1947

In 1947, India was torn apart.
Friend against friend, knife against heart;
Pakistan emerged, for better or for worse…
Families divided, people made to traverse
borders and lines,
Some stuck within the confines
of unfamiliar places once called home.
Some prayers to Allah, some beginning with Om.
My great grandfather, father of my dadi,
was simple in nature, adorned in Gandhi’s khadi.
He was a Sindhi, with a family of many to feed –
He brought them to Bombay with undying speed.
They stayed at a friend’s house, and then he bade them goodbye.
He would come back, he said – or at least he would try.
Back to Karachi he went, to sell the ancestral home –
Unnoticed, undetected, quiet and alone.
Next on the list was the college at which he had taught
He would collect his provident fund, trying not to get caught.
As it so happened, luck was far from his side –
a raid was announced with him still inside.
Money in hand, and with nowhere to hide,
He shut his eyes, and in God, he chose to confide.
As the raiders looted the college, killing all who were Hindu
he thought of his family and what they would do
if he wasn’t around… no one left to provide,
nobody there to take care of them if he died.
And then he felt a weight on his head –
He opened his eyes, heart filled with dread
He turned to his man beside, a janitor – a Muslim –
and in that moment, became forever indebted to him,
because the janitor, a man of compassion so rare
had placed on my great-grandfather’s Sindhi hair
a kufi, a holy cap of his kind.
Considering him as his own, he proved that love was blind
to religion, to caste, to creed
to all outcomes of humanly greed
for dominance of faith
that can only ever make humans hate.
And that is how a life was spared –
all for the kufi on my great-grandfather’s head.
He thanked the janitor for saving this life,
and returned home safe to children and wife.
To them, he said, “Religion – that does not start a war.
It is character,” and by that he swore.
We still have that kufi, kept securely somewhere
To prove that love still exists… you just have to trust that it is there.