'Wounds of communal violence still fresh, etched in memory'

Sameer Singh

Bathinda, August 13

Nonagenarian Dara Singh, who hails from Chak 64 village in Montgomery district of Pakistan, breaks down while recounting the horrific experience of the Partition. He was 14 when he and his family migrated to India in the wake of communal violence.

Killer mobs came after us

Wounds are still afresh and etched on my soul. When the word about the Partition spread, my father was adamant on staying back. He, however, changed his mind when a group of armed Muslims gheraoed our house. — Dara Singh, Bathinda resident

He now lives in the district’s Mehma Sarja village. All his life he was an agricultural labourer.

“Wounds are still afresh and etched on my soul. When the word about the Partition spread, a group of men came to Chak 64 to take us, but my father was adamant on staying back. He, however, changed his mind when a group of armed Muslims gheraoed our house. We fled to a nearby village and hid in a house. The killer mob came after us. Fortunately, the house owner came to our rescue,” he tells The Tribune.

One day, Dara Singh and his family hid in a mango orchard and, the other day, they hid in a sugarcane field.

“One day, Army men announced that an India-bound train would leave at 8 pm. Since the railway line from Pakistan to Hari Ke Pattan was removed, we reached Ludhiana via Vyas area. We spent the first night at Attari in Amritsar, the second at Ludhiana and the third at Ferozepur and then reached Goniana in Bathinda the next day,” he recalls.

He remembers his elder brother’s friend, Rehmat, who used to come and play in his courtyard.

Dara Singh, who has a mild hearing impairment, sells iron spades even at this ripe age of 90. Every day, he cycles to different villages to sell iron spades and axes. “I don’t want to depend on my children for my expenses,” Dara Singh says.