Chaos of the unseen frontier
(With quotes from Fathima Ashgar ’s “ If they come for us”) Remember those thick chunky social science textbooks we used to study? The history textbooks taught us about Indian history, sacrifices, massacres, the non-violence movements. However, there was a less taught topic, an anticlimax to Nehru’s dream of Unified India, the Partition. I checked with my friends to see if I alone was oblivious to the monstrosity of this mass migration. And truth be told , they too had only a little knowledge about this. I realized the grotesqueness of this massacre especially when I read these lines from Fatima Ashgar ’s poem, “If they come for us” 1947: The cannons sound during Ramzan and everyone hold their breath To find who survived. Laylat Al Qadar Births two nations. No one knows the boundaries Bodies spoon like comm...