Murree

Yashpal Sethi was born on September 7, 1931 in Mohalla Shah Chanchrag, Bazaar Sarafan, Rawalpindi, and moved to India after the Partition of India. He joined the Punjab National Bank in 1953 and retired from the Bank in September 1992. He returned to Pakistan in 2006 to visit Murree, Rawalpindi and Lahore, when he had a memorable time visiting various places, including his ancestral home, which today is a commercial complex. Now he lives in Yamunanagar, Haryana and is quite active on social media such as Facebook.

Editor's note: This article is based on an interview conducted by Gurpreet Singh Anand in 2013, and is presented as a report of this interview. Additional material has been taken from Yashpal Sethi's blog http://yashpalsethi.wordpress.com/

Gurpreet was born in India to parents who fled from Rawalpindi and Murree, where the family had cloth shops, as ‘refugees.' His father, though from a business family, was a full time member of the communist party and a freedom fighter. His father died when Gurpreet was 10 years old, leaving behind a diary of the events in 1947\; Gurpreet has always been intrigued by this diary. Gurpreet, now an avid traveller and businessman, keeps searching for people who were traumatised by the partition of India. He interviews them to record their memories, and keeps in touch with people of similar interest in Rawalpindi.

Dr. Anand - an unholy person born in 1932 in the holy town of Nankana Sahib, central Punjab. A lawyer father, a doctor mother. Peripatetic childhood - almost gypsy style. Many schools. Many friends, ranging from a cobbler's son (poorly shod as the proverb goes) to a judge's son. MB From Glancy (now Government) Medical College Amritsar, 1958. Comet 4 to Heathrow, 1960.

Long retired. Widower. A son and a daughter, their spouses, five grandchildren, two hens (impartially, one black, one white) keeping an eye on me as I stand still and the world goes by.

My father was fond of walking. Hiking is too formal an activity. He preferred to walk.

And see the surroundings, the topography, the trees and shrubs. Hear the birds sing. At night, there were the silent owls swooping down to pick up a field mouse. Plenty of bats. Listen to the howling of the jackals. (I wonder if there are any jackals left in India?)

And then there were the dogs. Mostly pariahs. Some would attach themselves to a village or a residential locality and charge any strangers.