Turning the clock back ...

‘Time throws a blanket over slumbering memories until one day we walk back to them unknowingly, following the bitter-sweet scents of love, of loss, of happiness and pain, of a war won and battles lost.’

“It wasn’t called Pakistan, Beta. It was India”, said my grandmother, correcting me. “It earned its name only after we came here, after the partition”, she added with a sense of pride in her voice. Sitting in her favourite chair, watching T.V and knitting a beautiful pattern with white wool, she looked like a happy and content lady. Her forehead showed lines of hard work she had put into building her life here and the life she had left in the land of her childhood, Pakistan.

It was a weekday and no one was at home. My family had gone to attend a close relatives’ wedding. Grandmother was not fond of crowded places and hence avoided going until completely necessary.

Lying on bed listening to my grandmother’s stories at nights was one of the very few things I used to look forward to. It put me altogether in a different mode. I could listen to her never ending heroic stories forever. Since we lived in a joint family, silence was a missing entity. Calmness crept in after lights went off and even if my grandmother was asleep, I used to nudge her and wake her up. And since she was a light sleeper, she never really seemed disturbed.

But today was an exception. No one at home on a weekday was very rare and since I was in the middle of my Christmas vacations, I was surely making the most of it.

“It was not at all easy to pack up your entire life in a jiffy and leave behind everything”, she continued.

“I was born and married there. Life had just got on path and we had to come here. Everything turned unsafe”, her eyes going wide, “I wish no one has to see such days”, she said shutting her eyes and saying a silent prayer to herself.

“What about your friends, Dadi and what about school? Did you not go to school?” I asked with curiosity.

“He he... I was married when I was fifteen. I went to school till I was about twelve. After that I was assigned to learn all the house work and by the time I got married, I could make food for hundred people together”. Another wide smile came to her face. She may not have been very educated but she certainly was a woman of substance.

Hearing her tales made me sway along with her through her nostalgic ride. Her journey had not been an easy one. But each time she told me a situation or an incident of her life, she managed to grab every iota of my attention to her captivating storyline. How amazing yet difficult would it have been for a teenage girl to leave her one life behind and enter another one, in a new land?

We all know that the partition of our country brought tranquility to some but a sense of melancholy to those who had to leave their homes and lives behind to commence a new beginning. She was no different. The sight of death was that a common one which she witnessed through the most important journey of her life. Gruesomeness around made her strong at a very tender age.

My grandmother is no more and like every grandchild, I too had formed a special valued bond with her. Reminiscing about her life, her talks, her tales, connected me to the sadness she felt each time she held my hand and took a walk down her memory lane. Her stories are safe with me; her childhood, a part of mine.