How a new platform is allowing Indians and Pakistanis to bond over Partition tales
Now here’s some really heart-warming stuff amid the screaming cacophony of the usual news headlines. Two young men — 22-year-old Sandeep Dutt, an information technology student in Ludhiana, and Faisal Hayat, who is 19 years old and studying to be a journalist in Rawalpindi — have put together a Facebook page to bring you personal accounts from the fast-fading generation of elders who were witness to the tragic Partition in 1947.
“Bolti Khidki — The Speaking Window” is evidently evoking a huge amount of interest on both sides of the India-Pakistan border. Launched barely eight weeks ago, it has already got over 6,000 online followers, whose numbers are growing by the day. It’s a rather unique platform where common people, who may well have remained anonymous, tell their stories of life in homes across the border; the sudden disruption and horror of Partition; and then picking up the pieces to rebuild lives as refugees.
Clearly not the usual sort of youngster, Dutt, who’s a budding poet and is learning Urdu, says he found his first Partition story in 86-year-old Prem Singh Bajaj, a retired college principal who now teaches the language of his formative years in Sargodha (Pakistan) at Ludhiana’s Punjabi Bhawan.
Dutt encountered Faisal when he first posted a draft of Bajaj’s story on Facebook about a year ago. It started as a mutual conversation that has now blossomed into what promises to be a treasure chest of poignant and nostalgia-filled narratives.
Besides men like Bajaj, who migrated to Hoshiarpur and eventually settled in Ludhiana after securing a teaching position in the then “new” Government College in Jagraon, “Bolti Khidki” includes moving tales like that of 77-year-old Mohammad Shafique and his wife Fatima Noreen, who migrated to Pakistan from Panipat and Delhi respectively. Abandoned by their six children, the aging couple eke out a living as street vendors in Rawalpindi’s Sadar area.
But it’s not only about painful memories and sufferings. “Bolti Khidki” is equally about happy memories — of lives across the divide; of loving neighbours and friendships across the Hindu-Muslim and Muslim-Sikh divide.
“I miss my village Gheel; it was near Rawalpindi. I still remember that my grandmother used to sing the Shabd “Pyar wali gali vicchon koi koi langda”, while spinning cotton. I cannot express the love and harmony that was present in our time,” shares 94-year-old Surinder Singh, whose family moved to Patiala where he opened a tailoring shop and stitched pyjamas for the royals.
Dutt and Faisal’s “Bolti Khidki” has initiated a thousand conversations between visitors from India and Pakistan. And these include a happy number of young people who are clearly whelmed by the unusual content. Every narrative, split into a paragraph each for “life before Partition”, the “migration”, “life after Partition” and a message for today’s youth, is an easy but engaging read.
At the moment they are putting up two new stories every week. “A story from India every Monday and another from Pakistan on Friday,” says Dutt, who is hoping that more young people on both sides will start volunteering to collect more stories.
Encouraged by the response, Dutt and Faisal are hoping “Bolti Khidki” will eventually grow into a repository of personal Partition narratives that would meaningfully engage people in both countries. And coming as it does amid all the mutual chest-thumping on the two sides, it makes for a decidedly refreshing change.
(Courtesy: Mail Today)