The one thing I kept forgetting to post about and one of the few things I thought was important to share is the importance of visiting India or Pakistan soon, if your family was on the other side of the border prior to the Partition of India. Having visited the villages of my grandparents in Pakistan and meeting people who tearfully and lovingly remembered the days before the countries were split along religious lines, I had a stronger feeling of being Punjabi first and Indian a relatively distant second.
Even though there had been a lot, and I mean A LOT, of bloodshed as the religions crossed borders (read Khushwant Singh's Train to Pakistan), there was and is an underlying respect for the different faiths which had lived centuries together in the Greater Punjab. I know some of you will disagree but my experiences in Bhaun and Murid tell me otherwise. One of the most interesting examples was this doorway to a house in Murid. In Punjabi (Gurmukhi script), it says: Ik Onkaar Satnam - a section of a Sikh prayer.
It may not look significant till one realizes that a displaced Muslim family came from India and was "allotted" this house (as were Sikhs and Hindus in India) and took the trouble to wipe out the name of the previous Sikh owners (look carefully in the red circle under the Ik Onkar, if you can read Urdu) but did not wipe out the Ik Onkar Satnam. And till 2007, has not wiped out the Ik Onkar Satnam, which translates to "There is one God.Thy name is Truth"
Ok, I digress from the original reason for this posting... a reminder that time is running out. Simple math shows that a person born at the time of Partition is now 60 yrs old (2007-1947). And s/he is now at least 75 yrs old if s/he was old enough to have significant memories of the villages/towns you want to visit and possibly find your ancestoral house(s). This is the last generation that will remember life in the Greater Punjab.
