Remnants of a Separation by Aanchal Malhotra

Author:Aanchal Malhotra
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: null
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers India
Published: 2017-05-06T04:00:00+00:00

In comparison, I thought about the piece of paper that officiated the division of the country. Documents were often seen as powerful instruments of change, depending on the conditions they laid out. A piece of paper, then, was malleable. The paper that re-allotted the family its land was never going to live up to its expectation in the disarray of post-Partition Delhi. But in the case of Undivided India, a piece of paper had changed the fate of millions. Lines drawn on a map and swift signatures of the officials involved had divided India into its respective parts: Hindu, Muslim; Friend, Enemy; East, West; Mine, Yours.

I asked him whether he still had that piece of paper, my thirst for a tangible object from the past still not satiated. In response, he scoffed and shrugged his shoulders, as if it would be the most absurd thing to have kept. So I couldn’t help but wonder, then, exactly what the attraction to Delhi was for him and his family. What was this unexplainable patriotism; why remain?

‘I have seen this country get ripped apart by that one single event. I have seen it. But despite all that, it is my country,’ he said firmly. Not really to me, but just out loud.

‘But didn’t you ever wonder what it would have been like if you had moved to Pakistan, especially after you were made to leave Delhi once?’

‘No, the thought never even crossed our minds. At the time we had envisioned it to be a small country. We didn’t know anyone in the areas that had become Pakistan. We didn’t know what kind of mulk, what kind of country, it would be, what respect we would get there, what our conditions would be like, what our plight would be after the journey there, how we would survive. We didn’t know anything and it was all just too foreign to even think about. Coming back to Delhi was the only option; this was home. It was familiar.

‘It’s true that we were just laymen in India; no political leaders or important public figures ever decorated our family tree. We were labourers, our work could be done anywhere. But it was the layman, the common man – Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Isai, it didn’t matter – it was people like us who made up the population of secular India. Secular India.

‘Yes, Pakistan was created from Hindustan, carved from within. But in my opinion it was born in the midst of loss. Hindustan lost an integral part of herself in the violence, in the bloodshed, in the politics, and that part became Pakistan.’

Suddenly, his eyes grew wide, ‘Ah, but you know, I have visited Pakistan once – in 1984. I went on a passport with a visa! During the Partition and in the years following it, some of our extended family did eventually move there, and so I went to visit them. The society, the people are not so different from here, but it is no Delhi!’

I smiled widely at him, the lover of Delhi.

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