After 75 years, Indian citizen Reena Varma, 90, was able to return home and visit her childhood home in Pakistan. The family left during the Indo-Pakistani war, and she was the only one of that group who lived to make it back.
“My dream came true,” he said, remembering his sister who died without ever being able to fulfill the same wish. The family, with six children, was among millions of others whose daily lives were disrupted in 1947, when departing British colonial administrators ordered the creation of two states — one mostly Muslim, Pakistan, and the other mostly Hindu, India.
There followed a mass migration of some 15 million Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs, who, fearing discrimination, switched countries in a violent political and social upheaval that claimed more than 1 million lives.
Varma and her family had to leave the city of Rawalpindi when she was 14 and flee to what is now Pune in western India, shortly before the division of the two states.
Since then, India and Pakistan have engaged in armed conflict at least three times, and relations between them remain strained — particularly over the disputed region of Kashmir, which both fully claim.
Varma’s parents and siblings are now dead, and although she managed to travel once to the Pakistani city of Lahore as a young woman, she never returned to Rawalpindi. She spent decades trying to get a visa and said she was touched to be able to undertake the trip now.
“I couldn’t imagine or predict how I would react when I arrived and saw my ancestral home,” he said. “When I crossed the border and saw the signs indicating Pakistan and India, I was already touched.”
War and Departure
The 14th of August will mark the 75th anniversary of the division of the two countries – which included the division in half of the province of Punjab, in which, on the Pakistani side, is Rawalpindi, neighboring the capital Islamabad. Varma says she vividly remembers those tumultuous days: “Initially, we didn’t understand what had happened.”
The family decided to leave because of the reports of violent incidents; the father left his government job behind and the children stopped going to school. According to her, the mother for a long time did not want to believe that the nations had been divided and was betting on the family’s return to Rawalpindi – in the end she ended up accepting the reality of the separation of India and Pakistan.
Varma had been trying to get a visa to Pakistan since at least 1965. In this 2022, Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar and the Indo-Pakistani Heritage Club stepped in to finally help with the process, after a post about the case on social media draw attention.
The organization, which works to “highlight the shared heritage of citizens on both sides of the border and bring together the members of families separated by the partition [dos Estados]”, is run by Imran William. It was he who welcomed Varma to his town after the car journey across the border.
“India and Pakistan today are two separate countries, but we can bring peace between them through love and contact between people,” William said.
The guest, in interviews, asked both countries to ease their visa regimes, allowing Indians and Pakistanis to meet more often. She, who is Hindu, said that when she was leaving India for the visit, many warned her not to travel to a Muslim-majority country — the warnings did not stop her.
“I ask the new generations to work together to make things easier. We have the same culture, we all want to live in love and in peace.”
childhood memories
Upon reaching the street of the house where she was born, Varma was covered in petals by the current residents, who played drums, to which the visitor danced after telling that in the 1940s music used to play from dawn until dawn.
The three-story property, tucked away among the alleys of Rawalpindi, remains preserved. On the balcony, the now Indian citizen remembered her childhood. “I would sit there and sing,” she said, her eyes filled with tears—”but tears of joy.”
“I’m very happy to see it’s left intact.” She spent several hours inside the house and at one point burst into laughter as she found herself unable to climb a flight of stairs unaided. “I would climb it like a bird several times a day,” she recalled, according to the account of one of the people who now occupy the property.
Varma said that when she lived in Rawalpindi, the street was mostly Hindu, but Muslims, Christians and Sikhs all lived peacefully in her neighborhood. “All religions teach humanity. I would say keep humanity above all else.”
