My Pakistan Diary: Roots! A Spiritual Journey

There are two lasting bequests we can give our children. One is roots. The other is wings. - Hodding Carter, Jr.

South Asians are emotional people and have a particularly sentimental attachment to their lands. The Bangladeshi national anthem speaks of her golden land; the Pakistani national anthem talks about its sacred land, although for the true emotional appeal, one has to listen to ‘dharti sohni Pakistan’. In India, too, the national anthem does not bring out the same deep sentiments as Bankim Chatterjee’s Vande Matram, or its newer version, MaaN Tujhe Salaam by A.R. Rahman. The Sikh Diaspora has created a vibrant culture based on the sheer love of their land of birth. But nothing conveys the reverence and devotion to one’s land of birth as well as the Sanskrit expression, ‘janani, janma bhoomi’.

I, too, had this emotional attachment to my unseen place of birth. Neither my wife nor I had any memories of our birthplaces. My wife was delivered by her mother at her nanake (maternal family), it being the frequent practice in the old days to send the pregnant mother to her parental home for delivery. My parents left my village of birth when I was still a baby. So, both of us were quite eager to see the places where our lives’ journeys began.

Our search for our places of birth began in India. My wife’s mother had vivid memories of Sargodha where she gave birth to my wife but her description was of little value. She could only give us vague directions on how to get to her old house. She said, “when you come out of the railway station, you will cross the phatak-gate, when you reach Five Block, ask anyone about the kothi of Vakil Sita Ram Kohli and he will guide you”. This presumed, of course, that there were no changes in the Sargodha landscape from her time and that there were still people in that neighbourhood who would remember Vakil sahib; both of these were doubtful assumptions. In my case, the only person who had any memories of the village where I was born was my elder sister and she was herself an adolescent when the family left the village of Kussak; all she could tell me was that the nearest railway station to the village was Sodhi, it took more than an hour to get to Choa Saidan Shah by mule and that the village fort was visible from afar. Not of much help, especially since I could not locate Kussak anywhere on the Pakistani census websites or on the Internet.

We were fortunate in having the help of Nazar Saheb of Chowk in navigating us in our mission to search our birth places. The first stop was Sargodha. There was no problem in getting to the ‘Five Block’. However, as we suspected, there was no one there who was from the old days. This locality had been inhabited by the Hindus and Sikhs who all (but one) left for India at the time of the partition and replaced by the refugees from the other side of the border. We were told that there was a prominent Hindu family still living there and they would be our best bet to find out the location of Vakil Kohli’s house. However, we could only meet an old demented lady in that house and she was not able to offer us much guidance. We stopped at a street corner and asked a shopkeeper the familiar question about Vakil Sahib; by coincidence, a man came out of a large house and told us that the house we were standing in front of belonged to the vakil sahib. He had bought the house a few years ago and had checked the land records and could assure us that the house belonged to vakil sahib at one time. He was very pleased to meet us and volunteered to give us a tour of the house. He was quite proud of the house and full of admiration for its architecture and engineering. The house was mostly in its original condition, including the plumbing and electricity and did not need any major modifications. It was very sensitive to the climatic conditions and there were areas in the house where it never got hot even during the searing heat of May and June. The house was currently being used as a shoe factory.

My wife became quite sentimental about the place. We took many pictures both inside and outside the house, along with the proud new owner of the place. My wife immediately called India from a public phone to tell her brother and mother, who were thrilled to know that she was calling from her old house.

Finding my village was somewhat more difficult as no one had heard of Kussak. Fortunately, we met someone at Nazar sahib’s ancestral village who originally belonged to the salt range region. He knew about Kussak and had a rough idea of its location. We took the Kalar Kahar exit on the Lahore-Islamabad motorway and went to Choa Saidan Shah via Ketas Raj. At Choa Saidan Shah, we asked an old man if he knew about Kussak. He did. He asked us to go in the direction of Maniala and pass the Watli spring water reservoir to reach our desired destination.

The village of Kussak is about 5-6 kilometers from Choa Saidan Shah on a side country road. We finally located the village after a couple of false starts and reached the small kutcha road that led to the village. We could see the village with the backdrop of a fort perched on a hilltop. But getting to the village was a problem. The small and narrow kutcha road leading to the village was lined with small rocks and would have damaged our vehicle. With a heavy heart, we decided to end our journey right there and take only a few photographs with the castle in the background.

And then, providence appeared in the form of a small van carrying a group of passengers. The angle of mercy, the driver of the van, stopped his vehicle on seeing us and asked us if we had any problem. We told him of our predicament of wanting to go to the village but not being able to do so. As luck would have it, the driver, Zaheer, was from Kussak and ran a passenger service between Kusaak and Choa Saidan Shah. He was on his way to Kussak. I asked him if he would take my wife and me to the village and bring us back. He asked for Rs. 50 for the return journey; I would have happily given him hundred times that much.

The village of Kussak is a hilly tract at a height of about 3000 feet above sea level, which probably explains my genetic love of hiking and the mountains. It has a population of approximately one hundred. The village does not appear on any of the websites of the Panjab government. It was part of the Jhelum district but, after the creation of the new Chakwal district, now falls into the new district. The only place where I found a mention of this place was in a book of correspondence by Maharaja Duleep Singh, the son of Maharaja Ranjeet Singh who had been taken by the British to England. He mentions it as part of his claim to his ancestral property from the time of his grandfather, Maha Singh, as opposed to the property of the Lahore crown, which had now gotten transferred to the British. It appears that Kussak at one time derived its livelihood from a salt mine and became an economic waste land after that mine dried up. The name of the village is most likely derived from a temple dedicated to goddess Kaushika at the top of the hill inside the Kussak fort.

The village was only a couple of kilometers from the main road. As the van moved slowly towards the village, my mind was flooded with images; the image of my parents leaving the village, with their children and belongings on mules, trekking their way to Sodhi, the nearest railway station, to embark on a journey from which the family would never return; the image of my father coming to the village for an extended visit during the turbulent summer of 1947; the image of his neighbours coming to him one August evening and telling him that he had only one day to decide whether to become a Muslim or to face death; the image of his leaving his beloved village under the cover of darkness in the middle of the night to walk to the nearest railway station, only to catch one of those ill-fated trains to India.

“Kya soch rahe hain sahib?”, the voice of Zaheer sitting next to me brought me out of my thoughts. I had told Zaheer that I was born in Kussak and wanted to see the house where I was born but had no memory of the place. He volunteered to take me to someone old enough to remember the pre-partition times. We were almost at the edge of Kussak. Kussak is one of those places which has probably remained unchanged over the centuries. We were now passing by the village well. My parents were always full of praises for the Kussak water which, according to them, had the strengthening qualities of desi ghee.

Upon reaching Kussak, Zaheer unloaded his other passengers. At the edge of the village was a small mud house and a woman was sitting outside. Zaheer asked if Shera was inside. In an instant, Shera appeared at the door. Shera must have been in his ‘80s. Zaheer told him my family name and asked him if he remembered anyone of that name from the old days. He didn’t and seemed somewhat nervous at seeing us. Zaheer told me not to worry and that he would find someone else from that era.

We walked up the narrow mud alley to reach another mud house with a small door entry. Zaheer called for Mohammad Alam. Out came a man in his late ‘70s. Like Shera, he also did not know my family name. He asked for the name of my grandfather. As soon as I mentioned Lachhman Das, the name of my grandfather, his eyes lit up. He said that he certainly knew my grandfather as well as his two sons, Ram Labhaya and Girdhari Lal, who left for Sialkot. He told me how my father and grandfather were both very god-loving (khuda-prast) people. He told me that my family owned two dharamshalas in the village, a fact that I was totally unaware of until that point. One of the dharamshalas, which were used by the villagers for communal use during weddings and other functions was just across from Alam’s house. It had now crumbled and only a wall survived. He then took me to the other dharamshala, which was still intact. “This is where” Alam said, “your grandfather used to read from Guru Granth Sahib to the veiled Khatri women of the village”. He told me that my ancestral house was destroyed in an earthquake but showed me a couple of walls that were still standing.

We went back to Alam’s house and he started telling me about the old times. He said that he missed his old friends with whom he went together to the village school. The village was always poor and continues to be so though not as poor as it used to be. In the old days, Hindus constituted half of the village and they were the only ones who were prosperous. The Muslims frequently had to go to the Hindus’ homes to feed themselves. He said that there was no ill-will between the two communities and they coexisted in peace and amity, drawing water from the same well, albeit from different sides. There was/is no source of livelihood in the village and young people from the village seek employment in the army except for one or two who had gone to the Middle Eastern countries.

Alam wanted us to have our meals with him. But we had to be at the Rawalpindi airport in two hours, so we had to politely decline his invitation, settling instead for a glass of water from the well, with the “strength of desi ghee”.

Thus ended our sentimental journey to our roots.

Postscript: After our return to India, my mother-in-law told us that we most likely went not to her house in Sargodha, but to the one next to it.