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Interview & Book Review: Line of Blood by Balraj Khanna

The autumn of great divide

She couldn’t have run away from those she loved and those who loved her. She didn’t need do. Yet, she became the first victim of Partition in Balraj Khanna’s fictional town of Puranapur.

The autumn of great divide

Balraj Khanna



Sarika Sharma

She couldn’t have run away from those she loved and those who loved her. She didn’t need do. Yet, she became the first victim of Partition in Balraj Khanna’s fictional town of Puranapur. When religion ceases to be the spiritual and emotional force that it ought to be and takes a political face, that’s what happens. That’s what happened 70 autumns ago. That’s what happens every day, all over the world.

The Partition of the country had been announced and Puranapur residents didn’t know which country their village would fall in. In either case, some of them would have to leave their homes, land and people. The tide was rising and Puranapur was engulfed in it. There were rumours. Right felt wrong and wrong felt right. Houses were being burned, women were being defiled. Trains full of mutilated bodies and mutilated dreams were going to and fro. Freedom came at a cost and that cost was our “sanity”.

But Puranapur was different — even for Khanna, who was witness to Partition as a seven-year-old, and saw his friends turn into foes. But his Hindu protagonist does whatever it takes to save the lives and properties of his friends. And why just him, the entire village came together for each other.

A celebrated painter in the UK, Khanna is an award-winning writer, as well. While the motifs in his artworks exude a European feel, his writing is rooted in Punjab. As one wonders how his writing helps him paint, you can almost see him paint Puranapur. A small village, dotted with small hills and a dirty nullah around which its life revolves and men and women see history live itself across the line of blood drawn by a stranger who hardly knew the country.

This is a simple story of the great divide that changed forever the way people who had lived together for centuries see each other. It is that line which pitches us against each other even today, whether in the battlefield or in the playground. Line of Blood is as much a novel of our times as it is a novel of those times gone by.

A heartwarming tale from the worst of times

Line of Blood belies Balraj Khanna’s abiding memory of Partition. Four Muslim boys had tried to circumcise him. Set in 1947, his new novel is a tale of brotherhood. Excerpts from an interview...

You were just seven when the Partition happened but the book is vivid in description. How did you paint such a heartbreaking picture?

When you are writing a novel, you see the world through the eyes of your characters. You live and feel like them, whether it is a comedy or a tragedy that you are writing. Writing my earlier novels, especially the first one, Nation of Fools, I used to burst out laughing loudly, much to the amusement of my family. While writing this on the Partition, Line of Blood, I cried copiously, at times.

You say you always wanted to write a book on events of 1947. Why did you feel the need to tell the story when so many had already been told?

I was seven when the Partition took place, devastating lives of millions of Indians — Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs — tearing the country apart, creating a tragedy beyond times. Living in the Muslim-dominated small town of Qadian in Punjab, what my family lived through and what I saw left an indelible impression on me. I decided then that I would write a book about it one day. The thought had been in gestation all these decades. 

Your artwork on Bangladesh’s partition was hailed in those times. Which medium was more satisfying?

The two disciplines — writing and painting — are vastly different from each other. It is a question of sensibilities. As a painter, I think in terms of colours — primaries for happiness and joy, while sadness and sorrow find expression in darker colours like black and blue and deeper tertiaries. In writing, words conjure up moods; one thing leads to another. Your characters take over, dictating you to write. 

While your paintings seem to exude a European feel, the novel is very Punjabi. Do you, like your mentor Mulk Raj Anand, think in Punjabi and then transcreate in Punjabi?

I have lived in Europe — England and France — since I was 22. The art that I was made familiar with from my teen years in Shimla was entirely western. But I evolved my own style, which has been recognised as embodying Indian sensibilities, and a certain Indian spirituality. The same could be said of my writing — I have an MA in English — but my thinking is rooted in Punjabi like my mentor’s.

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