IT IS AS SCARY AS THE SCENES OF PARTITION DESCRIBED BY RAMANAND SAGAR IN HIS BOOK “AUR INSAAN MAAR GAYA”

BY Ali Peter John

These days , I am growing more sick watching the scenes of the tribals walking back to their villages . And it has suddenly struck me that these scenes of men , women and children walking with their homes in the cities on their backs and heads , are almost similar to the scenes of thousands of people crossing info the two countries the partition had given birth to .

I have read several accounts of those scenes, but no writer , according to me , has been successful in bringing the grim reality to live on paper.

I may have read Ramanand Sagar’s “AUR INSAAN MAAR GAYA”and every scene described in it is still living in my mind . Sagar never wrote a book again, but this one book is all that he needs to be immortal.

And if I may have forgotten any part of the book , these scenes of thousands of people walking back to their villages is a grim reminder of what we had to go through to be where we are today .

Are we going forward or backward ? are those people on the streets the same Indians like us ? Why have they been reduced to so many Indians with a very Bleak future ? who is responsible for making them what they are today ?When will their lives change for the better?

How long will they have to wait for their sun to rise ? am I sounding like the poet Sahir Ludhianvi , when he cried out ,”Woh subah kabhi toh aayegi”. if yes , then I am proud to be in his company , but that doesn’t take away the truth about the bitter realities of today.If Sahir was alive today , he would have written the same lines that he wrote almost sixty years ago .And I and crores of Indians would have joined him .