BY LIVLEEN BHAGAT
I wasn't even four years old when India gained freedom.
This year India celebrated 75 years of Independence.
My memories of the painful partition are an amalgam of forlorn, crestfallen, creased faces, vibrations of uncertainty, low and deep whispers of pain still echo in my mind. As if tucked deep in my subconscious only to surface intermittently, is neither consistent nor chronological.
In these flickering images of sepia tone, I see my parents, relatives, objects, associations, even the wagging tail of pets–abandoned by their English masters who packed their bags and went back home for good. The sequestered sounds and the vague colour pallets; moments of happiness and sadness seem etched in my memory.
It’s like a meditation: to concentrate on these broken images and beckon the past from the dark recesses of my mind. It’s not very different from an archaeologist carefully peeling off layers of the stratum to rediscover the buried past, bit by bit. The dormant memories stir in my watery brain, exciting billions of neurons and from the dark depths of consciousness rise bubbles of recollections.
A long time translates into a long journey, images wayfaring miles through the cerebral veins, passing through the midbrain, the cerebral cortex to the frontal lobe, in the process, stimulating my past into the present. And then comes a moment, all of a sudden, when the cerebrum sparks and sputters to life like a retro cinema projector. A distant life steps out from the shadows of the past.
It was, indeed, a time of darkness and pain and anguish for those who were forced to cross the border on either side. It gives me a shiver even today to recollect the shock and trauma of being uprooted and expelled from one’s home for generations.
It happened overnight. Millions of Hindu, Sikh and Parsi became pariahs in their own motherland as the new political masters swore their allegiance to Islam. Friends turned foes, even killers. The partition is a saga of lives torn apart, loss of loved ones, of crushed spirit and shattered dreams, of blood gushing down the drains of the city. We paid a big price for the cherished freedom. My family is no exception.
***
In 1947, I, the little girl, Livleen, lived with my parents in a cottage nestled in the green hills of Shimla; it had a smaller annex with a few rooms. The cottage was not far from the main building of the Walker Hospital, also called the Viceroys Hospital.
My father, Satya Pal Bhalla, a doctor, was the administrator in-charge of the hospital. Daddy had served as the Captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps, later renamed as the Medical Corps of the British Army. He served with distinction in the Middle East for four years during the Second World War.
Daddy studied medicine at the prestigious King Edward Medical College in his hometown of Lahore and belonged to ‘the batch of 1938’ as he’d proudly declare. It was here Daddy met the love of his life, my mother and his batchmate, Jagjit Kaur Malhotra—a proud and elegant Sardarni from the family of doctors in Amritsar.
Mummy’s father, my Nana, Jagat Singh, was a sepoy’s doctor–or an Indian doctor for the native soldiers--a progressive man.
In those days, only a handful of girls were allowed to pursue higher studies, and for a woman to be a doctor was almost unheard of. My mother’s sister too was pursuing medicine, however, she finished her studies in India after the partition, but that’s a story for another time.
In 1950, Mummy got posted as the superintendent of the Lady Reading Hospital in Shimla. However, during the painful months of the partition, she moved to Amritsar to take care of her father, and younger siblings.
Daddy looked after me and his extended family, a couple of dozen of them, who had arrived in batches after being expelled from Pakistan.
The cottage was so large that the three of us appeared lost in the wide spaces. This changed after the deposed relatives came to live with us. Soon the cottage was infested with new faces, some familiar, others I had never seen before. The space seemed to shrink as more and more relatives arrived. Distressed faces filled every nook and corner of the cottage.
Dadaji—my paternal grandfather—Rai Sahib Mohan Lal Bhalla was a bulky man with an air of authority, yet very caring. He had the distinction of being the first Indian principal of the prestigious Central Model School in Lahore, and held this position for ten years from 1929 to 1939.
Dadiji—my paternal grandmother—Durga Devi was a gentle lady who’d call me ‘Loovleen’ in the typical Punjabi accent, instead of the western pronunciation of ‘Livleen.’ Her voice still resonates in my mind.
The six of us, me with Daddy, Dadaji and Dadiji, with my father's two younger siblings, Kamal aunty and Vidya uncle, shifted to the annex and left the cottage for the growing number of relatives. It didn’t bother me much, perhaps, I was too young to care. Vidya, a graduate student, was my youngest uncle, later joined the hospital as a clerk.
The four bedroom of the main cottage was occupied by dozens of relatives—married aunts and uncles, and their parent-in-laws, cousins, even in-laws of the aunts, and some friends. My father had a big family, eight siblings. Most of them were there.
Two of my uncles were married to sisters who had red hair and pale eyes. They were all from distinguished families and were helpful to the less fortunate relatives, and supported many of their brethren. Now they find themselves uprooted and left rudderless, and were refugees with an uncertain future. All they could carry with themselves was gold and silver, tucked around their waist by women of the house and hid it behind a dupatta.
Dadiji did the same. Dadaji had supported many meritorious students as the headmaster. One of them, a Muslim, let’s call him Yonus, became a police officer soon after he matriculated with the help of my Dadaji. Younus was like a family. Dadaji was reluctant to leave Lahore. He had goodwill in the city and the faith that he and his family wouldn’t be harm’s way, come what may! It was Yonus who convinced him to leave with family.
Most of the precious belongings were lodged in a truck. And my grandparents with Kamla and Vidya were driven to the Amritsar border in their Maurice car. Yonus diverted the truck to his village, and when my family reached the border, he asked them to cross the border by foot, and kept the car. Thankfully, Dadiji had hid the jewellery bag around her waist.
That was all they were left with.
***
The new Indian political elite had assumed political power a year before independence, and could do little to prevent partition, and failed to contain killings and plunder. The people were forced to leave their land, home, vocation, possessions, schools and college. Those who resisted were slaughtered. The survivors crossed the border to their new life as paupers. Lucky was my extended family, they found refuge in the welcoming home of my parents and me—the little Livleen.
As I pen these lines, the past gets sharper in my memory—the red tone of the bitterly cold winters of 1947 come alive. The young and the old would bundle up every night in the distinctive red army blankets of the Walker Hospital. All huddled together in the cottage and the annex on sofas and beds—as if patiently waiting for the storm to pass.
Daddy would work late into the night tending to the patients, so I would happily snuggle in with Dadiji. She would tightly wrap me up in the warm red blanket. This was my story time. She would tell me the most, now I realise in retrospect, imaginative and exciting fairy tales. These were happy stories in the tumultuous times. She shielded me from all-pervasive pain and suffering. In despair there was hope.
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