Wagah border. Who doesn’t know the name? The grand trunk road from Amritsar links India to Lahore in Pakistan where an impressive ceremony takes place on either side, the raising and lowering of flags and change of guard. This place is special to me because I was born in a village in India, 5 miles from Wagah along the banks of a beautiful canal.
This network of canals in Punjab is a marvellous feat of engineering, built by the British in the early 20th century. The five huge rivers in the state – Sutlej, Jehlum, Beas, Ravi and Chenab – fed by the melting Himalayan snows are linked by these canals through reservoirs and headworks. Our canal was one of these spots, and our village stood on the bank. My grandfather, a doctor, had worked hard and built three brick bungalows for his large family. There was a primary school where children learnt their tables in a singsong fashion in Punjabi. A 25-bed Christian hospital met the needs of neighbouring villages. There was no electricity in the villages; the lighting of lanterns, lamps and petromax was the duty of the faithful woman who worked for my dadi. On warm summer evenings we loved to paddle in the streams. There was a well, a favourite place for us, the seven or eight cousins who visited dadi each year from Delhi and Bombay.
I have vivid memories of evenings spent walking on the banks of “our canal” with cousins, telling stories, cracking jokes, and incidents from the far-off cities where we lived. Sometimes we played in the large courtyard which smelt of fresh moist earth, sprinkled by the bhisti (water carrier). The elders chatted while we played hide-and-seek. Some nights we were treated to 'giddha', a rhythmic traditional Punjabi dance, performed by friends.
May 1947 - that date stands out. It was our last visit to the village; we overheard strange conversations. My dadi was sitting at the bhisti and weeping. She was saying, “I don’t want to go to Lahore, I have no one there, you are my family.” Today I realise the enormity and tragedy of the events that followed. My sons are men now in different parts of the world; they have heard stories about "our village and canal". I hope one day I can take them to Wagah border to relive my childhood.
