For some months we had been hearing stories of Mussalmans killing Hindus and Sikhs in Rawalpindi and Lahore. We heard that Hindus and Sikhs were fleeing eastwards where there were not many Mussalmans. Then we heard that the Mussalmans had got a country of their own called Pakistan and Hadali was in Pakistan. Some of our elders suggested leaving Hadali and joininig other Hindus and Sikhs who were going to Hindustan. But we had money owing to us, we had our brick-houses and buffaloes in our courtyards. So we decided to stay on till we got our money back and had sold our properties.

I, Ram Rakha, was then sixteen years old. I had a sister, Lachmi, a year younger than I. She had been betrothed to a second cousin since she was born. (This was not uncommon amongst us! Pregnant women often agreed to betroth their children to be born if they were of different sex). My parents felt that it was unwise to keep a fifteen-year-old unmarried girl in the house. The date of marriage was fixed. As was the custom in our village, bhaaji (sweets) were sent to most families in the village including those of the Mussalmans. A fortnight before the day fixed for the wedding, the groom’s father needing money to feed his guests asked one of his debtors to pay up. And when the fellow said he hadn’t any money, the groom’s father filed a suit against him. No one had done this before.

The Mussalmans returned our bhaaji. This too had never happened before.

We went ahead with the preparations for the wedding. According to custom, my sister spent the last week before her wedding indoors wearing the same dirty clothes. On the seventh day woman of the family bathed her, dyed her palms with henna and slipped ivory bracelets on her arms. They sang songs to the beat of the drum. In the evening Lachmi and her girl-friends went out together to relieve themselves. They were sitting on their haunches defecating and babbling away, when a gang of young Mussalmans surrounded them. The girls were so frightened that they could not even scream for help. The thugs had no difficulty in recognizing Lachmi. A lad picked her up, threw her across his saddle and rode off into the desert.

My father was like one possessed of the Devil. He screamed and tore his hair. He went about the village lanes calling the Mussalmans sons of pigs. He ran thirteen miles over the sand dunes to a police station and lodged a report. He gave wads of rupee notes to the inspector. Next day, he came back with the police with warrants of arrest against the boys he suspected of being Lachmi’s abductors. Two days later we went to a magistrate’s court. The accused were brought in handcuffs. The rascals twisted their moustaches and made lewd gestures at us. One of them said loudly, ‘Let me get back to Hadali and if I don’t split the bottoms of all these kafirs, my name isn’t Turrabaz Khan.’