War, we were learning slowly, is a terrible thing that turns men into beasts, women into zombies and children into scarred and introverted human beings for the rest of their lives...
When in primary school, we did not know or care about the Partition. Why would neighbours suddenly begin resenting each other enough to kill and set fire to each other’s homes? Who gained or lost in wars, whether between nations or within one country?
Truth be told, sitting in a tiny school in a small town in Uttar Pradesh, we did not know where exactly Lahore was, or Sindh or Amritsar. Our parents, when they did, talked in hushed whispers about “the Partition” and “refugees” who had come streaming in and changed the profile of “our” towns.
A little later in Nainital, we saw the terrible, unbelievable traumas some of our neighbours, who were landlords in Punjab before being driven out with next to nothing and turned into unwelcome refugees. One large family lived in a huge kothi next to ours. They were luckier than many, and had done very well with the land the Jawaharlal Nehru government had granted them in the terai region as compensation. However, memories of the Partition and a sudden loss of centuries old roots had driven several members in the family to lose their sanity. Even though they now had several kothis, as well as a “Faaram Haus”, faces of their women remained perennially sad with vacant eyes….
After the truth-shower 