Page 14 - Seniorstoday October 2021 Issue

Spotlight

The Trauma and

Turmoil of Migration

Medical help for defence personnel - Representative
photograph

Prem, a nonagenarian, recalls the trauma, turmoil and uncertainty of
migration from the North West Frontier Province to India at the time of

the Partition of the country, and then again from the beautiful valley of
Kashmir to Jammu due to the militancy and changing circumstances. In
conversation with Malti Gaekwad

Born in 1931 into a family of freedom the charkha and weave cotton……. my
fighters from Punjab, Prem had a grandmother whom we called Beji or Bebe
comfortable and much protected childhood. went to Gandhi and urged him to come to
Her father Shri Jagat Ram Sethi belonged our house. She took him to an interior room
to a very well to do business family, he was where her charkha was kept, the room was
well educated and an expert in his field of full of many cotton bales. It seems she told
paper and pulp engineering. Their family Gandhi that she had been spinning yarn
funded and supported the freedom struggle since the time he wasn’t even born!”
and Prem’s grandfather and paternal uncle Although the family had businesses and
were imprisoned many a time along with lived largely in Lahore and Rawalpindi,
Lala Lajpat Rai and Khan Abdul Gaffar Prem’s father travelled to various places
Khan and other such leaders. across the country due to his assignments
As a child she remembers: “Many freedom of setting up mills. In fact, Prem was born
fighters and leaders used to regularly in Calcutta while her father worked there
visit my grandfather’s home. One incident on his return from studies in the US. At that
was when MK Gandhi had visited our time, he was one of the few Indians who
mohalla and was telling the ladies to use went to a foreign university for higher and

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