The Day Everything Changed

"We didn't have much use for these terms, you know: Hindus, Muslim. You live there. I live there. We were kids, then, really just kids. And neighbors."

I can tell from the way Prem uncle says this, with a tight frown on his face, his neck craned, and his old eyes gazing up toward the roof, that he means it...or at least he meant it.

"We were twenty-two, twenty-three years old, like you, no?" He shoots a glance at me, nods, and doesn't wait for confirmation. I'm twenty-five, quizzing him about events fifty years ago. Prem uncle doesn't care much for details anymore. Little details like labels, ethnicities, religions, they ruined his life fifty years ago, and since then they haven't much interested him.

"We went to the bars and the clubs and drank together, got drunk together--every Indian loved Scotch in those days--the town, all of Lahore, it was ours. It belonged to us."

In 1947, India had just gained independence from its colonial ruler, Great Britain. Like many colonial outposts, until that time civil tensions had taken a backseat to resistance against the more immediate problem of imperialist rule. But the unrest and brewing animosity between Hindus and Muslims that had existed in India for hundred of years was again at the point of eruption.

"It was a very crazy time. All of a sudden 'freedom.' What did that mean? Things from yesterday hadn't changed at all, and yet everything,

, was different.

"There were celebrations in the streets. People yelling, 'Freedom!' Really just shouting it as loud as they could, hoping it would teach them what it meant because no one knew. But then, the celebrations, they turned to riots."

There's a change in the tone of Prem uncle's voice. His eyes are downcast, perhaps still a bit perplexed. "Small disturbances, fights, and all of a sudden they became huge riots."

Indeed, throughout the independence movement in India there had been factions urging the separation of nations--the creation of two countries to serve as home for the subcontinent's two major faiths--Hinduism and Islam.

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