What happens when two people who met with similar fates come together? They relive history. That is what journalists Kuldip Nayar and Asif Noorani did at the launch of their book Tales of Two Cities (Roli) at the India International Centre: they went back to a moment in 1947 when two nations were born in blood, forcing them to leave their land, cross a new, hastily drawn-up border and find homes in unaccustomed earth. Karachi-based Noorani, associated with the Dawn Group, was in Bombay and all of five when Partition happened. “I vividly recall shouting ‘Up, Up the National Flag, Down, Down the Union Jack’ as a schoolboy. When someone asked me why I wanted the Union Jack down, in all my innocence, I replied that since Jack fell down and broke his crown, the Union Jack must also come down,” laughed Noorani, offering a light moment. Noorani’s family left Bombay for Pakistan only in 1950 when the wounds were not so raw, but Nayar was not so fortunate. He was 24 when he left his hometown of Sialkot, exactly a month after the city became part of Pakistan, and saw first-hand the trauma of migration.“Circumstances no longer sheltered us in our hometown. Our patience had exhausted in a month, though we came over to Delhi with the idea of returning when things got better. But they only worsened,” says Nayar, who started the annual candlelight vigil at Wagah on the night of August 14. The mood is reflected on the pages where personal stories intertwine with history: if Nayar’s “From Sialkot to Delhi” is grim, Noorani’s “From Bombay to Karachi’ carries twists of humour.
