E-Paper
90-year-old woman crosses Wagah border to visit home in Pakistan after 75 years
Reena Chhibber Varma left her ancestral home of Rawalpindi in Pakistan 75 years ago during the Partition. Her visa was rejected several times but was finally accepted this time.
A 90-year-old Indian woman made her long-cherished dream come true as she got an opportunity to visit her ancestral home in Pakistan's Rawalpindi, 75 years after moving to this side of the border at the time of Partition. Reena Chhibber Varma got her visa and arrived in Pakistan's Lahore on Saturday via the Wagah-Attari border.
With tears in her eyes, Varma started from Lahore for her hometown Rawalpindi, where she planned to visit her ancestral dwelling Prem Niwas, her school and meet her childhood friends.
Sharing a video on social media, Varma said her family was living on the Devi College Road in Rawalpindi. Varma stays in Pune now. She was only 15 years old when her family moved to India during the Partition in 1947.
“I studied at the Modern School. My four siblings had also gone to the same school. My brother and a sister also studied at the Gorden College located near the Modern School," she recalled in the video, as quoted by PTI.
She also remembered that "our house-help was also a diverse mix of people", a report by The Express Tribune quoted.
"My elder siblings had Muslim friends who would come to our home as my father was a man of progressive ideas and had no issue in boys and girls meeting each other. Before the Partition, there was no such issue of Hindus and Muslims. This happened after the Partition," she said.
Varma had applied for a Pakistani visa in 1965 but failed to get it then as tensions between the two neighbours were high because of the war.
The elderly woman said she had expressed her desire to visit her ancestral home on social media last year.
Sajjad Haider, a resident of Pakistan, had reportedly contacted her on social media and sent her images of her home in Rawalpindi which made her apply for a Pakistani visa again but was denied.
She then tagged Pakistan’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar who facilitated her visa to visit her ancestral town.
The Pakistan High Commission in India has issued a three-month visa to Varma as a goodwill gesture.
"Although the Partition of India was wrong, now that it has happened, both the countries should work together to ease visa restrictions for all of us,” she said.
(With agency inputs)
