At 92, she still remembers dhol beats: ‘…meant the mob is here'

Indian Express

2 days ago

'This is my truth,' begins 92-year-old Bebe Bhupinder Kaur, her voice trembling under the weight of memories carried for nearly eight decades. She was 14 in 1947 when Partition tore Punjab apart — and her life with it. She remembers the fear spreading like fire in the days before the actual violence reached them. All the young girls of her extended family were locked in a large room at her Massi's (aunt's) sprawling farm.
'We didn't know why,' she says quietly. 'We were told it was for our safety. Later, I learned the unspoken reason — if anything went wrong, we were to be burned alive to protect our honour.' At the time, she lived in Chak No. 141, District Montgomery, in what is now Pakistan. Her Massi, Basant Kaur — originally from Patiala — had moved there years earlier, buying land and building an estate with flour mills, juice factories, and hundreds of acres of cultivation. Life had been peaceful: days of chores and school at the gurdwara, nights of folk songs, poetry, and the warmth of a close-knit community.
'But 1947 changed everything,' she says. 'The beat of the dhol turned into the drum of danger.' In her village, Muslims and Sikhs had lived in harmony, but fanatic groups from surrounding areas began to form. 'We used to hear the drums first… and then the attacks.' When the riots began, her Massi sent tongas to fetch her father, Jagir Singh, her mother, Amar Kaur, and the rest of their family from their home 5–6 kilometres away. Her father resisted, unwilling to abandon his land and cattle. But her Massi arrived herself and insisted. Within hours, Sikh families from 12 nearby villages — neither large nor small — had gathered at her fortified farm for safety.
'The Muslims of our own villages were very nice. They risked their lives to save us,' she recalls. Friends hid them in sugarcane fields and thick bushes as they moved to her aunt's farm. 'They cried as we left. We cried too. We didn't know if we would ever meet again.' The estate had over two dozen licensed rifles, but danger still loomed. Her Massi's son, Satwant, rode to East Punjab to meet Defence Minister Baldev Singh Dumna, pleading for army protection for the 12 villages sheltering there. The answer came: The military is on its way. Be ready. Take only what you can carry. Then began the exodus — a caravan 6–7 kilometres long. Bullock carts, tongas, bicycles… mothers clutching children so tightly it seemed they were anchoring them to life itself. Some hid babies in grain sacks to protect them from being snatched. One cousin was born in a cart during the journey.
Six army vehicles arrived, along with a special bus for her Massi — but she refused to leave her people, sending the elderly and infants instead and returning to travel with the kafila. It took them a month to reach their ancestral village in Ludhiana, despite repeated attacks on the road. She still remembers the night an aunt gave birth during a heavy downpour, her mother covering the new mother with a soaked cotton blanket, squeezing out the water at intervals. Along the way, parents hid children in bushes during attacks; some disappeared, others slipped into canals and were swept away. Not everyone survived.
'Passing through Muktsar, I saw massacred Muslims,' she says softly. 'Partition spared no one. It was cruelty on both sides.'
After a week of hunger, thirst, and fear, they crossed into Indian territory via Ferozepur. But there was no warm welcome. 'People looked at us like we were aliens,' she recalls. 'They called us bahrle (outsiders).'
Her family had left behind wealth and dignity, arriving in poverty. They were allotted some land by the government, and relatives returned the land they had been tending in their absence. With hard work, they rebuilt their lives, eventually cultivating 60–70 bigha in Punjab. She married into a family of transporters and agriculturalists in Gharuan, Mohali, and raised two children — a son, now an agriculturalist, and a daughter settled in Canada. Today, she lives with her son, Gurdeep Singh Dhanya, and his family.
'Scattered across India, Canada, and the US, my family still carries those wounds,' she says. 'But we also remember a land where poetry, music, and faith bound people together, regardless of religion.' Her eyes glisten. 'I don't know who gained from Partition. For me, it was a loss for everyone. We were happy the country got freedom, but that happiness was ruined forever. Whenever I'm alone, the memories play before my eyes like a film.' She pauses, her voice steady now. 'We lost our home,' she breathes, 'but not our story.'