Munaza Kazmi
At midnight on August 14, 1947, freedom was announced. By morning, millions had lost the address of their loved ones.
79 years later, the politics of Partition are in textbooks. The human part lives in silences at dinner tables, in old letters with no reply, in names whispered once a year.
This was not just a line drawn on a map. It was a line drawn through homes, piercing hearts.
Yesterday he was our neighbour, our beloved friend and today seemed as enemy!!!
In August 1947, trains crossed the new border of India and Pakistan. Some arrived full. Some arrived empty. Some never arrived at all.
Meanwhile, families were left with few hours to decide, who would go, who would stay, what could be carried. Rings was sewn into clothes, with promises of love. House keys were kept in pockets “for when we return.”
The separation was instant. A brother in Lahore. A sister in Amritsar. 30 kilometres apart, now two countries. Letters took months. Phone lines didn’t exist. Many never found out what happened to the others.
For decades, the only proof of survival was a name on a refugee list, or a rumour passed by someone on another train.
However, the biggest pain was not only loss of property. It was loss of people.
In camps in Lahore, Delhi, and Karachi, people wrote names on walls, hoping someone would see them: “Looking for Fatima, last seen Jalandhar.” Most walls were painted over. The names weren’t.
Even today, elderly survivors keep small things, let’s say a photograph, a bangle, a school certificate. Not because of value. Because it’s the last thing connecting them to someone.
Similarly, at our own home, we have collection of teapots, sarees & jewelled boxes of my Grandma’s, all came from Bombay.
Later, doctors and social workers in the 1950s called it “Partition trauma”. Sudden crying at train whistles. An inability to throw away old things.
That grief was passed down. Children born in the 60s and 70s grew up hearing, “Don’t waste food, we didn’t have any on the road” or “Be careful with strangers.”
However, the stories were rarely told in full. They came out in pieces — during Eid, during Diwali, when a Bollywood song played, when someone mentioned “the old house.”
The internet has changed one thing: searching. Facebook groups and WhatsApp forwards now say “My grandfather was from Ludhiana, surname XYZ. Does anyone know?”
Sometimes, after 70 years, a reply comes. “That was my nana’s cousin.” A photo is shared. People cry on video calls with strangers who have the same eyes.
Initiatives like the Kartarpur Corridor and cross-border oral history projects don’t erase the past. They give people one more chance to say a name out loud without fear.
Borders are still guarded. Visas are still hard. But the wound that hasn’t healed is personal.
Partition didn’t just divide land. It divided festivities, funerals, the simple act of visiting. It divided people.
Some Nasreen Bibi, of Rawalpindi reaching 89, still keeps her mother’s dupatta. “It smells of nothing now,” she says. “But I hold it when I miss her. She stayed behind.”
Uday Singh of Chandighar, who can’t remember his street lane, but remembers the Lassi-wala who lives next to his home in Sargoda.
Freedom came. So did absence.
And that is the wound that time has not closed — the space where a loved one should have been.
