Anecdotes that I never forget.

As I went through the chapter describing Kushwant Singh’s experiences during the partition of India and Pakistan, in his autobiography Truth, Love and a little Malice, I recalled my mother once telling her families’ experiences. Though she was born after her family had moved to India after partition, she still knew the stories of those times as told by her elder brothers and sisters. It was the time when we were watching the opening scenes of the movie Gadar, when she told us a few of those.

In days preceding partition, violence had broken out in parts of western Punjab, which now belong to Pakistan, where my maternal grandfather had his big house. They, along with hundreds of Hindu and Sikh families, decided to move out of the village with whatever they could carry. The houses with lots of family gold buried under the floors and in the walls (those times, this was considered the safest method of storing the treasures) were left unprotected. My grandfather along with his wife, a few young children and a newly born boy boarded the train for the new-India. The trains were stopped in between for days, the Hindus and Sikhs dragged out of the trains and killed in cold blood. But not before hurting them where it hurt the most. The young daughters and sisters were raped in front of their fathers and brothers. The Sikhs were punished by cutting off their sacred hair. And much more.. The hatred was never one sided. The same was done with the Muslims crossing the border from the other side.

My grandfather and his family escaped all this by bolting the doors of the train compartment and not opening them until they reached the destination. The boarders of the train had to relieve themselves in the compartment. The children got sick. And sicker of living in the smell of vomit and shit for days at stretch. My grandfathers’ elder children even suggested literally throwing out their youngest brother, still feeding on breast milk and suffering from extreme diarrhea, as he was too much trouble for all of them. Still, my grandmother did not abandon her child. I was appalled to hear this. How could my masijis and mamajis even think about such a thing! But then, that was the atrocities of partition saying that, not them.

On other hand, my grandfather’s brother decided to take a lorry(truck sort of thing) to move to India. The lorry being overloaded with people and luggage overturned in its way. Only a few survived. The brother had to be operated upon to be saved. But he never came out alive out of the operation. It is believed that the doctors turned corrupt seeing all the gold he carrying tied to his body. This conclusion is not baseless because his dead body later showed signs of poison.

Sometimes I wonder, what causes people to turn so evil. What inculcates so much hatred in them that they are ready to kill masses of innocent people.  And it is not that its all history. All this still happens. Iraq. Afghanistan. How many more such chapters? How many more such anecdotes?

~ by hakunamatatawithgarima on June 18, 2010.