Indian partition through the eyes of my grandmother, a first witness
The Arabian Sea, ca. 1820
He filled the traditional night lamp with oil to brighten the night. He needed the light to chase away his darkened fate away. As he bundled all the rupees he could find in jute sacks while sipping hot tea on warmed porcelain plates, he contemplated the morning plan.
My grandmother’s great-great-grandfather was a first-generation Chinese settled in Lahore, India, now present-day Pakistan. He and his team of Chinese traders spent several days away from the family to transport goods between China and Lahore.
The time spent on the sea was both physically and emotionally draining. To overcome this struggle, the entire society had decided to take one last trip and pool in all their savings to secretly build a bridge connecting the two countries.
With torches, the many yellow, flat-faced men breathlessly dragged sackfuls of money onto the boat in the dark. Pirates spotted them and looted them. The society of traders vanished into thin air. My grandmother’s great-grandfather never returned.
After a month of prayers and a daily check for pigeons and posts, his wife, an Irish woman, lost hope. She was left to take care of the children alone in a conservative nation. She did very well. She worked in a convent school and raised her children to be devout Catholics.
1947, Lahore in Punjab, India, now present-day Pakistan
Her grandson, my great grandfather, was a shoemaker in Lahore’s busy Anarkali Bazaar. He continued in his grandpa’s shoes, still ordering raw material from China. The family spent summers in their house in Dalhousie, a hill station in Himachal Pradesh, India, and winters in Habibullah Road, Lahore. A friendly Muslim family acted as caretakers in their absence.
At a time when women busied themselves with cooking, cleaning, and looking after the household, his wife — my great-grandmother, was also responsible for hiding money in several places, that would magically re-appear on a rainy day.
That rainy day had come. As the woman rushed to dig out Indian rupees she had cleverly sealed in a hole in the house with cement, she shrieked at its wilted uselessness. A water pipe had exploded, and so had news of the partition between India and Pakistan.
The Backstory
In the year 1857, Hindus and Muslims came together to fight the British and weaken their dominance. Muslims were at the forefront of the battle and had ruled India for 100 years. Their supremacy threatened the British. They thus weakened their hold through the divide and rule policy — a strategy that plotted Hindus against Muslims.
My grandmother’s family was settled in Punjab, which was now to be a Muslim dominant nation. Another state that would be divided on the basis of religion was Bengal. West Bengal would remain in India and East Bengal with a majority of Muslims would go to Pakistan, now present-day Bangladesh.
The situation created a stir, with Muslims driving away Hindus from areas they believed to have control, and Hindus attempting to do the same. The partition triggered the greatest migration of people in the world outside war and famine. About 12 million people became refugees as they sought desperately to move from one newly independent nation to another.
My great grandfather wanted to escape this mayhem and ordered his wife to get ready to leave for the hills. She followed suit, burying all her gold jewelry in a hole in their house in Lahore, hoping to retrieve it at her next visit. That did not happen.
Lahore Railway Station, 1947
Trains were busting at the seams. Families traveled light with whatever they could grab. Women squeezed themselves together with other women, carrying whining children with them. Men, the decision-makers, stuffed themselves into another compartment, playing cards and poking silly jokes to swallow the tension.
The head of the family, my great grandfather, got off at every train station, to straighten his legs. While he was buying his usual pack of cigarettes and waiting for his pan (a stimulant prepared by combining betel leaf with areca nut consumed throughout Southeast Asia) in Atari, Punjab (the last station in India on the Amritsar–Lahore line), the train left the tracks earlier than usual.
A head each popped out from the windows in the men’s and women’s compartment. The clanking sound of change dropping from his pocket helped keep track of the running man — his breath, the change, and the moving train followed a steady beat and rhythm, until both the music and the man, disappeared into thin air.
Someone pulled the chain, but the train did not stop.
Dalhousie, Himachal Pradesh, India
My great-grandfather always carried his quintessential bag with a flashlight, house keys, and a pack of cigarettes. This he left in my great-grandmother’s possession. When the family reached Dalhousie, they gained access to the house.
The eldest child of the house, my grandma, hoped that history would not repeat itself, and her father would not disappear like her great-great-grandfather, who went to build the bridge to China and never returned.
After three worrisome days, the man of the house arrived.
My grandmother's dad had successfully escaped life-threatening danger and made the trip from Lahore, Punjab to Dalhousie, Himachal Pradesh in the midst of a war.
He had lived to tell his tale, which I narrate here, in the days of partition between India and Pakistan, with the help of a first witness, my grandmother.
A close brush with death
Despite a kind man attempted to stop the train to let my great grandfather in, the driver paid no heed. This was because a train before them had stopped in a similar fashion, inviting bloodshed.
People were beheaded without any questions. It was especially confusing in Lahore as no one knew where the Indian border ended and the Pakistani border began.
My great grandfather stumbled through several bodies on those blood-stained tracks until he managed to climb into a goods train. Slowly but steadily, other living human bodies emerged from behind the golden sacks.
Bodies Hindu, Muslim, and Christian, bodies that wanted to live in peace irrespective of the religion. They gorged on raw food grains, as a Muslim lady in burqa shared her only water bottle to keep them hydrated.
The train reached Pathankot, Punjab, after which my great-grandfather took a bus to his house where he was reunited with his family.
They were forced to start from scratch, forgetting about their belongings in Lahore. They were lucky to be Christians and unharmed. Threatened Muslim shopkeepers underneath begged them to take over their shops.
Rescue camps were formed to avoid further bloodshed. A ration card was started for the new settlers of India. Food reserves were low and demand high, which forced my grandmother’s family to eat just once a day.
After Partition
My grandmother married and settled down in Delhi, India, and made it her home. Her parents, who I remember as extremely devout Catholics, lived with her.
Her mother’s brother, my grandma's uncle or mamu, as we say in Hindi, decided to stay back in Lahore, Pakistan for love. The woman he married was very social and good at maintaining lost family ties. In the years to come, my grandmother made several severely scrutinized trips to Pakistan, and vice-versa.
In the year 2000, India completed 50 years of Independence and a bus was started between India and Pakistan. All of us, my grandma, her mother, my mother, my two sisters, and I went to Pakistan for the first time.
Their home there was now acquired by the Muslim caretakers who welcomed them with open arms. It still bore the same bronze doors. The treasure of family jewels may still be waiting for their rightful owners. No one other than my grandma knew the secret.
As we continued to visit Pakistan on several other occasions, my sister fell in love with mamu’s grandson. Their wedding was held in the year 2009 in India. Perhaps for the only time in history, a bus full of Pakistanis from the boy’s side of the family crossed the Indian border. The couple is now happily married and settled in Austin, Texas.
History repeats
My grandma’s uncle (mamu) in Pakistan had a huge backyard where fellow Muslim neighbors from the entire street came to break their fast after Ramadan.
His son and daughter-in-law, (now my sister’s in-laws) spent the whole day preparing appropriate food for their Muslim brothers. There was even a designated prayer place for the guests in their house.
My sister’s father-in-law, who was the director of a very esteemed Catholic organization, continued this tradition even after his father's death.
One day, because of a property dispute between the Catholic church and the Muslims, he became a soft target for their wrath. In the dark of the night, angry people broke into his house threatening his life.
After half a century, history repeated itself. My sister’s inlaws were forced to flee immediately to the USA. They applied for asylum which prevented the son from visiting his mother even at her death.
My sister’s father-in-law, then in his 50s, was forced to forget about all his possessions and re-establish himself in another country. After 10 years, of struggle, his body gave up.
Irreversible Damage
The partition of 1947 created a rift that time could not heal. The hatred spread quicker than wildfire. The negative strains can still be felt in beautiful Kashmir, where people still battle for their basic needs.
The Indian-Pakistani partition affected three generations in my family. Like ours, there may be many stories untold. They remain buried deep in the aching hearts of people of all denominations. Some never came to the surface, others got lost with those lives.
As I document her accounts, my 86-year-old grandmother is filled with nostalgia. With tears in her eyes, she says,
“Religion was never a factor. It was something personal that people practised only at home. The British brought it to the forefront.”
References
Shireen is an avid writer, budding Opera singer, apprentice nurse in Germany, wildlife rehabilitator, dog sitter, dog walker, walker…. Jack of all trades and master of one- Mother to two children aged 7 and 9!
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