The Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh

 

This book spoke a lot about the society that once was in Mano Majra - a fictional village on the Indo-Pak border.

The people have so long lived in harmony. But Partition has caused them to give up their homes and relationships reluctantly. There are accounts of how dead bodies were sent via trains that plied between India and Pakistan. And as revenge goes, it is an eye for an eye situation. The doom that is on people's faces are sad to read. Quite like our situation now, where every second household seems to have one person gone. You are helpless as you have no powers in your hands to change the way things are.

The book, despite being well known in writing circles, did not impress me. I liked other Partition stories and movies. Earth, the movie, which is the adaptation of Bapsi Sidhwa's Ice Candy Man was a good story on Partition. So were other books - Gulzar's Two/Do or even the non-fiction book, On the Footprints of Partition by Anam Zakaria. Even the simple children's book, The Night Diary had a good theme describing Partition.

This book was more self reflection and sounded almost like gyan to me and didn't really give me the story line I was expecting. I was looking for somewhat real-time stories of a broken love story maybe, or how families felt moving away from their "home" irrespective of which side of the border they were. Or did some people just hide and not cross the border? What happened to such people?

Either ways, Train to Pakistan is good to have on one's reading list.