An interesting story narrated by Neeti Nair about the Partition refugees. One such story is about a Sikh family who was struggling to decide whether or not to leave Mailsi, a village near Multan.
Neeti Nair writes...
Not one of my interviewees believed they would have to leave when troubles broke out, or leave forever – whether they came from Nathiagali near Abbottabad or Lahore, Jhelum or Rawalpindi districts. This moment of “reckoning”, the decision to leave their home/ vatan, for a new political configuration or country/ desh, lasted a few hours for some, several months for others. But the memory of the contingent quality of that decision to leave has stayed. When I arrived in Delhi with my tape recorder in 2002, this fact had to be recorded, marked, and reiterated.
"
Before Partition, when I was six months pregnant with my daughter I visited Mailsi. Then we used to hear slogans “Pakistan banke rahega, Pakistan banke rahega” [Pakistan will come into being; Pakistan will come into being]... we’d talk amongst ourselves about our future because we were minorities ... my grandfather used to say nothing will happen, no one will touch us, but we were a minority in that city, the majority were Muslims. And we were considered more well-to-do than them ... so he used to say that no one will tell us anything, and then we used to respond, my uncle, that fine, lets stay here for a month, a month and a half longer. When they saw that circumstances were worsening, then he said lets leave, my grandfather said I will not leave, no one will say anything to us, they are all friends. He was a doctor, I have treated them, why will anyone kill me? They used to say, they are Muslims, we are getting ready to leave. They say, my uncle and my grandfather, that those Muslims swore by the Korans on their heads again and again saying please don’t leave and my grandfather would respond saying I don’t want to go. I really don’t want to, but tell me, my children, and then my uncle said, you know ... young thinking maturity, see we know you will not say anything to us, we have complete faith in you, but if a mob comes, 500 or 600, from somewhere else, not from your village, but from behind, first they will kill you, then they will kill us. You will not be saved, and we will not be saved, is this intelligence? This is why it is best if ... my grandfather would cry that this is helplessness. It was neither in their hands nor in our hands ...