“Tusi kehanday ho yad aandi hai, sanu tay yad bhuldai hi ni, jado log August 15 diyan khushian manaday nay, saadiyan akha vich athru hunday nay"
August 15 is a day when Indians celebrate their independence from the British, but for septuagenarian Gurdip Singh, the day marks the most painful chapter of his life as he had lost 18 members of his family, including his father and grandparents, in the riots during the Partition.
Gurdip, then four years old, lived in a joint family at Chappa village, now in Pakistan. His father Labh Singh, a teacher, commanded respect in Chappa and nearby villages.
“My maternal
village is Modhay, near Attari in India, while Chappa went to Pakistan with a
single stroke of pen. Both are almost at the same distance from the
international border,” Gurdip says. As he was very young at the time of the
Partition, Gurdip remembered only a few things, but he could join the missing
pieces of their history with the help of the stories narrated by his mother and
his individual research.
“When our family came to know about the Partition, the local villagers
suggested to my grandfather to relocate to Modhay, but he was so confident that
he refused to believe that the people who respect and love him could cause
harm,” the septuagenarian says. However, his grandfather made Labh to go to the
nearby village along with his wife and two sons, Gurdip adds.
The whole atmosphere was vitiated when the rioting began. “We came to know that
my grandparents and many other relatives had been killed. My father went back
to Chappa to find their bodies where many of his friends and villagers advised
him to immediately rush back to Modhay,” he says.
Gurdip says while on way to Modhay, the Baloch army shot his father dead and injured his mother. “My mother even pleaded to them to kill her, but she was somehow allowed to live. I lost my younger brother Gurdial Singh, who was later found after six months, and my mother was unable to move due to a bullet injury,” he adds.
It was a miracle, when a cyclist saw his mother with a child lying near the
bodies and offered to give her a ride to Attari hospital, Gurdip shares. “My
mother’s clothes were torn, and she was hesitant to go with him. But that
gentleman gave her a piece of cloth to wrap herself and dropped her at the
hospital,” he says.
Asked whether he remembers his village, he says, “Tusi kehanday ho yad aandi hai, sanu tay yad bhuldai hi ni, jado log August 15 diyan khushian manaday nay, saadiyan akha vich athru hunday nay (You are asking whether I remember, but I have never forgotten. When people celebrate August 15, I have tears in my eyes),” says Gurdip.
Gurdip shares that he had visited Pakistan twice, but couldn’t visit his village due to visa restrictions. With tears in his eyes, he urges the government to issue special visas to people like him so they can at least visit their ancestral homes and villages for the last time in their lives.
“Only a handful of us would be alive and everyone must be willing to visit their houses and villages as I do,” says Gurdip.
No comments:
Post a Comment