History’s most tragic events often find their eternal voice in fiction. Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan quickly became the definitive novel of India’s 1947 partition, during which rioting and communal violence led to the deaths of at least half a million people. Singh’s story portrays life in the sleepy Indian border village of Mano Majra, a multi-religious microcosm of the subcontinent. Until partition, villagers used to set their clocks by the arrival of the morning Delhi to Lahore train and its evening return. But when trainloads of mutilated corpses started to pass through in both directions, they began to grasp the magnitude of the upheaval. Razor-sharp ropes were strung up spanning the rail bridge, intended to slice in half passengers crammed on to the train’s roof. In the final pages, a lone hero scales the scaffolding and cuts the rope before being shot dead. The train carries on to Pakistan, while under the bridge thousands of corpses float towards India.
Almost 60 years ago, my father’s family—wealthy Hindu bankers and merchants from Lahore—fled by train, carrying little. They resettled in Calcutta in the new Indian state. Like Khushwant Singh, they had expected to remain in Lahore their whole lives, but instead had to contend with the clashing memories of violent displacement alongside happy recollections of close friends left behind. And, as with many of today’s dwindling number of partition survivors, these memories are no longer sufficient. At last October’s Diwali celebration, my father said, “Before I die, I want to see where I was born once more.” So began a trip which would take us not only to Pakistan, but also into the evolving heart of Indo-Pakistani relations.
Since partition, Pakistan’s population has swelled from 50m to 160m, in a space about twice the size of California. West of the Indus river, bordering Afghanistan, lie Balochistan and the North-West Frontier Province—barren, tribal, sparse. East of the Indus, bordering India, lie Pakistan’s two other provinces: the fertile but densely populated and increasingly urban Sindh and Punjab.
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