It is located in Punjab, Pakistan
An elderly Indian woman returns to her childhood home after 75 years of partition
Varma was eager to see her native land.
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The India-Pakistan border has been closed for many years.
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For decades, Rina Varma remembered the home she grew up in in Rawalpindi.
She wanders the narrow corridor that leads to the three-storey house, exploring the rooms in which she lived with her five siblings, parents and aunt for the first 15 years of her life.
But 75 years ago, across a seemingly impenetrable national border, Varma couldn't visit, and didn't get to until July of this year, became a painful memory.
Now Varma is 90 years old, but she is still full of vigor and vitality.
An opportunity to meet through a group on Facebook helped her find and visit the family home, which she was forced to leave decades ago, which is located in Pakistan.
Describing her emotional return, the old Indian said: 'I thought this was the reason why I was still alive.
So I can finally go home.”
Years later there was no one left in the lane that Varma had known as a child, but the locals gave her a warm welcome as one of their own.
It ended with the partition that separated the Indian subcontinent along sectarian lines.
Rawalpindi, the bustling city of Punjab where Varma lived in a Hindu family, was one of the cities that ended up in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, established after August 1947. Punjab became a center of terrible violence, and its majority Muslim population, mired in mass killings, Hindus and Sikhs were driven from their homes and fled across the border into India.
Growing up, Varma recalls the peaceful life between her Hindu family and their Muslim and Sikh neighbours, who often came to their home for cups of tea and for celebrations.
But by March 1947, Varma remembered the fear that had gripped Hindus living in the area.
Neighbors patrolled their lanes, and sirens sounded if Muslim attackers arrived at night.
Finally, in May 1947, Varma's parents decided to send their children to Shimla, a place in the foothills of the Himalayas, where they would go on vacation.
Varma was only 15 years old at the time and had only packed a few of her things, assuming she would be back in a few weeks.
Her parents followed soon after;
They had no idea that they would never see their home again.
something missing
After 1947, it became clear that it was inconceivable to return to Rawalpindi.
"My parents left everything behind and were suffering greatly," Varma said. "For years, my parents believed we would come back."
Stuck without a home, with all her possessions and money left behind, the Varma family eventually moved to Pune, Maharashtra.
As the years passed, Varma began to yearn for her home, and thought a lot about finding a way back.
But without any remaining contacts in Rawalpindi, and without any way of knowing if her house still stood, she moved on with her life.
She married and had two children, although she "always felt that something was missing".
But Varma's life changed after she joined a Facebook group called the Indo-Pakistan Heritage Club.
She wrote phrases about her old home in Rawalpindi, detailing its location and nearby landmarks, asking if anyone could help track it down.
Another member of the group, who lives in Rawalpindi, took over the task;
He sent her a message that he had found her old house, which, miraculously, was still standing.
Hospitality
It took two applications, which were rejected, before Varma's case reached the office of the Pakistani foreign minister, after which she was granted a visa.
In July, she crossed the border for the first time in 75 years.
Varma was not prepared for the celebration that was held to receive her, as she was accompanied by drums and singing, as she walked in the lane of her old house, and dozens of residents flocked to welcome her, which prompted her to give her a strong hug.
"I have no words to express how I feel," she said, adding, "Everything was done very happily, and there was a warm welcome when I got there, and I couldn't believe that the house was in perfect condition."
"People talk about India and Pakistan as divided, but when you go there, you get a lot of respect, and their hospitality, their hospitality you will never forget," she added.
The family now living in the house prepared it for the night.
However, Varma was sad as she walked around the rooms and stood on the balcony. “I used to miss my family so much.
I wish they were there too.”
• As the years passed, Pharma began to yearn for its home, and thought a lot about finding a way back.
emotional moment
It was an emotional moment for Imran Williams, who set up the Indo-Pakistan Heritage Club Facebook page, and was there to greet Varma upon her arrival in Rawalpindi.
“It was like I was walking around with my grandmother at her grandparents’ house,” Williams said. “I couldn’t have taken my grandmother back to her grandparents’ house, before she died, and it hurts;
So I try to fulfill this duty by helping others, finding their homes, villages and roots.”
Varma said she hopes her trip will set an example for the governments of India and Pakistan to put aside their political differences and allow others to travel across the border.
She continued, "My view is that after 75 years, we must not continue to talk about partition, and we must forget those divisions. People are very united on both sides, and on both sides, there are people who are desperate to meet each other."
Family reunion
A YouTube video has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times.
The clip shows an old man with a long white beard and a black turban embracing his sister for the first time since her separation from her family, 75 years ago.
They met in May at a border crossing between India and Pakistan.
Mumtaz Bibi, who wears a pink headscarf, is a Pakistani Muslim, while her two brothers, Gurmukh Singh and Baldev Singh, who were there at the border to meet her, are Sikhs.
The event that separated Bibi from her family in 1947 had catastrophic proportions.
Partition triggered one of the largest migrations of the 20th century, as some 10 million people fled across newly drawn borders: Hindus and Sikhs to India, Muslims to Pakistan;
Perhaps a million people were killed.
Families like the Singh family were torn apart.
When Bibi's father fled to India, his wife (Bibi's mother) was murdered, her father assumed that his daughter, then a child, had died with her mother.
But a Muslim couple found her lying beside her deceased mother, and raised her as their daughter.
The two Pakistani men who helped reunite Bibi with her two brothers, Bapinder Singh and Nasir Dhillon, are friends who became famous for finding family members lost during Partition.
"We are trying to find their loved ones before it is too late," says Bapinder Singh. "We want to bring peace to the people who have been suffering for 75 years."
Bibi embraces her brother after decades of separation. archival
Wound healing
Bapinder Singh and Nasir Dhillon, both in their mid-30s, have created videos that go viral.
For the past six years, they have produced videos in a makeshift studio in a garage owned by Dillon, in the industrial city of Faisalabad, where he runs a real estate company.
They upload videos to their YouTube channel, Punjab Lihar, which has nearly 600,000 subscribers and more than 97 million views.
The videos feature people talking about the loss of family members during the chaos of partition.
In some lucky cases, viewers help track down missing loved ones.
Singh and Dhillon, too, are connecting to their own network of contacts in India, which has been built up through years of research.
Singh says the videos have gone viral because many Pakistanis and Indians want to heal the wounds of partition.
Comments left by Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs on YouTube reflect this desire.
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