Reminiscences of a Home Long Gone

It is a sunny winter morning in Jhajjar, a small town in Haryana India. The place is known for its Khoya Barfi, Gajar Pak, and Bhalla Chaat. To this day, I bring home boxes of barfi whenever I make a visit to this simple town going about its business as it did as a pargana (an administrative unit during Mughal times and British Raj) under the reign of Akbar, as mentioned in Ain-i-Akbari. Surely, things are different now in the present-day world in February 2019. But the essence of this place seems to be the same. It's the mundaneness and the simple wonders of daily life that never cease to exist, even after centuries.

Raj Rani at her home in Jhajjar, Haryana.

I am here sitting on the first-floor verandah at the house of Raj Rani, my grandpa's younger sister. She and a brother younger than her are the only surviving siblings of the family - the last testaments of the family's humble life spent in Lyallpur, Punjab (now Faisalabad) before the India-Pakistan Partition. The family had migrated to India during these tough times, with many members dying on the way due to unhealthy conditions in the Refugee camps and because of the exhaustion of walking for days. Dada Ji had recorded a few such events in his diary, one of the meagre things that I have left of him, other than his loving memories. The diary entries had no elaborate descriptions, just stating facts of what all happened. I never bothered to ask him about his feelings about such events. When I started caring about such stuff, it was too late. Dada Ji was no more. The only moment when we talked about the partition was when on a winter morning I was reading Toba Tek Singh, a short story written by Saadat Hasan Manto, published in the year 1955. The text was part of my syllabus as a literature student at Delhi University. When he heard those words uttered by me 'Toba Tek Singh', he sprang from his chair to ask me what I was reading. That's when I got to know that's where he and his family lived in Lyallpur. He talked for a bit. When I asked him if it was difficult for him and the family, he smiled and said, "Haan beta, cheezein mushkil to thi tab. Par waqt bahaut cheezein dikhaata hai. Ab sab theek hai"(Yes child, things were difficult back then. But time shows you a lot. Everything is fine now). He chose not to delve into serious discussions about the past, maybe to protect me from the dreariness of what all happened, or maybe to shield himself from the past.

As I remember all of this, Bua Ji as we call her, starts to peel oranges and offers me some. Sitting there on the verandah in a plastic chair, she passes on the plate to Papa, sitting next to her. She looks cosy in her white-coloured knitted scarf wrapped around her head. She is wearing a salwar kameez made of heavy cloth, perfect for winter. I keep looking at her wrinkly hands and the beautiful gold ring adorned on her finger. I marvel at the detailing of its design. It's a typical Indian design from the old times. Vintage! I also admire the build and softness of her tender hands. I have a thing for this - looking at hands and thinking of many stories of toil that the owner had to endure in their lifetime (More about this some other day).

Vintage ring, oranges and dhoop

Papa has come for his yearly visits to meet her and his cousins. This is my first time visiting her during my adulthood. It was only when I was a child that I remember being near her in this noisy Indian town. She has always looked at me with a calm gentleness and caressed my hair wishing me happiness and long life. My brief conversations with her over the years have been about my health, if I feel happy, whether I have eaten or not, papa's health, how my work is, and a subtle question here and there about my plans for the future, including marriage. The questions have never been intrusive, only a subtle interest in knowing whether I am happy or not. I have always liked her for her progressiveness about such things. Maybe she was more than this and may have had conservative views about certain things, but I never got to see that side of hers. For me, she has always been a loving elderly motherly figure, whom Papa adores a lot.

We all eat oranges and discuss how cold this winter has been, and how the sun feels pleasant on the skin this morning. She is glad that it's a bright day and the clothes will dry quickly. She talks about how a gang of monkeys roamed around in the neighbourhood and stole clothes hanging out in the open verandah. Chachi comes to pick up the laundry that has been laid out to dry. She doesn’t want another missing kurta or baniyaan. Chachu wouldn’t like that at all. As she heads towards the kitchen to prep breakfast, I get back to Bua ji. We are talking again, this time about the home she left behind in Pakistan.

Raj Bua Jee

She speaks of her long-gone paternal home with a gentle smile. She tells how she was merely 8 or 9 years old when India was divided. She looks at me with a certain slowness and a soft feeling of love as she answers many questions about how things were back home when she was a kid. How the house was. How the farms were nearby and how she spent her time with friends. There is no visible emotion of loss or grief on her face. Maybe that’s how they do it. Become resilient. The many wrinkles on her skin signify the passage of time and the many experiences she faced along the journey.

Her words though tell a different story. The voice, even though mature, is childlike and so is her curiosity to know what I am up to in life. Between the many questions, I ask her about her long-gone home, she caresses my hair and asks me if I have eaten anything other than the oranges she’s offered. My answer is no. She asks Chachi if the potatoes are boiled and the safed makkhan is whipped to perfection. Ahh, she gets me! She and I haven’t talked much in life, but whenever we do, I am just amazed at the ease with which the conversations flow. And yes, I get to eat my home-cooked favourites.

Chachi cooking in her beautifully-lit kitchen

I ask her questions about what her home looked like. She has faint memories of her house and Toba Tek Singh. She only remembered that they stayed somewhere in ‘चक उन्नीस’ (Chak 19) or as she pronounced ‘चक्क उन्नी’. Chak 19 was the designated sector-like area where her home was. The family's main occupation was farming and the wheat fields they owned were located nearby. Toba Tek Singh and the Chak were a part of Lyallpur (renamed Faisalabad in 1977). All she had were the faint memories of how her house looked like where Lala Jee, her father and my great-grandfather, lived with a huge family around, many brothers and sisters, and their families, all living together or nearby. She also remembered how she and her friends would get atop the lorry carrying fodder for the cattle to get around the area. After all, she was just a kid when she spent her time there in Lyallpur. In no time, the partition was announced, and the family moved to a refugee settlement somewhere in Punjab, finally landing in a town called Gurgaon in Punjab, now a bustling metropolitan city in Haryana, India.

Later, going through my grandfather’s diary, I found the actual address of where the family lived. It was Chak 319, not 19. Details like these seem blurry when so many years have passed and when a home is long gone. Lala Jee created a new home for his family here in Gurgaon, and the kids adapted and survived. Papa tells me how everyone would gather around the Tandoor during the winter to keep themselves warm. As the women of the house would prepare rotis for the huge family unit, the kids would warm their hands and play around. On the dying yet still burning embers of the tandoor, a pot of dal would be left for it to slowly cook.

Then came lunch

As we get back to the conversations of daily life, chachi comes out with hot aloo paranthas and white butter. I am thankful for her toil. As she hands me the jar of mango pickles she made during the summer, she offers to pack me some. Ahh how much I love putting the pickle oil and masala over a plain matthi and having it with a cup of piping hot chai.

We finish our breakfast and Papa heads to the famous Burfi Wala to get some sweets to take back home. I spend some more time with Bua Ji. This is the last time I am doing this. I don’t know that at this moment. No one does. She passed away the next year during the pandemic, the same time when Papa was relieved from the hospital after spending an arduous amount of time in the covid ward. We couldn't go see her as she left the world. Her sweet memories still linger on, including that of her home in Jhajjar and also, Toba Tek Singh.

This post is a part of the Ek Ghar Aisa Bhi project.