Speaker 1: Oh, a quick note about this week's episode. For extra clarity,
Speaker 1: we have included a transcription of shanty's interview in the
Speaker 1: show notes. Warning. The following episode contains stories of extreme violence. Yes, big,
Speaker 1: big team. Every day. It was time to writing. Around
Speaker 1: one in July I was granted a reprieve from the
Speaker 1: Texas heat. I traveled to the bay area to interview
Speaker 1: a man who experienced partition when he was nineteen years old.
Speaker 1: Up until this point I had only communicated via email
Speaker 1: with his song and the only thing I knew, besides
Speaker 1: him being a survivor, is that he used to be
Speaker 1: a professor in the Economics Department at Rutgers University. I
Speaker 1: took the Coltrain from San Francisco to mountain view. My
Speaker 1: mind was racing during the entire journey. I have never
Speaker 1: spoken to my relatives who survived face to face about
Speaker 1: their experiences, and here I was about to meet a
Speaker 1: stranger and have him divulge painful parts of his past.
Speaker 1: I met Shanty Tongrey and his son Neil at the
Speaker 1: mountain view public library on a Friday afternoon. I got
Speaker 1: there early to set up our meeting room and I
Speaker 1: was constantly rearranging everything as if I was staging a
Speaker 1: house about to be put on the market. Once the
Speaker 1: equipment was set up to my liking, I sat down,
Speaker 1: took a breath and looked over my questions, and a
Speaker 1: minute later there was a knock at the door. They
Speaker 1: greeted me with a joyful and kind energy. We introduced ourselves,
Speaker 1: I explained how the process of recording would work and
Speaker 1: I went over some topics of discussion. After that, I
Speaker 1: pressed record and for two and a half hours I
Speaker 1: just listened to shanty, hanging onto every word of his story. YEA,
Speaker 1: each episode of this show has been difficult to put together,
Speaker 1: but my time with shanty posts a lot more discourse
Speaker 1: on how I should present his story to you all.
Speaker 1: This episode could be hours long. I would have loved
Speaker 1: to include everything shanty told me. Each sentence, each memory,
Speaker 1: had so much significance. I hardly spoke during our conversation.
Speaker 1: It didn't feel right to interrupt his stream of consciousness
Speaker 1: as he recounted a number of memories for me, each
Speaker 1: one more nerve racking than the last. From I heart radio.
Speaker 1: I'm Nahasie's and this is partition a podcast that will
Speaker 1: take a closer look into this often forgotten part of history.
Speaker 1: We know that many attacks and crimes took place before
Speaker 1: Independence Day. Shanty described some of the moments he witnessed
Speaker 1: the weeks leading up to partition. Partition offessially took place
Speaker 1: in make July. It was in the air. Matter had
Speaker 1: been politically decided by all of the parties. They were
Speaker 1: going to accept the compromising we sat me at the
Speaker 1: radio for an hours. I heard there were a fire
Speaker 1: in the inner Lahore and it wasn't being put out.
Speaker 1: He told me that he climbed on the rooftop of
Speaker 1: their home and realized the fire was only a few
Speaker 1: miles away. We could tell from the direction how it
Speaker 1: come from, that this was the old city and most
Speaker 1: likely it said either, we didn't know for in the beginning,
Speaker 1: with the hint them what must number, or bolt. Sometime
Speaker 1: during that night the words started coming that it reached
Speaker 1: the hint of version of the town. Picture right. We
Speaker 1: were all up and beginning to what to do. For
Speaker 1: a while everybody was totally confused. Think maybe next morning.
Speaker 1: Think told calmed down and stiff. I kept listening to
Speaker 1: the idea now, how two more police heavy now and
Speaker 1: then coming through with all of the news shanty had
Speaker 1: knowledge about. He began to think about what would happen
Speaker 1: when the formation of a new country was quickly approaching.
Speaker 1: So I would listen to the radio or read the
Speaker 1: newspaper and there were articles about getting fired and down,
Speaker 1: down Lahr and on. We started wadding about what's going
Speaker 1: to happen when Pakistan our lives. A decision about the
Speaker 1: family's future had to be made. Well, he had all
Speaker 1: arguments and we had generatives. Had cousin who had gotten
Speaker 1: matted recently and he had come as wife, new wife
Speaker 1: and staying with us for a while. They were on
Speaker 1: the way to cash media and that's check to him,
Speaker 1: and so was my order brother, who was at Paris
Speaker 1: in the university and Engineering School and probably India's prestor
Speaker 1: that time. And we had a family session, all of
Speaker 1: us as through what to do, because I think we're
Speaker 1: getting worse. For some reason I found myself in agreement,
Speaker 1: which some of them not an agreement retus, and one
Speaker 1: of them happened to be my oldest brother's father in law,
Speaker 1: who was very part of me. For some reason. I
Speaker 1: had stayed with him and karage once and interrupted me
Speaker 1: to stay with him for two months. So he kept
Speaker 1: coming back and saying, listen to this young man. Listening.
Speaker 1: He were probably more for two ways that me and
Speaker 1: my father going along with he wanted to get back
Speaker 1: to Karachi and he was saying no, you shouldn't do
Speaker 1: what he's saying. What I was saying is send this
Speaker 1: young man, my younger brother. He's gone up strong, bigger
Speaker 1: than me. It looks like if the police it's coming
Speaker 1: into any trouble, he will be picked up and card
Speaker 1: knows what they would do to him. Get him out
Speaker 1: of town, send him to Eastman job, we had relatives
Speaker 1: and that would be a safe area because every largely
Speaker 1: into secretion area. My father was a reluctantly want to
Speaker 1: get back to work. He thought he'd went through so
Speaker 1: many crisis before. But he agreed to that. And Christian
Speaker 1: Party and his wife, who was sick. They said we're
Speaker 1: going to crash me and we're going to take his
Speaker 1: two brothers. There's witness and shut her down. Christian can
Speaker 1: go to Nis in the university. If we don't, he
Speaker 1: can go there now, but don't stay in town. And
Speaker 1: finally that so it worked. As time began to pass,
Speaker 1: Shanty's family went their respective ways. It was my turn
Speaker 1: and I had an older brother who was in nontown.
Speaker 1: He was living in a town callisle for about D
Speaker 1: and fifty miles west. He was married. His wife was
Speaker 1: with him. I had visited them two weeks before. She
Speaker 1: was not too well and she had a child, which
Speaker 1: is one reason my mother had sent me there to
Speaker 1: help out. So I had to get her out so
Speaker 1: that range had her out. Also sent her to some
Speaker 1: relatives on her mother's side. So it was me and
Speaker 1: Christian Parta and his wife's new wife and my mother. Well,
Speaker 1: the vicar time to go mother like, and then we
Speaker 1: had it serveant like many families who had been with
Speaker 1: a sint Chad and he didn't have any family anymore.
Speaker 1: Team boy. They sort of pressured me to go with
Speaker 1: the Christian Parta and wife and that we should all
Speaker 1: get together at the same time be easier, and we did.
Speaker 1: That was someone harrowing because we gotten out in time,
Speaker 1: but we left our mother and father behind. Father he
Speaker 1: was still and Denny, he was saying you get out down.
Speaker 1: He mentions one particular memory that is imprinted in his brain.
Speaker 1: For the second of July, he and I was sitting
Speaker 1: in the outer room of our house and I heard
Speaker 1: kind of buzzing sound. I know it was after the
Speaker 1: fires that were watched from a roof and I couldn't
Speaker 1: stand the noise after a while and nowise get out
Speaker 1: and outer. So I opened the window, get shutters and
Speaker 1: inside there were screens and glass paints, so there was
Speaker 1: some filtering out. It's the kind of noise I never
Speaker 1: heard before, like you have a swarm of bees buzzing around.
Speaker 1: This is tired and the love the day. It was hard.
Speaker 1: Day may have been a hundred or hundred five degree.
Speaker 1: I opened the window my hair rounds and I saw
Speaker 1: a crowd milling you now, maybe thirty, forty or fifty people.
Speaker 1: I couldn't tell, except that some of them were wearing turbans.
Speaker 1: So I figured, and most likely even to some Muslims,
Speaker 1: road carboants something. But it seems like, of coursely, as
Speaker 1: crowder six, we had been speculating that there will be
Speaker 1: troubled because of the fires in downtown and some people
Speaker 1: are going to do it rightful and do something terrible.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what it would happen. So what I see
Speaker 1: in the few minutes, some people not only were just
Speaker 1: milling around, but they had all kinds of rude weapons.
Speaker 1: Some had souls, some had actors, somehow thinks made of
Speaker 1: would anything they can use strike and they were meaning
Speaker 1: around and for a couple of minutes I couldn't tell
Speaker 1: what was happening. In spred they were also a link
Speaker 1: around and shouting. Then before my eyes or I could
Speaker 1: really get a vation hard. I didn't have glasses in
Speaker 1: those days. I may have kneeled them by. I see
Speaker 1: the crowd spreading up into three different clusters and surrounded
Speaker 1: each one there was somebody in the center, a human being.
Speaker 1: I saw at least two of them put a sheet
Speaker 1: over their head and people striking down with the weapons
Speaker 1: and shouting. And from the sound I could tell that
Speaker 1: they were mostly six and handles. That couldn't be Muslim
Speaker 1: in this avenue. And in five minutes, unless the crowd
Speaker 1: started disappearing, before my heart came in. Some of them fell.
Speaker 1: I saw some of them half dead and their body jumping.
Speaker 1: I've never seen person die. Seeing all this through a
Speaker 1: window in his home shanty, felt compelled to act, so
Speaker 1: I rushed to the front of my house, Vent Gate,
Speaker 1: was picked up a bucket. I started putting water in
Speaker 1: the bucket to take it out and my mother came
Speaker 1: rushing out from her because she had she had not
Speaker 1: seen the whole thing. When she saw it, she grabbed
Speaker 1: me and cut back. Don't go out, you'll get carried,
Speaker 1: you won't get ready for are you can't do anything.
Speaker 1: So I stayed and should I don't know if I'm
Speaker 1: going to do all. My family want to hang onto
Speaker 1: it again stay. That's where I am here. This date
Speaker 1: also sticks with shanty because he was to take a
Speaker 1: final the next day and heard on the radio all
Speaker 1: exams have been postponed. Soon after that incident, he left
Speaker 1: Lahore to travel Takshmir. We wanted to get out quickly.
Speaker 1: MHM Shanty was told by another family member that he
Speaker 1: could only bring one suitcase with him. In the bus
Speaker 1: that we took, Christian part rods en wife and me
Speaker 1: and my project Christians. There were two Christians, and we
Speaker 1: were going up along the dividing line that became the
Speaker 1: dividing gune between India and Pakistan. We were on the
Speaker 1: Pakistan side because that's where the road was. So we
Speaker 1: were going north to the town at Yambo, which was
Speaker 1: the southernmost town in the state of Yambo and Casa,
Speaker 1: which was a different political entity, and on the radio
Speaker 1: with sometimes the driver, who was a sick versus afraid
Speaker 1: also he to turn it off and keep it on.
Speaker 1: We want to hear and every now and then we
Speaker 1: beduced come there was travel, a bus got stopped and
Speaker 1: certain starts down, people got murdered and so on. There
Speaker 1: are fires have started in sentences down. So they were
Speaker 1: trouble popping up here and there and we didn't know
Speaker 1: where we were heading, into it or into safety, where
Speaker 1: they were dash to get away and be moving. And Luckily,
Speaker 1: by the I forget how late it was. My impression
Speaker 1: was six or seven p him or something, and we
Speaker 1: got to Gumban where you were able to rent rooms
Speaker 1: for the night and they were going to take us
Speaker 1: across to cashmere in the morning. Chaunty was in the
Speaker 1: Hindu majority area, so for the time being he felt
Speaker 1: safe if there were anybody endangered or Muslims. Next morning,
Speaker 1: after a few hours drive, the road goes over the
Speaker 1: dollars areas in the country. Company Hall Pass About Twelve
Speaker 1: Thousand Feet above sea level. Once she crossed that there's
Speaker 1: a tunnel and you get a view of Kashmir valley.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful and it's all mostly Muslim or Buddhist minority
Speaker 1: hind so these are two different countries almost, but they
Speaker 1: were all under the rule of one Hindu Maharada, so
Speaker 1: it was safe at the time. He shared another encounter
Speaker 1: that caused intention but said the suit a sho end
Speaker 1: up being okay. Mostly didn't lack. I could feel that.
Speaker 1: But a there were people with guns and weapons within
Speaker 1: thirty ft of me and I was walking through, walking
Speaker 1: on the road parallel to the published Sund border, and
Speaker 1: there was most of the places it was one mile
Speaker 1: apart from Indian territory. I had to walk from an
Speaker 1: area west of them, probably not a long time, but
Speaker 1: by the time when that road came very close to
Speaker 1: the border, but it was not visible because there was
Speaker 1: a sugar cane crop. It had not been harvested and
Speaker 1: across the sugar cane you couldn't see but you could hear,
Speaker 1: and I heard. No, it's just and a few guns
Speaker 1: going golf and some people yelling lags. So going to
Speaker 1: treat to a generally who are Chris and then we
Speaker 1: know that we was troubled. So already you could do
Speaker 1: us to just lie quietly, not make any noise and
Speaker 1: hope that nobody will stumble your way. Shanty son, Neil
Speaker 1: was in the room with us and I had to
Speaker 1: ask if you grew up hearing any of the stories
Speaker 1: from his father. Yeah, he would tell me these stories
Speaker 1: of partition. We met Gandhine. Yeah, I would hear about this.
Speaker 1: I think one of the things that made the greatest
Speaker 1: impression on me is, you know, like he's telling the
Speaker 1: story of when there was rioting and there were people
Speaker 1: who would go out in the streets to call on
Speaker 1: the crowds to disperse the riot with their words. You know,
Speaker 1: much later I came across start with the King Juniors
Speaker 1: phrase of talking to madness out of young men, and
Speaker 1: that just struck me as such a such an incredibly
Speaker 1: brave and selfless thing to do. Um and incredible to
Speaker 1: have that capacity of speech, that you can reach people
Speaker 1: who are in a nonreasoning state of mind. With this
Speaker 1: next question, I wasn't sure what to expect. I had
Speaker 1: asked how he coped with all of these experiences. It
Speaker 1: seems almost silly in a way, but also vital at
Speaker 1: the same time. How did I quote? I don't know
Speaker 1: if I have an answer to that is you know
Speaker 1: a tank which something to happen and you can analyze
Speaker 1: him and analyze him and and and no guarantee that
Speaker 1: that analysis leads you to something which you can repeat
Speaker 1: and benefit from. I find myself in the last year
Speaker 1: or so again, for some reason, a bad night's sleeping.
Speaker 1: It's not because I was very interesting those dangers again,
Speaker 1: it's just that those memories coming back and they led
Speaker 1: me and took other people to otherwise which I can't
Speaker 1: explain easily. He describes one memory in particular to me
Speaker 1: one night where we were walking in a Jimmu road.
Speaker 1: He had walked about over a two day period, fifty
Speaker 1: miles high. Had Two other people who were villagers from
Speaker 1: local village whom I had met in snag and then
Speaker 1: it turned out to be working for a distant relative
Speaker 1: of mine and deadly and the relative who my dad
Speaker 1: never met, uh ans opens. They said, you can come
Speaker 1: with us. They yet come to pick up their son,
Speaker 1: or not their son but their employers son, and come
Speaker 1: with us and we have a village and will break
Speaker 1: their journey on the village. The rest of the time
Speaker 1: we may have to walk or we may be able
Speaker 1: to find some transportation. So I left with them and
Speaker 1: it's all right. Sleeping in the village was enough problem.
Speaker 1: But when I got the village and soon after we
Speaker 1: couldn't go any farther because, oh he hired in the
Speaker 1: radio that there was flooding and Rabbi River. Rabbi River
Speaker 1: fogged the boundary between focus son and India at that time.
Speaker 1: Going north south, shanty recalls seeing numerous boats filled with
Speaker 1: refugees mushrooms going west. Who Are you? Going East? They
Speaker 1: had been washed away during the night. The three boats
Speaker 1: were lost and with them a lot of people. So
Speaker 1: we didn't go. We decided we're going to wait to
Speaker 1: see what the situation is. Record from the hills water
Speaker 1: can come down any time quickly and they can be
Speaker 1: flooding without much warning. Shanty and his group are trying
Speaker 1: to figure out their next course of action. There were
Speaker 1: camels and donkeys, but neither could really make it across
Speaker 1: the river. They were blazing hard during the day and
Speaker 1: we were totally ill equipped. No water bottles down and
Speaker 1: walking Chad is getting into our shoes. You take the
Speaker 1: shoe off and hardly walk ten feet when sand gets
Speaker 1: in too. So walking one mile in that hard sand,
Speaker 1: if it's like you've been walking half a day. So
Speaker 1: we weren't not we are not confidented for you being
Speaker 1: able to do the thirty miles or so before we
Speaker 1: reached the river. Meanwhile, India Pakistan travel and escalated into
Speaker 1: it Malatary flight. The road they were taking wasn't in
Speaker 1: good shape, so the group had to figure out what
Speaker 1: did do next. They won't be any even halfway decent
Speaker 1: road for a while. There's questionable whether to stay in
Speaker 1: that village and well, everyone an option were very well accepted.
Speaker 1: These people are cool and they wouldn't. I didn't want
Speaker 1: to take money from US and anyway we're sifted. So
Speaker 1: we walked. We decided to go and see as far
Speaker 1: as we can get and if we have to, was
Speaker 1: they would sleep in the forest. When I head out,
Speaker 1: I did not want to sleep in the forest drive.
Speaker 1: We did walk months and I saw that the forest
Speaker 1: chat some old buildings from a temple complex and there's
Speaker 1: not being used, had not been used for a long time.
Speaker 1: So I started asking these people about what some of
Speaker 1: these holes wires somewhere found outside this it's a wilderness,
Speaker 1: and there were snakes of tinds, so modeling afraid of stakes.
Speaker 1: So I said I'm not sleeping here. So you have
Speaker 1: a choice. We can go down to the Riverside, which
Speaker 1: is Sandy, but there is also the risk of being
Speaker 1: washed down in the middle of the night if it
Speaker 1: starts raining in the mountains, or go back to your village.
Speaker 1: I was a tough decision. In the end a compromise
Speaker 1: is made. What if we walk back until we don't
Speaker 1: have to go all the way back to the village?
Speaker 1: But it's sandy and there's no no big flotest around
Speaker 1: in the world. So we found such an area and
Speaker 1: walked back several miles, and I'm glad we did, because
Speaker 1: it very key. Shaunty said he became better in terms
Speaker 1: of religion. He details in exchange he had with Gandhi.
Speaker 1: I accused him of not acting on its own faith
Speaker 1: and answer it. You're a legocity and adhering to it's
Speaker 1: contributing to it, and he couldn't, of course, understand that.
Speaker 1: Thought it unfair. I wanted to know. So what do
Speaker 1: you suggest I do? What? So you should speak against religion?
Speaker 1: You know history as well as I do. Maybe better
Speaker 1: tell me all the time when Christians, Muslims, Hindus have
Speaker 1: not fought each other and not carried each other. And
Speaker 1: Tell me, why do you believe in God? Couldn't he
Speaker 1: do any better than produce people like us, so he says.
Speaker 1: And what would you do if I've talked like you?
Speaker 1: How long did you said, it's not helping people that
Speaker 1: hate each other. So, if your God is there, and
Speaker 1: God is all powerful, what's the excuse for his being
Speaker 1: such a lousy engineer? He was taken aback by my
Speaker 1: sharpness and Gandhi repeatedly asked shanty what he should do,
Speaker 1: and shanty responded to denounce religion, he says, if I
Speaker 1: do what you tell me, how long will it take
Speaker 1: for people to agree with me? I said you got
Speaker 1: the winning argument. Probably if would never be no, he's
Speaker 1: just so. What can we do? You have to do
Speaker 1: what you can that. I have to do it I can.
Speaker 1: The last thing I asked was how he felt after
Speaker 1: seventy five years. I've been much of the life in
Speaker 1: my life in order to keep going and do change,
Speaker 1: rich I found difficult to do. Not kept changing. Well,
Speaker 1: thanks can change, and there is a Hilosophy, especially an
Speaker 1: American education, of emphasizing the positive, emphasizing a better time.
Speaker 1: It came to come. I can't see I am believe
Speaker 1: in them anymore. It's maybe it's just my age. I've
Speaker 1: become very festivestic. I listened to the news, I get depressed.
Speaker 1: He mentioned Putin and the war in Ukraine as a
Speaker 1: current example of greed. How can you be optimistic? If
Speaker 1: I a teacher, I who could? I'm be telling you
Speaker 1: so many good people working in so many different countries,
Speaker 1: and yet for each one of them there's somebody out here.
Speaker 1: You turned the TV on and see how many people
Speaker 1: are trying to give you. Next time you'll hear from
Speaker 1: two brothers who lost each other during partition and finally
Speaker 1: met in person seventy four years later. It was through
Speaker 1: social media and community they were able to find one another.
Speaker 1: NACIA DELO is a real estate agent in Pakistan and
Speaker 1: in charge of the Youtube Channel Punjabi Lahare. He was
Speaker 1: a vital component to Saddiq and Sika reuniting. It used
Speaker 1: to take a long time to find people because whenever
Speaker 1: someone used to contact us about a missing relative or kidnapping,
Speaker 1: we used to do everything. Before that we didn't have
Speaker 1: a community to assist with finding people. Now, as soon
Speaker 1: as we upload a new video we get a clue
Speaker 1: because we have quite a few subscribers and people contact
Speaker 1: us or leave notes in the comments. It usually takes
Speaker 1: eight to ten days to find an idea. Around two
Speaker 1: people have met not only their blood relatives but old
Speaker 1: friends and neighbors through the channel. Until next week, an
Speaker 1: haze's and this is partition. Partition was developed as a
Speaker 1: part of the next up initiative created by Anna Hosnia,
Speaker 1: Joel Monique and your Sinia. Median partition is produced by
Speaker 1: Anna Hosni, a, Tricia mccagee and back Oramas. It is
Speaker 1: added it by Rory Gagan, with the original score composed
Speaker 1: by Mark Hadley M