Someday in mid-August 1947, my grandmother, Abnash Kaur, then about 12 years of age, boarded a practice along with her household from Lahore in what’s now Pakistan. The journey would take her to Kalka, a sleepy Indian city within the foothills of the Himalayas. She would by no means return to Pakistan.
Like an estimated 15 million others, she was a refugee – pressured to go away her residence because the subcontinent was divided into two separate nation-states: Pakistan and India.
Tens of millions of Muslims headed to West and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) whereas hundreds of thousands of Hindus and Sikhs, like my grandmother, migrated to India. One of many largest-ever mass migrations, the Partition left as many as two million folks lifeless and as much as 100,000 girls kidnapped or raped.
Houses had been set on hearth and looted. Trains shuffling refugees forwards and backwards between the newly shaped nations had been stuffed with corpses and gangs of vengeful males armed with swords. Massacres en route had been commonplace. Based on a report by the Australian Related Press in September 1947, one bloodbath left 3,000 Muslim passengers lifeless. Studies of trains dripping in blood and railways blanketed with the lifeless led to those treacherous journeys turning into often known as “blood trains”.
Girls drowned themselves to keep away from being raped, their bloated our bodies floating by way of contaminated, blood-stained rivers. The acrid scent of demise and destruction embedded itself into the nations’ topography.
My grandmother, nonetheless, by no means spoke of any of this. When requested about Partition, she would reply simply that “unhealthy issues occurred”. If probed additional, she would merely ignore the query or change the subject. So we seldom requested.
On the age of 24, she migrated to Malaysia from India along with her new husband – my grandfather, a police inspector and former soldier within the British Malaya military.
She arrived in Malaysia as if she had all the time been there. Like a shiny, new decoration dangling on a Christmas tree she slot in completely; studying to talk Bahasa Melayu fluently and to cook dinner Chinese language and Malay dishes.
She gave start to her first little one in 1959 and went on to have six extra, certainly one of whom died in infancy. She lived in a number of completely different cities in Malaysia earlier than lastly settling in Seremban in 1963, a city recognized for tin mining and its candy, baked pork buns.
To us, it appeared Partition was little greater than a distant reminiscence to her.
Raven black hair
On February 3, 2019, at 4:30am, my grandmother died of most cancers. It had began in her breasts and metastasised to each bone in her physique.
Ten minutes earlier, when everybody else was sleeping, I had gone into her room, the place she lay on the hospital mattress we had rented so she might spend her ultimate months at residence.
I held her hand, listless and sticky with Johnson’s child oil we used to moisturise her dehydrated pores and skin. On her wrists had been the gold bracelets my grandfather had given her lengthy earlier than.
The maroon varnish my sister and I had painted on her nails a month earlier was chipped now. Earlier than most cancers, she all the time wore a slick coat of maroon or a deep cherry crimson to match her Maybelline lipstick. She would by no means have been seen with it chipped.
Even in her early 80s, she had meticulously dyed her hair raven black with a field of the Revlon hair dye she stockpiled in her kitchen cabinet. As a toddler, I used to be all the time mesmerised by that thick, black hair drenched in “Zam Zam” oil that smelt like Vicks and codeine cough syrup.
Now mendacity in mattress pumped filled with morphine, no matter strands of hair she had left had been gray. Her physique, as soon as plump from incessant cooking and consuming, was now skinny, frail and chilly – enveloped in thick winter fleeces. I kissed her head, squeezed her hand and thru tears instructed her I beloved her.
I left the door ajar as I went to get some chocolate milk, and within the few seconds I used to be gone, she handed away.
My household put me answerable for her obituary, being the one author within the household. We talked about how she beloved to cook dinner. How she beloved to speak. How she favored KFC and unhealthy Indian cleaning soap operas. How she knew all of the gossip on the town. How her youngsters had been her life. And the way she was mild and sort to everybody – from the milkman to the okra plant in her backyard.
Greater than 100 folks attended her funeral. Nearly everybody had a narrative in regards to the kindness my grandmother had proven them of their middle of the night. She was a part of a friendship group that dated again to the late Fifties when she first arrived in Malaysia; that they had supported one another by way of the loss of a kid, home violence, sickness and, lastly, demise.
However I knew nothing of her formative years. Nothing of who she was earlier than she turned a spouse, mom, grandmother and matriarch of our household.
Earlier than she died, she had promised me she would lastly inform me the story she had averted for all these years. However by the point I got here residence to go to, the most cancers had utterly ravaged her – leaving simply the shell of the talkative lady I had as soon as recognized. She barely spoke within the months earlier than her demise. And when she died, she took her Partition story along with her.
‘She refused to speak about it’
So I made a decision to retrace my grandmother’s journey with the little info I had. Piecing collectively components of her life utilizing a mix of Google Avenue View, maps, journey guides and YouTube movies, I’ve travelled by way of her Partition journey and formative years. And within the course of, I’ve realized extra about her than I ever imagined I’d.
My grandmother was born in Sialkot, Pakistan – an historic metropolis that was razed by Alexander the Nice and which had a considerable Sikh inhabitants previous to Partition. It’s the primary producer of footballs on the earth and residential to a 500-year-old gurdwara.
We have no idea precisely when she was born. She had no start certificates. Her household was working-class and her father was a railway employee.
Looking for extra info, I contacted my aunt, the oldest of my grandmother’s youngsters. She, in flip, advised I communicate to my grandmother’s finest good friend of 60 years and my grandmother’s sister-in-law. However neither of them knew a lot about my grandmother’s formative years. “She refused to speak about it,” they each defined.
Based on my grandmother’s sister-in-law, she had well-off kin in Agra, the house of the Taj Mahal. The patriarch of the family labored for the Indian military. My grandmother’s household would vacation there whereas they had been nonetheless dwelling in Sialkot. It was completely different from the life she lived in Sialkot along with her father’s modest pay as a railway employee. I vaguely bear in mind my grandmother speaking about how a lot she beloved to swim in the course of the faculty holidays. I’d wonder if she swam in iridescent marble swimming pools just like the one we noticed on the Taj Mahal once we went collectively in 2003.
She had two siblings, an older sister who, like her, migrated to Malaysia and a youthful, abusive, alcoholic brother who lived in Canada. He would typically go to Malaysia to beg my grandmother for her gold to gasoline his behavior. He handed away years in the past, in accordance with my mom. I by no means met him.
My grandmother additionally survived typhoid fever thrice. It appeared she caught it as a toddler and once more across the time of Partition. The typhoid would result in power, extreme leg pains that plagued her in previous age.
She lived a easy life in Pakistan. She would traverse orchards of Chaunsa mango and jujube timber in turquoise juttis and would eat chikoo and pomegranate throughout lengthy summer time nights. After faculty, she would drink a cool glass of lassi from the road meals vendor close to her modest residence. She beloved the sweets of her homeland; Balushai, Kalakand, Jalebi and Patiasa which her household would purchase from family-run candy outlets on their meagre wage.
Based on the late veteran Indian journalist, Kuldip Nayyar, Sialkot withstood the preliminary surge of violence in 1947. In August 1947, after India and Pakistan’s independence, my grandmother and her household left for Lahore to board a practice to the newly created India. The small home within the sprawling working-class neighbourhood the place Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus had as soon as co-existed peacefully, the 500-year-old gurdwara, the sweets and pomegranate timber had been all gone and finally forgotten by my grandmother as she started her new life in India.
Practice journey
As my grandmother left us little to go by, I needed to flip to secondary sources like Practice to Pakistan, by Khushwant Singh, the famed Indian creator who took a really comparable practice journey from Lahore to Kalka throughout Partition. Though the e book and 1998 film had been considerably useful, I wanted extra. I made a decision to attempt nearly travelling by way of my grandmother’s journey. I began by watching movie footage of refugee trains from Lahore by the British Movie Institute. I’m not positive what I had anticipated. I had examine Partition however maybe didn’t absolutely perceive the horror of it; the sheer scale of the occasion.
The Partition Museum of Amritsar has a digital exhibit with Google Arts and Tradition that gives an interactive overview of how a typical partition practice journey would go. The trains had been stuffed with folks stuffed like cattle in a pen, awaiting doable demise by way of a bloodbath, illness or hunger.
My grandmother migrated round monsoon season amid sweltering warmth, torrential downpours, and the shadowy, lurking presence of cholera. Going by way of the digital archives of the museum and watching survivor tales, I couldn’t assist however surprise what it will need to have been like for my grandmother. Overcrowded trains with refugees hanging onto its exterior. Discarded baggage losing away in practice stations. The arrival of refugees into varied camps in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh the place they had been processed into their new homeland. I imagined my grandmother boarding the practice in her pink Punjabi swimsuit with jasmine garlands in her chottis (plaits) and smeared kajal from crying.
Whereas my grandmother by no means talked about her practice journey, I discovered a weblog of a Partition survivor who went to the identical practice station as my grandmother: Kalka railway station. Not like my grandmother, he was heading to Pakistan from India. He recalled the collective tears shed from passengers who needed to go away all their belongings behind, a suitcase stuffed with Qurans piled among the many baggage on the platform.
My grandmother and her household finally arrived in Kalka and made a life of their new homeland, as finest as they may. She studied till the tenth grade and have become a main faculty instructor quickly after. In 1958, she married my grandfather in Kalka amidst a backdrop of rolling, verdant hills. Her sister, who was already settled in Malaysia, had met with my grandfather and instructed him about my grandmother. He had chosen her title from an inventory of eligible Sikh bachelorettes in India. They celebrated their honeymoon within the city earlier than they left for Malaysia – by no means to return.
Contact e book
In 1980, my mom visited Kalka for the primary time along with her uncle, my grandmother’s brother. They went to see the household residence. “It was a wood home, close to the hills, with lambs and child goats. It was modest and crowded,” she recalled.
After my grandmother died, my mom saved her contact e book from the 70s. We tried to search out her kin, those who lived in Kalka and others who lived in Punjab, Canada, New Delhi, and different components of Malaysia. Regardless of my grandmother dwelling solely an hour away from her sister, they weren’t shut so nobody knew the contacts of my grandmother’s sister’s youngsters, who had been nicely into their 70s. My grandmother’s contact e book meticulously saved particulars of names and addresses however no cellphone numbers. It appeared practically unimaginable to search out anybody – till we got here throughout one lady who lived in Punjab. I had managed to search out her title and the cellphone variety of a store she owned. My mom known as solely to search out out that the girl was not the identical lady within the contact e book. There was no method we had been going to search out out any extra details about my grandmother.
Why was my grandmother such a thriller? Why did she by no means go residence or speak about her mom, father or sister? Maybe as a consequence of trauma, my grandmother selected to chop that a part of her life out, like slicing out a festering wound. Though we will speculate about trauma being the explanation my grandmother by no means talked about any of it – the Partition, her childhood, the practice journey, her household – we are going to by no means know the solutions.
My grandmother might have died and left us with extra questions than solutions, however this complete thriller has bonded my household collectively. It made us all begin speaking about her once more and who she was as an individual based mostly on how we knew her – the good, type and chatty lady who had an affinity for Tupperware and fluffy socks from Daiso. We now have talked about hiring a non-public investigator to search out her kin and mentioned a doable journey to Punjab and her unique residence in Pakistan. Though we are going to all must accept nearly travelling for now.