Our family lost its ancestral home and, within it, four family members. Of the three women one was blind and couldn’t leave the house without a guide. Two were nieces of my grandmother’s sister who had stopped off in Ludhiana on their way back to their village.

We never found out what became of them. They were almost certainly abducted and forced into marriage with their abductors or, worse still, sold off to brothels. Dadi mourned their loss for years and wept bitterly whenever her sister came visiting. The old man was a distant cousin of my Dada, and a veteran from the days of the first world war. He was deaf in both ears, a legacy of his time at the front with an artillery regiment, which was probably why he never heard the alarm raised when the Jan Sangh marauders came.

- "Becoming Pakistani" by Maruf Khwaja

Link to article: https://www.opendemocracy.net/arts-multiculturalism/article_2051.jsp

Map: https://www.punjabpartition.com/forum/geography/gulchaman-gali-ludhiana