DP Singh
The Tribune, Feb 11, 2026 IST
I visited Pakistan once to attend a conference. At the time, memories of the Kargil conflict of 1999 and the Parliament attack of 2001 were still fresh. When the invitation arrived, I was unsure and conveyed my reluctance to the organisers. After some back and forth, I agreed, and soon the air tickets arrived by email.
When I arrived in Islamabad, I learned that mine was a reporting visa, which meant that I had to visit a police station every morning. The hosts had arranged a vehicle, but the daily visit to the police station felt awkward. The visa did not allow me to move outside the municipal limits and barred me from entering the cantonment area within the city. A visit to Taxila, which was nearby, was planned for other delegates, but not permitted in my case. Being watched and constantly reminded of where I came from made it hard to feel at ease.
On the second evening, dinner was served on the lawns. Round tables slowly filled as delegates trickled in. I found a seat and exchanged greetings with others seated at my table. When my turn came, I introduced myself in English and mentioned that I was from Punjabi University in Patiala, Punjab.
Before I could finish, a young woman sitting across from me looked at me closely. “You are not from Punjab,” she said gently.
I smiled, slightly surprised. “I am from Punjab.”
She continued to look at me for a moment, thoughtful, almost certain. “You are from Haryana, somewhere near Rohtak.”
I paused. She was right. My village, though now in Hansi district, is culturally part of the Rohtak region. I asked how she could tell as I had spoken only in English.
She said, “My grandmother was from Nindana village near Rohtak. She left the village with her young children after the Partition. All her life, she spoke the way you speak. Everything else changed, but not her tone, her accent, her expressions, even her pauses. For a moment, after hearing you speak, it felt as if I was hearing my grandmother again.”
“I cannot be wrong about someone from my grandmother’s land,” she said with certainty.
Her words carried memory and loss, but also warmth. It was not just recognition, but something that had lived quietly in her for years. She was about 25, far removed from the Partition and from the land her grandmother had left behind, yet her roots had not been erased. That was the moment that made me forget all the restrictions and surveillance. Two strangers were now sharing the memory of a place, a culture and a language that existed more in the mind than on a map. The nostalgia and sense of belonging transcended religion, borders and time.
For a short while, the Partition did not seem like something from the past, but something close and familiar, not just in memory but also in accent.
The writer is a professor at Punjabi University, Patiala