Prose 1 Refugee - K.A Abbas

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia-pacific/70-years-later-survivors-recall-the-horrors-of-india-pakistan-partition/2017/08/14/3b8c58e4-7de9-11e7-9026-4a0a64977c92_story.html

Refugees are people who were uprooted from their home and family. Like the autumn leaves, nearly ten million people were blown away from one end of the country to the other. The places from where the people moved are from Delhi-Karachi, from Karachi to Bombay, from Lahore to Delhi, from Rawalpindi to Agra, from Naokhali to Calcutta, from Calcutta to Dacca, from Lyallpur to Panipat, from Panipat to Montgomery. The historical event of Partition happened on August-September 1947. The news about the partition came in newspapers in June 1947. The author describes the partition as ‘the thousand-year-old-joint family system was shattered’ Maanji is the main character of this story. She was living in Rawalpindi in her own house. She was very happy and moderately rich with the income she got from her buffalo which gave her milk and a shop from which she received a regular income as rent. It was the partition in 1947 that forced her to leave Rawalpindi and come to Bombay through Panipat and Delhi. She stayed with her son in Bombay. Even though she is living in Bombay she talked to her son frequently about her life in Rawalpindi. She said “Your Bombay may be a great and grand city, son. But we can never forget our Rawalpindi - those pears and apricots and apples, those grapes and melons and baggoogoshas that you never get in Bombay”. In Rawalpindi, Maanji used to live in her house which was a double-storeyed building. She occupied the upper floor, while down below on the ground were shops mostly rented out to Muslim shopkeepers. There was a close bond of good neighbourliness between all of them - Muslim, Hindu or Sikh. She had a buffalo of their own and which used to give 10 seers of milk. She made butter from the milk. She would distribute the buttermilk to all her neighbours. She also possessed farmland which was harvested (wheat, maize or bajra) twice a year. As the news about Partition started appearing in newspapers, troubles also started. Many of her relatives went away. Her son wrote from Bombay asking her to join him. Her neighbours kept watch night and day at her house. Maanji helped the refugees who came to Rawalpindi by giving them foodstuffs, clothes, blankets and bedding. Then, one incident happened which snapped ‘the last thread of faith’.  A tonga wallah was killed in front of Maanji’s house. Even the horse was not spared. She decided to lock up her house and leave everything behind. She became a refugee. In Rawalpindi, she used to live in a house with six spacious rooms, wide verandas and a big courtyard. In Bombay, she and her husband lived with their son, in a single room. There was a small kitchen which also served as a dining room, bathroom and storeroom. Maanji kept the room clean with white sheets in the beds, with neat pillowcases, and no particle or dust on the floor. In Rawalpindi, she had two male servants and a maidservant. In Bombay, she did all the work alone. She misses her home in Rawalpindi, but she was not angry with anybody who made her leave her home. She feels happy whenever a letter comes from Rawalpindi.