A mother’s 51-year journey of separation, reunion

Rachna Khaira

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, March 16

Harbhajan Kaur, loving called Bhajno by her family, was 15 when she got married to a Sikh boy from Pul Kanjri, a village equidistant from Amritsar and Lahore.

She happily started a new life with her husband Heera without realising that she would soon embark on a journey where she would be separated from her five children born from a Muslim man in Pakistan and will be raising her three foster children from a Sikh man in India.

Today, when one of her foster sons, Romy Singh, released ‘Train to Amritsar’, a book depicting Bhajno’s life, The Tribune spoke to the woman over the phone in Karachi, who has happily shed her identity she was born with only to be buried and united with her husband Afzal, who had died waiting for her return.

Living the last years of her life in Karachi, Bhajno does give a big pause when asked about Afzal. “He was Rizhwan’s Abbu,” she said.

While sharing the nostalgic moments of her life, Bhajno and Rizhwan informed that barely a few days after her marriage, riots broke out in the wake of the Partition and her first husband Heera got killed as he took the wrong turn towards Lahore in panic.

“A Muslim rioter, Kaasim, took me away but his wife got me rescued through their neighbour Afzal. I married Afzal and was rechristened Shehnaaz Begum,” said Bhajno, who later had six children including a son, Rizhwan, from him. One of the children died later.

In a twist, Bhajno was reunited with her parents back home after 16 years and was called with her two children to India.

“They had promised Afzal that they will send me back. But they did not keep their word and sent my two kids back with Afzal. Thereafter, I was remarried in a Sikh family,” said Bhajno. 

While calling his stepmother a dedicated and loving person, Romy Singh, one of her foster sons, revealed that she was totally devastated after being separated from her children in Pakistan. “I had seen her crying and banging her head against the wall many times. As she is in the last stages of her life, my wife and I finally decided to locate her real children in Pakistan and reunite her with them,” said Romy Singh.

In 2013, Romy Singh, who along with his entire family had migrated to the US, inserted an advertisement in an Urdu newspaper in Pakistan, which was seen by Rizhwan’s boss. It was February 9, 2013 – a date etched into the family’s memory. The children, separated for long 51 years, finally met her, albeit virtually via Skype.

By March 4, Bhajno’s daughter Khurshid, who lived in Canada, travelled to the US to meet her. Then, she was desperate to meet her youngest son. “He was born after five daughters. In all these years, the only thing I remembered was his date of birth — January 26,” said the emotive mother.

What is your name now? “Since my children know me as Shehnaaz Begum, I would prefer to live the rest of my life with them here in Karachi and buried as Shehnaaz only,” she signs off.