As he surveyed his largely deserted village along India’s border with Pakistan, Kuldeep Singh cast his mind to his childhood when his home was on the frontline of a full-blown war between the two arch rivals.
“All of this reminds me of when I was a boy back in 1971 and I can now understand what my father must have felt like sending me away to live with his relatives back then,” said the father-of-three.
“My wife and kids are already getting restless to come back home after three days. I’m also missing them but we don’t yet know what’s going to happen, so it’s better to wait another day or two.”
While most of Naushera Dhalla’s 4,500 residents have sought shelter elsewhere, a few male residents have stayed behind to look after their land and livestock and protect their property from potential looters.
Those who have remained all said they felt they couldn’t afford to do otherwise but had no illusions about what was at stake.
Lakhvinder Singh, a 58-year-old tailor, said he too had vivid memories of the 1971 war when Naushera Dhalla also emptied in a matter of hours and soldiers took over their rudimentary mud-hut homes.
In another village even closer to the border, Sohan Singh said he could remember way back to partition when Punjab became the main setting for the largest mass migration in history before becoming a war zone.
Sohan Singh, who gave his age as “about 85,” said there was no way that he would take to his heels and desert the small village of Danoi Khurd also close to the border. “Where would we go? If we leave, we will starve.”

Source: Arab News