“His name was Ismail, but everyone knew him as Chabloo.” My Nana and I were talking about the original owner of the house in Kharu Khera v...
“His name was Ismail, but everyone knew him as Chabloo.”
My Nana and I were talking about the original owner of the house in Kharu Khera village in Haryana that now belonged to Nana, the house in which I had spent summer vacations as a child.
My image of Ismail is of a man who was deeply attached to his village, his land and his home. Perhaps, he was also attached to the well in front of his house – the one that eventually swallowed him.
Inder Lal Bhasin, my Nana, is an “allottee”, as Partition survivors allotted a house came to be known. My maternal grandfather was 12 in October, 1947, when his family moved from their village Shaheedanwali in Mandi Bahauddin, which had become Pakistan two months before.
Our family had initially decided against moving to a new land, assuming that they were just caught in momentary chaos.
Even if there was to be a Pakistan, it was decided that they would still stay put. Grandfather, like many other of the other people I had interviewed about Partition, had once rhetorically said, “Raje badle jaande ne, kadi praja vi badli gayi si?” (Rulers are changed, ever seen the ruled being changed?)
On each such occasion, I have only nodded...
