A name to remember
I was half-asleep, soaked in moonlight on the night of Guru Purnima, when the phone buzzed. Who is it? “Sukrita”, she continued in a calm voice, “and your name is Sukrita because I am Sukrita.”
By giving me this name, my father had, in fact, breathed life into his frozen but fond memories of the five-year-old “Sukrita” left behind in 1947, living in the same compound as his in Sialkot. It was etched in some deep corner of his mind, and was transported from Sialkot to Kenya as part of his intense emotional baggage. When I was born two years later, the name surfaced as a relic from the repository of the memories of my refugee-father. This was an act of remembrance suffused with the pain of Partition and the deep wounds of rupture. As if my name stood as a memorial to the homeland of my ancestors. Strangely, neither Partition experiences nor the reason why my name was Sukrita, were ever discussed in the house. Often, I wondered why I have a Sanskrit-sounding name, when my parents were Punjabi(s) and spoke very little Hindi, leave aside Sanskrit. My name was pronounced rather awkwardly by Punjabi and Urdu speakers. Only on meeting my namesake recently, did the rationale behind it dawn on me.
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Let me go back to how I finally met her.
A symphonious bond of fate and love
It was truly serendipitous. Some unexplained compulsion, perhaps to reconnect, drew this professor of Hindi to speak to my writerly father after his talk in Calcutta in 1991. Her chance reference to Sialkot triggered in my father a fervent sequence of questions about her antecedents. When she mentioned the names of her parents, Sialkot emerged like a torrent on the scene, with that compound of the Sialkot house and members of his family, and hers too. After this quick and emotionally charged encounter, a visit to Sukrita’s house to meet her ailing mother was imperative. Putting aside all other commitments—what with having to catch a flight back to Delhi early next morning—my parents decided to go see her at the other end of Calcutta in the middle of that night. This was a reunion after 45 years between my father and her mother, witnessed by my mother and Sukrita. At first, there were those taut moments of instant mutual recognition, followed by a tense silence, and then, through an uncontrollable stream of tears bursting forth, Sialkot surfaced and buzzed between them, as if the Partition had never happened. But the country was fractured, people had separated, and notes needed to be exchanged about their grave losses and pain. They went down the knotted memory lane, taking stock of the tragic events. The five-year-old Sukrita from pre-Partition times was now a PhD in Hindi and a professor at a college in Calcutta.
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I was not a witness to this reunion. I happened to be abroad and somehow missed even hearing about this meeting.
Sukrita meets Sukrita
As the course of life would have it, once again the families of the two Sukritas went their separate ways, living in two different cities—Calcutta and Delhi—and yet again they were lost to each other for over 30 years after the meeting in 1991. Having scrambled through several ups and downs, settled in Beas now, my namesake Sukrita chanced upon a yellowing letter a few weeks ago (July 2022) lying in an old file sent by my mother to her, soon after they had met in Calcutta. The warm words of the letter brought back to her memories of the 1991 meeting and of the pre-Partition family ties all over again. It was my name in the letter that kindled in her an urgency to reach out to me. She located my contact number, thanks to the supportive technology of Google search, etc. Her call to me in the middle of that special full-moon night of Guru Purnima, felt like a dream, even a calling, as if from within. We had to meet. Our parents were dead and gone, but there seemed to be a compulsion to reignite the ties between us, to acknowledge the legacy of love between the two families. The damage caused by Partition needed to be addressed.
On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of Partition then, I took a road journey to Beas (Punjab) to meet Sukrita. Even at 80, Sukrita’s memories of Sialkot and Partition remain fresh in her mind. Sharing a name does evoke a special connection between us, and the shared past of our families creates a special bond.
(This appeared in the print edition as "Partition Diary")
Sukrita Paul Kumar is a poet, critic and academic. She has authored Vanishing Words (Hawakal) and Krishna Sobti: A Counter Archive (Routledge)
