Very few would have heard of Didi. After all who any longer cares, or remembers, the millions of victims that the events of 1947 Partition unleashed on the subcontinent. As the years pass the bloody events of the 1947 Partition increasingly become distant.

It makes sense that, from time to time, we recollect the experiences of people who suffered in silence the most. Amazingly Lahore was also a focal point of the killings. To create a Partition Museum in the Bradlaugh Hall on the lines of a similar one that has come up in Old Amritsar’s Town Hall, has been shot down by our bureaucrats and politicians. They love to cultivate the culture of hate that plagues our land.

We tend to forget that the events of 1947 triggered the greatest exodus in human history. It seems we do not understand the true gravity, let alone the meaning and scale of this event. We tend to block out the tragedies in our national life. No academic research worth the while has emerged, though our creative writers and poets have produced amazing and touching literature. No wonder we do not know who we are.

Let me put the scale of the tragedy in context with a few examples. The total deaths on all sides, both military and civilian, in the two World Wars combined to an average of 22,034 a day. When the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima, official records tell us that 90,000 people died on the first day. After four months the death toll because of radiation and burns reached a staggering 146,000. At Nagasaki the immediate death toll was 39,000 people, which after four months reached 80,000 persons. So almost 650 persons a day died from burn wounds and atomic radiation in both cities of Japan put together. Even the Holocaust deaths average 1,200 a day.

Let us compare this to the deaths in 1947 in the Punjab in the first one month alone. It might surprise many that the death toll was a massive 700,000 over the first seven days, which continued for another three weeks. So on an average 100,000 people - Muslim, Sikh and Hindu - were being slaughtered every day, or 70 persons every minute of the day, or more than one every second of the day. Research tells us that 16.5 million people migrated and a massive 1.7 million were killed, which makes this one in almost nine being slaughtered.

Never before had humans killed each other with such venom, ferocity and hatred. Who can deny that the sectarian reasons for Partition continue to fan life on both sides of the Partition Line. On the surface an uneasy calm prevails.

In this piece let me dwell on just one simple single old lady who suffered unseen, unknown and silently. We called her Didi, and she was a lovable person who continued to suffer in different ways after 1947. Sadly, she passed away last September. Didi was the middle of three sisters and a brother of a reasonably well-off educated family who lived in the small town of Chawinda. In 1947 the rumour was that this small town, now in Pakistan on the border, would be going to India as it had a Sikh majority. Their brother was in the army and posted too far away to help. As flames engulfed the houses of Muslims in 1947 the three sisters managed to escape bare-footed from their house. It was to prove a life-changing trek stretched over three months all the way to Jhelum.

On the way they suffered untold atrocities, most of which are better not told. Probably all three migrating communities would have found three young girls an easy target. So they trekked day and night and in the heat and stench of death, sometimes eating leaves to survive. That they survived is a miracle. They slept under trees, in the open fields, in rain and heat or any shade they could find.

Often, as Didi used to tell me, they preferred the company of any group of refugees that secured their safety. But even that had its pitfalls. She used to go silent. What they encountered is way beyond description, but it was Didi who stepped up to protect her elder sister and the younger one. That made her a ferocious person and the experience stayed with her. Yet she was, deep down, a very cultured and mellow person. I am leaving out the gory details but the fact is that they survived and made it to safety, finally ending up in the Chauburji area of Lahore.

In Lahore the eldest started to teach to earn money while Didi entered Kinnaird College and graduated with distinction. Her elder sister was to go on to head the department of philosophy of a Lahore college. The younger married a professional working in PIA. They moved on in life. But for Didi it stood still.

My first meeting with her was when my uncle, himself a college professor, married the eldest and she moved into their house. Didi also moved in with them. Finally, the sisters got her married off to a bearded pious person, only for her to be badly beaten up and sent home. The reason she was “a Partition victim”. This was over half a century ago. Her troubles had just started, and they continued till the day she passed away, all along serving others with a rare dignity. It was 71 years of unhappiness.

My question to her once was: “Was Partition worth all the problems that you face?” She said: “Chawinda, Sialkot and other nearby places had the highest educational levels in India. Both Iqbal and Faiz belonged to the area” she said with pride. But then in Pakistan, she said, the ‘Claim Scandal’ converted barbers into big landlords. The age of fake documents had started. Cheating and lying are the norm. She shook her head as if in disbelief: “Morality holds no value. Even our children do not know where to draw the line. Yes people are slightly better off, but then the rich are richer and the poor, virtually invisible, are poorer. Even drug addicts have respect here”.

Didi seldom spoke her mind, but when she did it was in anger … and she would just walk away and a long silence followed. That spoke a lot about how she felt about issues. In a way that is what her country had become, a place where issues are never confronted and solved. All that one does is walk away from reality.

In the comfort of her sister’s family she saw her three nieces stay in Pakistan while both the nephews simply walked away to live in foreign lands. That is the way she had experienced life with women facing the brunt while the men just walked away.

My frequent visits to their house were because of a favourite uncle who himself had returned from England to serve his mother. In a way he was also an unhappy person because he lived for his scientific research. My father used to claim that had his cousin remained in England he would have won the Nobel Prize. Work on his theory was to later win an English colleague that very coveted prize.

So Didi has passed away, a Partition victim who graduated from Kinnaird with honours, and because of the bloody events of 1947 lived another 71 years of lonely sadness. All over our land there are hundreds and thousands of such victims, each story more gruesome than the last. The victims are mostly women. The unheard of continue to pay for a holocaust never discussed. History is a sin.