
It was an incessant flow of names. Lassa Ju, Walijee Choudhary, Khwaja Pandit, Khwaja Usman Bohri Walla8230; and with every name, 88-year-old Ram Lal Verma nodded in agreement.
There were memories captured as Tariq Naqash, a journalist from Muzaffarabad in PoK, shared notes with Verma, who had migrated from Muzaffarabad to Jammu during Partition. The two men met here today and the 57 years past were back in conversation.
Recalling the era, Verma says his 10-month-old daughter had been caught in fire, and was saved by a Pathan.
Naqash, part of the 16-member delegation of Pakistani journalists on their first visit to J-K, says the connection is stronger since his father had lived in Srinagar till 1956. Naqash says it had been a dream ever to visit the state, which he could only see in library books.
Roshan Moghul, who belongs to the border village of Chargotti, says it feels like he has stepped out of one home into another. Moghul says with the opening of the Uri-Muzaffarabad road, the distances would be covered in no time.