Seared by Radcliffe line, scars still remain

Ravi Chandel

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, August 10

Days, months and years have passed but memories of her native place Jalalabad in Multan district, Pakistan, refuses to fade away for 81-year-old Shanti Devi, also known as Dyali Bai, a resident of Partap Nagar.

“It was like I needed wings to fly to Jalalabad, my home, where I spent my childhood like a princess,” said Dyali Bai.

“In Jalalabad, we were living a royal and happy life but in one night, everything changed. The brotherhood between Hindus and Muslims seemed to have vanished. I couldn’t remember the date exactly as I was just 10-year-old at that time,” she said.

“I remember that my father’s friend Maulvi saved our family from the Muslim mob. The same night, they sent us to Multan on horseback and mules. At that time, my father did not have the idea that we would never come back again to our place. He realised it in Multan from the special trains that were plying to India,” added Dyali Bai.

“During the journey from Jalalabad to Multan, we saw a number of bodies lying near the Ravi river. My father was trying to assure me and my younger brother that nothing had happened. We were told that we were going to some relative’s house. We boarded a train from Multan and when we reached Kurukshetra, we saw a large number of people living in tents,” the octogenarian said.

Dyali Bai said her home was destroyed and within a few weeks, they were reduced to being paupers.

‘We didn’t have sleepers on our feet. We spent more than two years in camps at Kurukshetra. After that, the government allotted us land in Bhiwani. But it was not that easy as my father had to make a lot of efforts to get that small piece of land,” she said.

“I do not exactly remember the year in which I got married to a freedom fighter, the late Hari Chand, a resident of Kurukshetra. I may be 13 or 14-year-old at that time and he was around 20 to 21. Later, he got a job in the Railways at Bathinda and we started living here,” added Dyali Bai.

Today, she hates Pakistan and as she says they called them ‘kaafir’.

She admires India’s first Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru for providing facilities to the people in Kurukshetra at the time of partition.