Of border crossings and other memories

It has been 70 years but 86-year-old Sat Prakash Goel still tears up as he remembers that day in early September 1947 when he was reunited with his family at Palam Airport in Delhi. For more than three weeks before that, he'd not known where they were – back in Rawalpindi in newly-created Pakistan, where his father worked as a station master, or somewhere in India.

Goel, then 16 years old, had been in Delhi on the occasion of Independence. "I saw Pandit Nehru raise the Indian flag that day," he reminiscences. It was the day he had returned to his brother's house in Karol Bagh after spending three days in Palam, hoping his family would be on a flight the Indian government had arranged to ferry government officials in Rawalpindi who wished to migrate to India and had taken shelter in refugee camps.

"It was in early August that my father suddenly decided to come to India. Until then, he had thought of staying in Pakistan as he had a job with the North West Railways. But then one day, he went to the railway yard for some work when two men accosted him. One had a dagger and asked him to give up whatever he had. My father had very little on him, and so, they asked for the white coat that was part of his summer uniform. My father gave it to them. 'Let's kill him,' the man with the dagger said, and advanced on my father. But the other man held him back. My father came back to his office, wearing just his vest, and fainted. The first thing he said when he regained consciousness was 'Let's pack our bags'," recounts Goel.

Goel was then in India, travelling from Haridwar to Delhi where his eldest brother worked. In early August, with Partition day approaching, he decided to go back and boarded a train for Rawalpindi. But he didn't get beyond Ludhiana.

"Our train was stopped there and we were told that it was too dangerous to go ahead," Goel says. He stayed back with relatives in Ludhiana for a few days, hoping there would be another train to take him to Rawalpindi. Over the days, however, he realised it wasn't to be. "There were two newspapers at the time – Tribune in English, published from Lahore, and Milap in Urdu. Both were full of rhetoric… The trains that arrived from across the border were full of dead bodies."

Forlorn, Goel decided to go back to Delhi, which was locked down by a curfew. But thoughts of the fate of his parents, his grandmother, two younger brothers and his sister and brother-in-law, who lived in Rawalpindi, worried him. Goel did the rounds of railway officials in Delhi, hoping for news. He was rewarded – his family had moved into the Rawalpindi camp for railway officers and would be sent to Delhi by flight, as it was dangerous to take the train.

"That was the happiest day of my life," says Goel, his eyes misty.

Goel's family came through Partition unscathed. The family lost their home in Rawalpindi, but then "occupied" a house vacated by a Muslim family in Karol Bagh. He got a job with the railways while Goel, who was due to sit for his matriculation that year, enrolled in a school for refugee children in Mori Gate, and passed with a scholarship to enroll in college. He then studied engineering and worked in several places, including the World Bank.

Goel, who now lives in an upscale south Delhi colony, has been to Rawalpindi twice – in 1989 and 2014. Somewhat unusual, he says, as Indians are not generally given a visa to the city because it's an important cantonment. "Our house remains just the same. The two floors are now occupied by two different families, but they were very cordial."