MY parents, siblings left Karachi for Bombay after selling our 10-bedroom house, worth Rs 2.5 lakh, for just Rs 30,000 to an Arab. I was working with the Karachi Port Trust and stayed on till January '48 when the first riots broke out. Sikh Sindhis, anticipating trouble, were fleeing to safety, belongings piled in 100 Victorias, when they were waylaid, looted and slaughtered by a mob of UP Muslims. I got the news at a restaurant. My first instinct was to run to the dry-cleaners, pick up my Rs 150 suit before he downed shutters! A Tamil friend's saner counsel to seek refuge in the Port Trust office prevailed. En route rioters snitched my pen and wallet. They couldn't take my Rs 2,000, emergency money I always kept stitched into my breast pocket. For years, till I consciously blocked out the memory, I'd get nightmares. Images would return to me: of people being clubbed to death with baseball bats, hockey sticks, hacked with knives. Anyway I managed to buy myself the last Rs 100 ticket on a ship sailing for Bombay. I reached on January 12. For weeks what they called the "Karachi Cologne" smell clung to my clothes, body. The smell of burning Hindu flesh from the cremation ghats.