Sindhi Exodus Dadi Guna Daswani  
        "We were two children in the family. I was only 11 years old when we moved from Hyderbad to Karachi. We were schooling there and were very happy. Life was great. Then in 1947 partition of India and Pakistan came. Basically I was still not old enough to realize the impact of the whole situation. We could see from our balcony there were lots of people coming and going. Lots of commotion on the roads. Lots of Muslims walking in the streets. God alone knows where they came from. My father used to go to the office but when he came back in the evening he always had a worried look on his face. He had banned my mother and myself not to step out of the house. Not even to school. In the night my mother and father quietly used to discuss the whole situation. Then all of a sudden one man came to our house with my father and then I realized there is something really wrong. Both men (my father and the stranger) were discussing money and my father was showing him the furniture in all the rooms. Then he went.
       After two days in the afternoon my father came home and told my mother to start packing and he said to her; "you are taking my two children tomorrow to Bombay. I have booked all of you in a boat to take you to Bombay". First my mother refused to go without him but he would not agree to that. He said he would follow us as soon as possible. So we left Karachi. A big ordeal began for my mother. Arriving in Bombay in the boat I was separated  from her. There was lots and lots of commotion, hence I was lost. She was in a panic but
eventually she found me. When we left the harbour we went to stay with one of my fathers friends. He had only one room so he put us up in his balcony. It was extremely uncomfortable for us and also for him. Anyway we stayed there for 2 weeks waiting for my father to come. He still did not come. He'd told my mother to go to Poona and look for a room. My mother left me in Bombay with one of her cousins and went to Poona. I was in Bombay without my father and mother for the first time and the women of the house tried to treat me like a slave. I was only Seventeen and  a half years old. Totally miserable. Then my mother came back to Bombay leaving my brother in Poona. Collected the baggage and myself and we went to Poona. My father was still in Karachi. We all were very worried about him and then out of the blue all of a sudden there was a knock on the door and he was standing there. 
    He was not happy with the room my mother had taken and he found a 3 bedroom flat further away from the main town. The building was still not complete but since we had nowhere to go we moved in. Nearly after 2 months life was beginning to show good signs.
        My father then went to look for business. He had experience of being a hotelier. He bought a restaurant as a running concern. He started making lots of money and life was very comfortable. So in reality partition of India and Pakistan did not bring any hardship for our family. Life has not been too bad."
  Guna Daswani.         Click here to return to people who used to live in Karachi.     Back to the Homepage This site is maintained by Sapna Ramnani.