Writer Mehmood Awan has written about Pakistani writer and columnist Afzal Tauseef who was born in Simbli, Nawan Shahr, Jalandhar in 1936.
Excerpts:
At the time of partition, all her paternal family members were massacred. She depicted this horrible tragedy in Lahu BhijjiaN BatkhaaN where family ducks are slipping on the blood wet floors of her family house. She and her mother survived because they were at her grandmother’s house in Pind Qaum, Ludhiana while her father who was a police officer was on training in Phillaur (Jalandhar). She was the only surviving child of her family.
Her blooming garden was ruined in Simbli and all her life, she remained a homeless child of the divided Punjab.
She never came to terms with this division and wrote so painfully in her East Punjab travelogue while visiting her birth town: “Kal loki jaduN mainu vaikhan gay tay kehn gay ‘Eih Simbli vãliaaN di dhee ay, Chaudhary Niamat Khan di Bhateji, Mehndi Khan di dhee, Vichaari pehli vaar aaee ay’. [Miary Vadkaay] Mussalmaan kiss tarah ho’ay mainu patta nahi par Mussalmaan hoN day Jurm wich 1947 vich apni dharti tay maaray ga’ay mainu patta ay. UnhaaN apna des chaddaN tu inkaar keeta….issay wajja tu ohnaaN day ghar da sona tay sonay vargyaaN dhiyyãN Lutte’aaN GyaaN.”
In one of her last appearences addressing a gathering of Punjabi writers, she said "There was a Punjab once from Delhi to Peshawar and from Shimla to Rajasthan. That was the blessed land, the Punjab of Baba Nanak. Then they snatched our language, our identity and our pride. They talk of dividing Punjab again. Every day new vultures arrive to prey on our land and demand their portions. They [vultures] even start fighting among themselves.”