I-Day Special: Tales from Delhi of homes lost, hope found

RAminder and Harpreet Kaur, 70 and 50‘We moved from a castle in west pakistan, to barracks hither... But we held on to trust’“ thither we had everything; here, nothing in comparison.” That was how Raminder Kaur’s paternal grandmother used to sum up the upheaval of Partition, when the family left behind their house, belongings, and life in Gujrat, Pakistan.“She would tell me we had a really big house there, almost like a palace,” Raminder, now 70, recalls. “There’s a saying I often heard – jo rani thi voh goli ban gayi, jo goli thi voh rani ban gayi – the queen became insignificant, the insignificant became the queen.”When asked if they still have anything from those days, Raminder and her 50-year-old sister Harpreet light up. “We have their utensils – plates, glasses, frying pans – but we don’t use them. We keep them safe,” Harpreet says. Raminder adds with pride, “We have our grandfather’s coat, and his silver watch studded with diamonds. It doesn’t work, but we keep it. We also have his perfume bottle – it’s empty, but still holds a beautiful fragrance.”They have even preserved a piece of their grandmother’s wedding dress, and her prized gold hairpin. “We turned it into a necklace, and wear it,” Harpreet says. For both sisters, these objects are more than heirlooms – they are touchstones to a life and family that once was.Raminder has heard countless stories from her parents and grandparents about their journey across the border. Her father’s family first went to Amritsar to stay with relatives, before moving to Delhi. Her paternal grandfather had been working in Delhi as a road contractor even before Partition, but he himself never made it here.“He died in 1947, in Amritsar,” Raminder says. “My father, 14 at the time, travelled separately from the rest. My grandfather thought his son had been killed. When they finally met, and he realised his son was alive, the shock of it killed him.”Life in Delhi began in barracks, where food was scarce. “Getting rations was hard, and never enough. My father told me he used to eat only one roti a day, at 5pm, and then nothing at night,” Raminder says. The family’s fortunes improved when they were allotted a house in Vijay Nagar. In a stroke of luck, many of their former neighbours from Pakistan were allotted houses in the same row.“Living among our community gave us strength – right after Partition, and later too,” Harpreet says. “If something happened and someone called, we could be there instantly. During the 1984 riots, we were safe because our community was together here.”Today, the sisters still live in the same Vijay Nagar house their grandparents received in 1947.Its walls, and the carefully kept treasures inside, hold the memory of a journey from a palace in Pakistan to barracks in Delhi – and the unbroken thread of a family’s resilience.Mohinder Singh, 84‘Attackers thought our train carried only cargo’For 84-year-old Mohinder Singh, a two-night train ride in August 1947 remains the longest and most terrifying journey of his life. He was just six when his family, along with hundreds of Sikh and Hindu refugees, was crammed into the dark, airless belly of a goods train. Hidden among sacks and crates, with no food, water, light, or air, they crossed into India—leaving behind their flourishing orchard business and their home in the hilly Haripur area, which became part of Pakistan.“As tensions worsened, our relative Ram Das urged us to move to Punjab in India. My father refused — until Das told him about the Muslim village head’s announcement that he would kidnap and marry my father’s cousin, the most beautiful woman in the village, after killing our family,” recalls Singh, now director general of Bhai Vir Singh Sahitya Sadan in Delhi.His memories of that escape are fragmented. But he knows the family survived only because of Das’s quick thinking. He arranged two goods train bogies marked boldly with “Goods for Patiala” and “Goods for Bhatinda.”“As the train rattled toward an unknown future, we had no idea if we’d live. I believe the attackers ignored us, thinking the bogies carried only cargo,” Singh says.He does not remember the station where they boarded. But he will never forget the moment the sealed doors opened at Amritsar. “That was the first light we saw. After two days without food or water, we were given two spoonfuls of khichdi in our hands and water to drink.”The dangers did not end with their arrival. At Patiala station, heavy rain drenched them as they walked to a gaushala, a temporary shelter for refugees. Two days later, they were told to occupy homes vacated by Muslims sent to Pakistan. What they saw outside remains etched in his mind.“The scene was horrific. Naked bodies lay on the streets. My family and other refugees rescued 30–35 women, who were later shifted to a refugee camp,” Singh says.Starting over was difficult. Singh’s entry into school happened by accident. “I noticed some neighbourhood children disappearing for hours every day. Curious, I followed them to a government school. When I was admitted, the teacher misheard my name -- Har Mohinder Singh -- and wrote only Mohinder Singh. That became my official name,” he laughs.From a boy hidden among sacks in a goods train to the head of a literary institution, Singh’s life has carried the weight of Partition’s horrors and the resilience to rebuild from nothing. But the journey that began in darkness, sealed away from the world, is one he has never been able to forget.Atma Singh, 93‘We boarded a train with the dead’In August 1947, Atma Singh was just 15 when four or five armed armymen arrived in his village in Lahore. Brandishing “large weapons,” they gave his family of six barely 15 minutes to pack before putting them on a train to Kasur in Pakistan. There, just seven kilometres from the Indian border at Ferozepur, they waited for five days without food or water for a train to carry them to India.“When a train finally came from the Pakistan side, it was filled with dozens of bodies – cut into pieces, blood dripping everywhere. There was no place to sit, so we didn’t board. Two days later, another train came in the same state. This time, we boarded it and reached Ferozepur – with the dead – on August 25 or 26,” recalls Singh, now 93, a retired autorickshaw driver living in west Delhi’s Vikaspuri with his sons’ families.Born to Har Singh, an airport worker, and Kesar Devi, Atma Singh was the third of four children. He remembers the sting of leaving behind their newly built house – and the old furniture stored at “Saeeda Tai’s” next door. “We knew it was permanent. My parents packed an iron trunk with clothes, a few utensils, some gold, and about ₹300 before we left,” he recalls.His memory remains sharp. He recalls hiding in fields whenever “Muslim men came with swords on horses” through the streets. In Lahore, he had studied till Class 3, learning Urdu and mathematics.“I still sign in Urdu. I don’t know any other language,” he says.Partition’s aftermath was merciless on the family, he says. In Punjab, he lost his entire immediate family over the years – his elder sister to tuberculosis, a younger sister murdered in a robbery, and an elder brother hanged for killing her murderer. His father died in an accident, and his mother succumbed to illness.Singh worked as a truck, car, and later autorickshaw driver. In 1961, he moved to Delhi seeking a better life. But violence found him again during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots following the assassination of Indira Gandhi. “My son and I had to cut our hair to survive,” he says quietly.Now, in his ninth decade, Singh sits in his modest Delhi home, his life marked by journeys he never chose and losses that never left him. “These incidents define me… I think I’ll take these memories to my grave,” he says.Nina Puri, 82‘Our home became a shelter’“I am at the edge of partly reminiscing about this episode and partly reliving it,” says 82-year-old Nina Puri, seated in her Vasant Vihar home. Born in Old Delhi, she witnessed her extended family arrive in India during Partition in August 1947.“My father’s elder brother, his wife and their eight children were still in Pakistan when my father moved here in early 1940s because he was inducted into the Indian Education Services – a government position,” she recalls. “But when the partition was announced, they came here with absolutely nothing and started staying with us.”Her grandfather’s Old Delhi home, close to the railway station, soon became a dharamshala for Hindus and Sikhs pouring in from across the border. Refugees found food, shelter, and safety there.Holding a book written by her maternal aunt’s son, Family Values – Reminiscences of Raj Rani Malik, Puri recounts her aunt’s harrowing escape from Sialkot, where her aunt lived with her children while her husband worked in Lahore.“She moved from place to place carrying her children, with no food or water on some days. They saw people murdered on the road to India. When she finally reached Delhi, my maternal grandmother gave her utensils because she had nothing,” Puri says.In August 1947, Delhi itself was gripped by violence. “When there was bloodshed all over, my mother and I would secretly visit my grandparents because people were being killed on the streets,” she says.For years, Puri heard her grandparents describe the family’s ancestral house in Rawalpindi, built in 1903 – its colourful windows, checkered floors, and oval façade. In the 1970s, while working in the social sector, she travelled to Pakistan and decided to find it.“An acquaintance in Rawalpindi took me there,” she says.The house still stood, its oval front and windows intact. “A woman with her grandson had occupied part of it. Seeing it was surreal,” Puri says, holding a photograph of the home.A lifetime in social work – after graduating from Miranda House and earning a doctorate in the United States – has not dimmed her memories of that August. The faces of those who arrived with nothing, the crowded rooms of her grandfather’s home, and the haunting beauty of the Rawalpindi house remain vivid, threads that tie her life to the upheaval of Partition.Raj Kumar Chawla, 86‘We thought humanity would prevail, but Partition won’Raj Kumar Chawla was just eight, a Class 4 student, when Partition upended his world. Of his lost home in Kasur Tehsil, now in Pakistan’s Lahore, three images remain etched in his mind: the name “Raj Kumar Building” engraved in Urdu in a circular design on the main gate of their new two-storey house; a secret iron cash box hidden in the wall; and the ritual of dropping into it a silver coin his father gave him each night.“The memories are few but vivid. I still remember the nameplate so clearly I could draw it even today. That cash box held my first savings—coins I’ll never get back,” says Chawla, now 86, who lives in Noida and runs a transformer manufacturing company.On August 10, 1947, four days before Partition, the family left for Haridwar after Muslim employees warned Chawla’s father, Diwan Chand, of an impending massacre. Carrying only an iron trunk with clothes and cash, they boarded a train from Lahore, leaving behind everything. “Our parents locked the house thinking we’d return once unrest settled. But we never did,” Chawla says.They took refuge in Mamdot, Punjab’s Ferozepur district. The first week after Partition remains seared in his mind. In the Muslim-majority town, Sikh and Hindu refugees lived in constant fear. Men stayed awake all night, taking turns to guard homes, cattle, jewellery, and women, shouting slogans like Jo Bole So Nihal and Jai Bajrang Bali—not in celebration, but as warnings to stay alert.In 1955, Chawla’s family moved to Delhi’s Kamla Market. But one story from Mamdot still pierces him. His maternal grandfather and uncle decided to return valuables—silver cutlery, brass lamps, expensive carpets—left behind in the haveli of the Nawab of Mamdot, sending them across the border in carts as a gesture of goodwill.“Some days later, the carts returned — not with thanks, but with bodies of Hindus and Sikhs. We thought humanity would prevail, but Partition won,” Chawla says, his voice trembling.It is why his family never returned to see their Kasur home. But Chawla, who still dreams of that engraved nameplate and the hidden coins, has one wish left: “I want to visit before I die.”