by HAMZA KHAN
Earlier this month, sitting on a cot in Mailsi town of Pakistan’s Punjab province, 86-year-old Daphia Bai alias Aisha plugged in earphones, with some help, and focused on the mobile screen, her eyes already moist in anticipation. When she finally saw her nephews and grandsons on the video call, she couldn’t stop kissing the screen or hold back her tears: it was the first time since Partition that she had laid eyes on a member of her long-lost family.
On the other side, in Bikaner’s Morkhana town, 266 km away, were Khoju Ram and Kalu Ram, grandsons of Daphia’s brothers, among others. More tears were exchanged than words as Daphia spoke in Saraiki and the Bikaner family in Marwari, as a person tried to translate. “I spent all my life crying, I offered money, ghee to people to help locate my family,” she said, sobbing.
In the seven decades apart, there were some words Daphia had held close to her heart: the names of her siblings, and a place with a lot of “mor (peacocks)”, where her family had land. It were these that finally ended the search that began more than a year ago, in August 2019, when Pakistani YouTuber Muhammad Alamgir shared a video of Daphia, asking if anyone knew about the family of a 13-year-old who had got left behind when they moved to India in 1947.
Before Partition, the family belonging to the Meghwal caste used to freely move between Bikaner and the part of Punjab now in Pakistan. When the border came up, they chose Bikaner, right next to the line. In the confusion of moving, Daphia was allegedly kidnapped, and subsequently converted to Islam, married and bore seven children. However, she kept searching, for the other part of her family.
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