A LIFETIME ON TIPTOES - Audience quotes

 
Feedback from bilingual workshop reading at Scottish Poetry Library, Edinburgh 14 August 2006.


Migration is not a bad thing but forcing someone out of their country is very painful. There is a cry in this work to stop this. We are one, we love each other, there should be no Partition any more because this is a very painful thing...
Khalida Mir, migrated to Pakistan with her family in 1947.
Now living in Edinburgh


It is very true that children absorb their parents’ sorrow even if they haven't experienced it themselves. I wrote a poem when my mother died in 1996. It includes the lines: “What will I do now with her sorrow because I shared it all her life. I had to carry it on.” There is that feeling in the play.
Tessa Ransford, born in India, migrated to UK with her family in 1947.
Now living in Edinburgh


What I have seen so far is brilliant. Love the whole idea of the whole play being in Punjabi - absolutely superb. The language is perfect for this subject. I have been telling people about it and how you plan to come to the festival next year. The Scottish public will be truly pleasantly surprised.
Navida Galbraith, Scottish based actress & arts worker,
who read the play's English translation


We would like to thank Mazhar Saab. He has touched our hearts.
Ghazala Farooq, MBE, JP.
Community leader, resident of Edinburgh

My father - Mohammed Baksh - used to tell me of what he lost because of Partition. He had come to Fife in 1928 and then moved to Dundee. He worked as a Door-to-door Salesman. It was a hard life and he was on his own much of the time. Yet he managed to raise enough funds after working for a number of years in Scotland to build a nice house in Adramaan, Jallandhar.

He used to tell me that he and my mum only managed to live there a year or two before they were forced to abandon it. They had to run for their lives to Pakistan, unable to take their belongings with them. He was deeply hurt that he put so much effort into building his new house but was unable to enjoy the fruits of his labour.
Jamila Aslam


The Partition left a great scar on the minds of the Punjabis and also the Bengalis, particularly since this event took place during 'peacetime'. It is unthinkable that a community could be driven out of their homes, if you tell people living now and here, they find it difficult to believe.

A lot of killing and destruction was done during this time of 'peace'. War, after all had not been declared. People were forced out and made refugees in their own land. A line was drawn and people were told they did not 'belong' now.

Sixty years on people still remember this event and are upset and angered by it. Yet I hope that people all over the globe will eventually learn the lessons of history an not repeat such atrocities.
However as yet we do not seem to have learnt this lesson. Forced migrations are increasing and ordinary people are suffering at the hands of politicians and those with power.
Mohammed Aslam
Chair of Pakistan Association, Edinburgh and East of Scotland

Indeed, there was such a Biblical atmosphere about this mammoth two-way exodus that I turned to the Old Testament to compare its size with the migration of the Israelites. I found that the Children of Israel numbered eight hundred thousand, but since the Book of Exodus counted men only, this number would have to be tripled or quadrupled. Even so, the exodus of the Children of Israel was dwarfed by the great migration of Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus which took place upon the partition of India. At the time that I was photographing it for Life magazine there were five million people on the move, with several more million due to follow as soon as room could be found for them. This, for these wretched millions, was the first bitter fruit of independence.
Margaret Bourke-White
Photographer for Time Life Magazine during the partition of India (See some of her pictures here)



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