September 26, 2022 • 24 mins
This week, Neha discusses what happened to many children amidst the chaos of Partition. She interviews Nasir Dhillon and his work reuniting families, most notably two brothers, Sadiq and Sika Khan who lost each other and were reunited in 2022.
Sources/Links:
The Other Side of Silence by Urvashi Butalia
Two brothers were separated in India during the partition. 74 years later, they have finally reunited - Washington Post
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkgJxsi3aAs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqwomJarhYk
Voiceover for Urvashi Butalia is provided by Nafisa Aziz
Voiceover for Sadiq Khan is provided by Aziz Akbarali
Voiceover for Sika Khan is provided by Ahmed Amirali
Voiceover for Nasir Dhillon is provided by Manahar Kumar
https://www.instagram.com/partitionpodcast/
https://www.instagram.com/nehaaziz/
https://twitter.com/NehaAziz13
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
A quick note about this week's episode. All three interviews
featured were conducted in variations of Hindi, Urdu, and Punjabi.
They have all been translated into English and voiced by actors.
Warning the following episode contains sensitive material. Living in Texas
(00:26):
the majority of my life, I've unfortunately become quite accustomed
to hearing stories about families being torn apart because of
a border. While the situations of the Indian Pakistan border
and the US Mexico border vary in many ways, the
heartbreak of being separated from your children, your parents, or
(00:46):
other loved ones are synonymous. We've briefly touched upon these
grave circumstances and previous episodes of this podcast. Today, I
want to introduce you to a man who was instrumental
uniting family split up by Partition. One of these reunions
was between two brothers who were separated during Partition and
(01:09):
only saw each other again this year. It had been
seventy four years from I Heart Radio, I'm Nahasie's and
this is Partition. A podcast will take a closer look
into this often forgotten part of history. Numerous children who
(01:59):
survived ninety seven were abandoned, lost taken to religious retreats
like ashrams, or they woke up in a hospital bed
with no idea where their families were, whether they were
alive or not. Authur Uvashi Battalia wrote in great detail
about the lives of women in the other side of Silence,
but she also devoted many pages in her book about
(02:21):
the children of Partition. Sabbatry mcjohnny, a record collector with
the United Council of Relief and Welfare, described a time
when a large camp closed down in Lahore. At the
time a few months after Partition, she was with the
(02:45):
School of Social Work in Delhi. Shortly after the camp
closed down, they received information that there was some dozen
children who had been left behind who seemed to belong
to no one. What was to be done with them.
Many children grew up in orphanages or homes for the destitute.
(03:10):
Others made their way through life on the streets, and
some had the privilege to be adopted into homes. Brutalia
mentions workers at the Gandhavan, Nita Ashram and Jilan there
recount that in a two year old child was brought
to the ashram, no one knew who she belonged to
(03:33):
or where she came from. At the time the book
was published, she was fifty two and still living there,
a child of history without a history. This sentence is
one that I keep coming back to. This woman would
be in her mid seventies now. Is she still alive?
Did anyone come looking for her? Was she able to
(03:55):
find any closure or peace? Who knows if she's even
there anymore. This is a devastating story, but, as we've learned,
far from unusual. In January, I had a friend sent
(04:16):
me an article from the Washington Post about two men
named Sadiq and Sica who met after seventy four years.
I was captivated in their reunion video. Siica is already
waiting for his brother, and Sadik is approaching with his family.
But you can hear someone saying, look there, that's your brother.
After all of these years, it has finally worked out.
(04:39):
Go run and hug him. The brothers have a teery embrace,
and the younger brother, Sika, is comforting Sadiq. He tells him,
we are alive, so we can be together again. Sadik
Givesica a floral garland, a welcoming gesture in South Asian culture.
The video of the his brothers. Reuniting gave me the
(05:01):
full range of emotions happiness, anger, sadness, longing, annoyance, you
name it. It was such a beautiful and touching moment.
But when you think about the many arduous steps it
took for these siblings to meet, it's hard to ignore
the continuous policing of our borders. Nasir Dillo is someone
(05:22):
who's desperately trying to change the status quo Nasir Lis
and Fezzil bad and when he's not tending to his
real estate business, he helps partition survivors find people they
once knew and have now lost. What started out as
a Facebook page created in transformed into a major online
community with over six thousand subscribers and almost one hundred
(05:44):
million views. Nasir is a prime mover behind the Pakistani
YouTube channel Punjabi Lahare. The channel hosts an array of
content from reunions and oral histories to the impacts of
the recent floods. On this channel, Nasir post interview the
people affected by partition. Although it started as a way
to simply document these stories, it has evolved into a
(06:06):
way for long lost family members separated in to reconnect
with one another. The channel might post an interview and
viewers who might know the family members comment and try
to facilitate a connections. You have channel Cube. When I art,
(06:31):
people asked us why we created this channel and what
the purpose was. I used to talk to my grandfather
about his village in India. I asked how the village was,
how are the people, how are your friends? My elders
used to say people were very nice in their village.
(06:53):
Wanting to hear stories and experiences from others, connected with
people from India through social media from about the Hindu
and Sikh communities. He has a Sikh friend named Booping.
They're saying Lovely living in nak Nanasia, a holy site
for the Sikhs which is now located in Pakistan. When
Lovely came onto the project, they got more exposure because
(07:14):
the door opened up to meet a lot more people
since many pilgrims traveled to nick Nanasya from India. He
will get in touch with the people visiting officers from
the real estate. There was an elderly person by my
(07:36):
real estate office in fast Labad. He recognized Lovely was
a seek and struck up a conversation about his time
in India. Lovely did an interview with the elder and
it went viral on YouTube and people really responded positively
to it. After the success of the first partition story,
(07:56):
we started contacting people by phone living in the area
of Punjab in Pakistan regarding their history with partition. What
did they see with their own eyes? They quickly started
recording more and have been recording for the last seven years.
Nasir says, with the Facebook and YouTube pages combined, they
(08:18):
probably have around stories ms name. When people from the
Punjab side of India used to come to Pakistan, they
used to recall that they lost a sister, a brother
(08:41):
or a friend. I never heard any complaints or animosity
among the different religions of people living in the area.
They lived in love and as many conversations with his grandfather,
Nasa remembered him saying how much he wanted to visit
(09:01):
his old village again in India, but he never got
the chance. His grandfather passed away a few years ago
and he couldn't go because he couldn't obtain a visa.
I feel guilty that I never got to take him back.
(09:32):
Punjabi La Hare has gained an immense following and because
of that, it's become a little easier for people to
find each other through the videos being posted. Coffee Logo.
It used to take a long time to find people
because whatever someone used to contact us about a missing
(09:54):
reality or a kidnapping. We used to do everything NASA
and Lovely had to record, upload an attempt to locate
people themselves. Before that, we didn't have a community to
assist with finding people. Now, as soon as we upload
a new video, we get a through because we have
(10:16):
quite a few subscribers and people contact us or leave
notes in the comments. No Sir said it usually takes
around eight to ten days for someone to have an
idea to help solve where I loved one. Maybe around
two hundred to two hundred and fifty people have met
not only their blood relatives, but old friends and neighbors
(10:40):
through the channel. People that leave comments on the videos
and form groups. In Punjab they talk amongst themselves sanji
south meaning people come together to join in conversations. We
hosted it online and people would come on from their homes.
(11:01):
Because of this, people are starting to get in touch.
The story of Sadik and Sica reuniting reach an abundance
of people across the globe and with it garnered a
lot of media attention. Now with an even bigger audience,
Nasa says he has more than one hundred stories to
work on, but's in the problems I think um one stories.
(11:26):
The problem is we can do the stories, but the
issues getting visas for people to visit and if you
can get assistance from the India and Pakistan government to
verify their stories. I don't understand why there should be
any issue with the success of reuniting survivors, there also
(11:53):
comes crashing waves of disappointment. Much like the woman who
has lived essentially her entire life in the astra Um,
not everyone has a happy ending. The serious suspects that
some people have been denied visas because their story was
not as high profile as Deak and sick Us. Absolutely
the stories, John, would you look after listening to stories,
(12:21):
it feels like it is my story, all of these
partitions stories. When people are talking about partition, it is
really tough for them. It feels like it is my bust.
If you can't help in some way, I feel sad.
(12:41):
He mentions one woman in particular, names Aldana Begum, a
famous poet. She visited Pakistan seven times to look for
her relatives. She died recently, never having found her family members.
Only a few days after her death, the Bunjabi la
Our team was able to locate her family. Boni the
(13:10):
people who sacrifice themselves, meaning the people who died, got
hurt and suffered hard for India and Pakistan and left
their homes. The governments won't allow them to meet with
their families. We are behind compared to other countries. There
is so much hate. We need to get out of it.
(13:32):
We are going to stay in the past if we
continue like this. Doesn't matter about the borders. It should
be open so people can meet each other. You can
travel to Japan, America, Canada and it's not as difficult
as obtaining a visa to India or Pakistan. When will
they get their senses after the break? We'll hear from
(13:56):
Saddi and Sica eight months ago where they're Sadiq and
(14:26):
Sica reunited at the Karthurpork Corridor. It was a day
filled with laughter, tears, and most importantly, it was a celebration. However,
what proceeded this day was over seven decades of separation
and unknown answers to a flurry of questions. In Poul, India,
Sadique was a young boy around ten years old and
(14:49):
Sica hadn't even turned one yet. Their father was killed
in the chaos and their mother took her own life
not long after a partition. They had a sister, but
she passed away from illness and a refugee camp, so
he ended up walking in a caravan to Pakistan. I
(15:16):
arrived in fest Labat and settled in Jenna colony in Pakistan.
The government provided me with some rations. From there, I
moved to a small village just to fifty five. We
got two acres of land from the government to farm. Meanwhile,
(15:39):
Sica was under the care of a poverty stricken uncle
in their village and was then given away. He was
taken in by the Saints, a family that raised him
as if he was one of their own. Since ICIca
was so young, A lot of what he knows about
his life comes from the villagers of pool Wa. He's
had to piece together the earlier parts of his life
(15:59):
based on what others told him. Dr Jugs Are saying
a farmer and friend of Sikas from the village was
quoted saying he was the one who was left behind. Yeah, well,
don't vide the amaze. You didn't know. Well, my life
(16:22):
after partition was spent in poverty. I spent every day
doing labor. It was hard work tending to all the animals,
but I didn't mind so much because I had people
who protected me. They both started looking for each other
at different points in their life. For Zadig, the older brother,
(16:43):
it was relatively quickly after making the track to Pakistan.
You do men, Yeah, I started looking for Chica two
months after I had lived in Pakistan. I tried very hard,
(17:04):
but it was impossible, but little to no resources. Sika
began his search for his brother when he was eighteen.
Oh Shari, I used to ask Muslim families going to
(17:26):
Pakistan to look for Sadik. I'd helped put some ads
in newspapers and writing letters, but nothing was working. Both
brothers went on with their lives, but even as years passed,
they never stopped attempting to find each other. And then
fate intervened. In May, Dr Singh was visiting his daughter
(17:57):
in Canada when he was showing a video from a
YouTube channel. It was a video of Sadiq reciting all
the details he knew about his brother and begging for
anyone with any news to reach out. The circumstances sounded
oddly familiar to doctor Singh and he had a hunch
that maybe the person this man was looking for was Sica.
(18:18):
Dr Singh called Nasir, who had conducted the interview, to
get some more details. The very next day, Nasir and
Sadiq found a man who lives with Sica, and all
four of them began having conversations. In a matter of days, Friends,
villagers and family members began to collect all the necessary
paperwork to apply for visas so Sadiq and Sica could
(18:40):
meet at long last. However, the Indian and Pakistani government's restrictions,
in addition to the coronavirus through a wrench in their plans,
and their reunion was put on hold indefinitely until they
could physically meet, Video calls would have to suffice. There
was one way around fund it, though. The Carthurpark Corridor
(19:02):
is a visa free crossing, so once COVID loosened its
grip on the world, Sadik and Sica started making plans
to meet at the Sikh temple in the middle of
the crossing. They would meet on January each group began
to prepare in order to make the trip, so they
(19:22):
expand fifty thou Pakistani rupees, which is a little over
two U S. Dollars. I did. I had to sell
(19:45):
my buffalo in order to get some money to travel there.
I traveled by bus with all of my family, friends
and neighbors of Sicca also rented a bus to the corridor,
and both groups brought with them an array of gifts
and food to give to each other. Sara union was
at the mercy of the temple's operating hours. Sadik and
(20:08):
Sitka spent three hours together before they had to say
goodbye again. Nasir said when it was time to leave,
Sadik whendn't let his brother go. Since their initial meeting,
both brothers have received the opportunity to travel to each
other's homes. On the Punjabula Hair channel, there is one
video of the brothers talking and laughing in a car
while Naser drives, and in another we see them celebrating
(20:32):
near the border and the horror Pakistan. They love Pakistan. Yeah, yeah,
you paid in other pace, How is you get? I
stayed in Pakistan for two months and one of Sadik's
grandson is getting married, so I'm hoping to visit again
(20:55):
very soon. Well. I traveled to India in me and
stayed for a couple of months. Hearing their story, I
(21:15):
hope that India and Pakistan will allow other partition survivors
as well as other people to obtain visas so they
too can visit their roots and memories. Before Sadik and
I hung up the phone, he asked where in Pakistan
I was from. My dad was on the line to
assist me with these phone calls, and he said we
were from Carachi. Sadik in return said the next time
(21:46):
ruined Pakistan, please come meet us. My dad responded with inshalla,
which means God willing. This was a phrase that my
parents said to me whenever they wanted me to stop
asking about something when I was younger, and on some
occasions even now, instead of giving me a yes or
no answer, this is what they would say. But here
(22:10):
it was real, it was genuine. I could feel it.
I've read, seen and heard countless stories of people wanting
to visit their homes they left behind and thought they
could visit, or their absolute exasperated grief when they describe
someone who they have lost contact with and yearned to
see again with all of these stories, they say in
(22:32):
shella or something to that effect. When it comes to
getting their visas approved to visit either India or Pakistan,
this phrase is really the only sense of hope they
can cling to. Next time, I'll take a deeper dive
into how Partition is portrayed in film and television. What
(22:52):
content is accessible, Are there any good examples? What is
the audience supposed to take away from these depictions h
We'll talk to filmmakers and writers Chanty Dcor and Fatima
Ascar about their own creative work with partition, along with
media they consumed on the topic. So literature really informed me.
(23:16):
And then I saw a documentary and it was a
very journalistic, you know, give me the dates, give me
the politicians name of what happened. And of course I
watched it because I wanted to learn as much about
the politicians who were involved and so forth. But there
was really something lacking. It seemed really one dimensional around
these kind of almost arbitrary conversations between politicians, but not
(23:41):
like what was happening in the hard and soul of
the people on the street. Until next week, I'm Naazie's
and This Is Partition. Partition was developed as a part
of the Next Up initiative created by Anna Hosnier, Joel
Monique and Senia Median. Partition is produced by Anna Hosnier,
(24:06):
Tricia muker Gee and Becca Ramos. It is edited by
Rory Gagan, with the original score composed by Mark Hadley.
A quick note about this week's episode. All three interviews
featured were conducted in variations of Hindi, Urdu, and Punjabi.
They have all been translated into English and voiced by actors.
Warning the following episode contains sensitive material. Living in Texas
(00:26):
the majority of my life, I've unfortunately become quite accustomed
to hearing stories about families being torn apart because of
a border. While the situations of the Indian Pakistan border
and the US Mexico border vary in many ways, the
heartbreak of being separated from your children, your parents, or
(00:46):
other loved ones are synonymous. We've briefly touched upon these
grave circumstances and previous episodes of this podcast. Today, I
want to introduce you to a man who was instrumental
uniting family split up by Partition. One of these reunions
was between two brothers who were separated during Partition and
(01:09):
only saw each other again this year. It had been
seventy four years from I Heart Radio, I'm Nahasie's and
this is Partition. A podcast will take a closer look
into this often forgotten part of history. Numerous children who
(01:59):
survived ninety seven were abandoned, lost taken to religious retreats
like ashrams, or they woke up in a hospital bed
with no idea where their families were, whether they were
alive or not. Authur Uvashi Battalia wrote in great detail
about the lives of women in the other side of Silence,
but she also devoted many pages in her book about
(02:21):
the children of Partition. Sabbatry mcjohnny, a record collector with
the United Council of Relief and Welfare, described a time
when a large camp closed down in Lahore. At the
time a few months after Partition, she was with the
(02:45):
School of Social Work in Delhi. Shortly after the camp
closed down, they received information that there was some dozen
children who had been left behind who seemed to belong
to no one. What was to be done with them.
Many children grew up in orphanages or homes for the destitute.
(03:10):
Others made their way through life on the streets, and
some had the privilege to be adopted into homes. Brutalia
mentions workers at the Gandhavan, Nita Ashram and Jilan there
recount that in a two year old child was brought
to the ashram, no one knew who she belonged to
(03:33):
or where she came from. At the time the book
was published, she was fifty two and still living there,
a child of history without a history. This sentence is
one that I keep coming back to. This woman would
be in her mid seventies now. Is she still alive?
Did anyone come looking for her? Was she able to
(03:55):
find any closure or peace? Who knows if she's even
there anymore. This is a devastating story, but, as we've learned,
far from unusual. In January, I had a friend sent
(04:16):
me an article from the Washington Post about two men
named Sadiq and Sica who met after seventy four years.
I was captivated in their reunion video. Siica is already
waiting for his brother, and Sadik is approaching with his family.
But you can hear someone saying, look there, that's your brother.
After all of these years, it has finally worked out.
(04:39):
Go run and hug him. The brothers have a teery embrace,
and the younger brother, Sika, is comforting Sadiq. He tells him,
we are alive, so we can be together again. Sadik
Givesica a floral garland, a welcoming gesture in South Asian culture.
The video of the his brothers. Reuniting gave me the
(05:01):
full range of emotions happiness, anger, sadness, longing, annoyance, you
name it. It was such a beautiful and touching moment.
But when you think about the many arduous steps it
took for these siblings to meet, it's hard to ignore
the continuous policing of our borders. Nasir Dillo is someone
(05:22):
who's desperately trying to change the status quo Nasir Lis
and Fezzil bad and when he's not tending to his
real estate business, he helps partition survivors find people they
once knew and have now lost. What started out as
a Facebook page created in transformed into a major online
community with over six thousand subscribers and almost one hundred
(05:44):
million views. Nasir is a prime mover behind the Pakistani
YouTube channel Punjabi Lahare. The channel hosts an array of
content from reunions and oral histories to the impacts of
the recent floods. On this channel, Nasir post interview the
people affected by partition. Although it started as a way
to simply document these stories, it has evolved into a
(06:06):
way for long lost family members separated in to reconnect
with one another. The channel might post an interview and
viewers who might know the family members comment and try
to facilitate a connections. You have channel Cube. When I art,
(06:31):
people asked us why we created this channel and what
the purpose was. I used to talk to my grandfather
about his village in India. I asked how the village was,
how are the people, how are your friends? My elders
used to say people were very nice in their village.
(06:53):
Wanting to hear stories and experiences from others, connected with
people from India through social media from about the Hindu
and Sikh communities. He has a Sikh friend named Booping.
They're saying Lovely living in nak Nanasia, a holy site
for the Sikhs which is now located in Pakistan. When
Lovely came onto the project, they got more exposure because
(07:14):
the door opened up to meet a lot more people
since many pilgrims traveled to nick Nanasya from India. He
will get in touch with the people visiting officers from
the real estate. There was an elderly person by my
(07:36):
real estate office in fast Labad. He recognized Lovely was
a seek and struck up a conversation about his time
in India. Lovely did an interview with the elder and
it went viral on YouTube and people really responded positively
to it. After the success of the first partition story,
(07:56):
we started contacting people by phone living in the area
of Punjab in Pakistan regarding their history with partition. What
did they see with their own eyes? They quickly started
recording more and have been recording for the last seven years.
Nasir says, with the Facebook and YouTube pages combined, they
(08:18):
probably have around stories ms name. When people from the
Punjab side of India used to come to Pakistan, they
used to recall that they lost a sister, a brother
(08:41):
or a friend. I never heard any complaints or animosity
among the different religions of people living in the area.
They lived in love and as many conversations with his grandfather,
Nasa remembered him saying how much he wanted to visit
(09:01):
his old village again in India, but he never got
the chance. His grandfather passed away a few years ago
and he couldn't go because he couldn't obtain a visa.
I feel guilty that I never got to take him back.
(09:32):
Punjabi La Hare has gained an immense following and because
of that, it's become a little easier for people to
find each other through the videos being posted. Coffee Logo.
It used to take a long time to find people
because whatever someone used to contact us about a missing
(09:54):
reality or a kidnapping. We used to do everything NASA
and Lovely had to record, upload an attempt to locate
people themselves. Before that, we didn't have a community to
assist with finding people. Now, as soon as we upload
a new video, we get a through because we have
(10:16):
quite a few subscribers and people contact us or leave
notes in the comments. No Sir said it usually takes
around eight to ten days for someone to have an
idea to help solve where I loved one. Maybe around
two hundred to two hundred and fifty people have met
not only their blood relatives, but old friends and neighbors
(10:40):
through the channel. People that leave comments on the videos
and form groups. In Punjab they talk amongst themselves sanji
south meaning people come together to join in conversations. We
hosted it online and people would come on from their homes.
(11:01):
Because of this, people are starting to get in touch.
The story of Sadik and Sica reuniting reach an abundance
of people across the globe and with it garnered a
lot of media attention. Now with an even bigger audience,
Nasa says he has more than one hundred stories to
work on, but's in the problems I think um one stories.
(11:26):
The problem is we can do the stories, but the
issues getting visas for people to visit and if you
can get assistance from the India and Pakistan government to
verify their stories. I don't understand why there should be
any issue with the success of reuniting survivors, there also
(11:53):
comes crashing waves of disappointment. Much like the woman who
has lived essentially her entire life in the astra Um,
not everyone has a happy ending. The serious suspects that
some people have been denied visas because their story was
not as high profile as Deak and sick Us. Absolutely
the stories, John, would you look after listening to stories,
(12:21):
it feels like it is my story, all of these
partitions stories. When people are talking about partition, it is
really tough for them. It feels like it is my bust.
If you can't help in some way, I feel sad.
(12:41):
He mentions one woman in particular, names Aldana Begum, a
famous poet. She visited Pakistan seven times to look for
her relatives. She died recently, never having found her family members.
Only a few days after her death, the Bunjabi la
Our team was able to locate her family. Boni the
(13:10):
people who sacrifice themselves, meaning the people who died, got
hurt and suffered hard for India and Pakistan and left
their homes. The governments won't allow them to meet with
their families. We are behind compared to other countries. There
is so much hate. We need to get out of it.
(13:32):
We are going to stay in the past if we
continue like this. Doesn't matter about the borders. It should
be open so people can meet each other. You can
travel to Japan, America, Canada and it's not as difficult
as obtaining a visa to India or Pakistan. When will
they get their senses after the break? We'll hear from
(13:56):
Saddi and Sica eight months ago where they're Sadiq and
(14:26):
Sica reunited at the Karthurpork Corridor. It was a day
filled with laughter, tears, and most importantly, it was a celebration. However,
what proceeded this day was over seven decades of separation
and unknown answers to a flurry of questions. In Poul, India,
Sadique was a young boy around ten years old and
(14:49):
Sica hadn't even turned one yet. Their father was killed
in the chaos and their mother took her own life
not long after a partition. They had a sister, but
she passed away from illness and a refugee camp, so
he ended up walking in a caravan to Pakistan. I
(15:16):
arrived in fest Labat and settled in Jenna colony in Pakistan.
The government provided me with some rations. From there, I
moved to a small village just to fifty five. We
got two acres of land from the government to farm. Meanwhile,
(15:39):
Sica was under the care of a poverty stricken uncle
in their village and was then given away. He was
taken in by the Saints, a family that raised him
as if he was one of their own. Since ICIca
was so young, A lot of what he knows about
his life comes from the villagers of pool Wa. He's
had to piece together the earlier parts of his life
(15:59):
based on what others told him. Dr Jugs Are saying
a farmer and friend of Sikas from the village was
quoted saying he was the one who was left behind. Yeah, well,
don't vide the amaze. You didn't know. Well, my life
(16:22):
after partition was spent in poverty. I spent every day
doing labor. It was hard work tending to all the animals,
but I didn't mind so much because I had people
who protected me. They both started looking for each other
at different points in their life. For Zadig, the older brother,
(16:43):
it was relatively quickly after making the track to Pakistan.
You do men, Yeah, I started looking for Chica two
months after I had lived in Pakistan. I tried very hard,
(17:04):
but it was impossible, but little to no resources. Sika
began his search for his brother when he was eighteen.
Oh Shari, I used to ask Muslim families going to
(17:26):
Pakistan to look for Sadik. I'd helped put some ads
in newspapers and writing letters, but nothing was working. Both
brothers went on with their lives, but even as years passed,
they never stopped attempting to find each other. And then
fate intervened. In May, Dr Singh was visiting his daughter
(17:57):
in Canada when he was showing a video from a
YouTube channel. It was a video of Sadiq reciting all
the details he knew about his brother and begging for
anyone with any news to reach out. The circumstances sounded
oddly familiar to doctor Singh and he had a hunch
that maybe the person this man was looking for was Sica.
(18:18):
Dr Singh called Nasir, who had conducted the interview, to
get some more details. The very next day, Nasir and
Sadiq found a man who lives with Sica, and all
four of them began having conversations. In a matter of days, Friends,
villagers and family members began to collect all the necessary
paperwork to apply for visas so Sadiq and Sica could
(18:40):
meet at long last. However, the Indian and Pakistani government's restrictions,
in addition to the coronavirus through a wrench in their plans,
and their reunion was put on hold indefinitely until they
could physically meet, Video calls would have to suffice. There
was one way around fund it, though. The Carthurpark Corridor
(19:02):
is a visa free crossing, so once COVID loosened its
grip on the world, Sadik and Sica started making plans
to meet at the Sikh temple in the middle of
the crossing. They would meet on January each group began
to prepare in order to make the trip, so they
(19:22):
expand fifty thou Pakistani rupees, which is a little over
two U S. Dollars. I did. I had to sell
(19:45):
my buffalo in order to get some money to travel there.
I traveled by bus with all of my family, friends
and neighbors of Sicca also rented a bus to the corridor,
and both groups brought with them an array of gifts
and food to give to each other. Sara union was
at the mercy of the temple's operating hours. Sadik and
(20:08):
Sitka spent three hours together before they had to say
goodbye again. Nasir said when it was time to leave,
Sadik whendn't let his brother go. Since their initial meeting,
both brothers have received the opportunity to travel to each
other's homes. On the Punjabula Hair channel, there is one
video of the brothers talking and laughing in a car
while Naser drives, and in another we see them celebrating
(20:32):
near the border and the horror Pakistan. They love Pakistan. Yeah, yeah,
you paid in other pace, How is you get? I
stayed in Pakistan for two months and one of Sadik's
grandson is getting married, so I'm hoping to visit again
(20:55):
very soon. Well. I traveled to India in me and
stayed for a couple of months. Hearing their story, I
(21:15):
hope that India and Pakistan will allow other partition survivors
as well as other people to obtain visas so they
too can visit their roots and memories. Before Sadik and
I hung up the phone, he asked where in Pakistan
I was from. My dad was on the line to
assist me with these phone calls, and he said we
were from Carachi. Sadik in return said the next time
(21:46):
ruined Pakistan, please come meet us. My dad responded with inshalla,
which means God willing. This was a phrase that my
parents said to me whenever they wanted me to stop
asking about something when I was younger, and on some
occasions even now, instead of giving me a yes or
no answer, this is what they would say. But here
(22:10):
it was real, it was genuine. I could feel it.
I've read, seen and heard countless stories of people wanting
to visit their homes they left behind and thought they
could visit, or their absolute exasperated grief when they describe
someone who they have lost contact with and yearned to
see again with all of these stories, they say in
(22:32):
shella or something to that effect. When it comes to
getting their visas approved to visit either India or Pakistan,
this phrase is really the only sense of hope they
can cling to. Next time, I'll take a deeper dive
into how Partition is portrayed in film and television. What
(22:52):
content is accessible, Are there any good examples? What is
the audience supposed to take away from these depictions h
We'll talk to filmmakers and writers Chanty Dcor and Fatima
Ascar about their own creative work with partition, along with
media they consumed on the topic. So literature really informed me.
(23:16):
And then I saw a documentary and it was a
very journalistic, you know, give me the dates, give me
the politicians name of what happened. And of course I
watched it because I wanted to learn as much about
the politicians who were involved and so forth. But there
was really something lacking. It seemed really one dimensional around
these kind of almost arbitrary conversations between politicians, but not
(23:41):
like what was happening in the hard and soul of
the people on the street. Until next week, I'm Naazie's
and This Is Partition. Partition was developed as a part
of the Next Up initiative created by Anna Hosnier, Joel
Monique and Senia Median. Partition is produced by Anna Hosnier,
(24:06):
Tricia muker Gee and Becca Ramos. It is edited by
Rory Gagan, with the original score composed by Mark Hadley.
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