Partition and exile
I have actually made myself a blog. Don't quite know how I did it but - I did it. Obviously I pressed the right buttons and now here it is. Why did I want to do it? - Well that's the story which will unfold .
Some months on the radio I heard something like this:
' Exiles wander the world carrying in their heads a picture of a perfect universe.'
I rushed to write it down and although I cant find the scrap of paper with the exact words - the image has resonated with me - full of meaning and questions and pointers - a journey which needs to be undertaken.
The partition of India in 1947 which dismembered the subcontinent into India and Pakistan was central to the lives of my immediate family and we repeated it as a family and as individuals recreating ‘partitions’ again and again it seems.
I suppose my parents were exiles. They lost the world they knew and at the same time they carried it with them and it grew and it nourished them and it nourished me. But it also hurt me. I suppose I lost a world too, but it was not a world I knew. I didn’t have any ‘pictures’ to carry in my head of Lahore and the lost homeland. I was too small to remember, so I suppose I, wasnt really an exile.
There were four of us, the dislocated Dhingras in Paris - waiting to go 'home'. All hoping to be able to die in India. It wasnt to be either for my father, my sister, or my mother who was the last to leave - five months ago. And now there is only me left with that story.
What was that 'perfect universe'?
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