Roots

Yesterday night after we had dinner, i went back to my room and started playing Icy tower... which is the most recent game that i've discovered. Daadi(grandmom) came into my room and we started chatting abt here and there. Papa was gonna come quite late. The discussion wandered off to her days in pakistan, that is before the British left. It had been two or three years since she had got married. My grandparents used to live somewhere near Allahbad in Pakistan. They were pretty young then. The Muslims and Hindus had quite a conflicting situation there, and the hindus were being pushed into converting their religion. So lots of hindus fled from there to Hindustan (India). A bus took many Indians on the route to a place in Punjab called Lalru near Ambala. That is where my maternal and paternal grandparents met. They came from differenr places in Pakistan, boarded the same bus on the same day and came to live as neighbours. Who knew that their children will grow up to marry each other, and they'll be relatives. She told me everything, that happened then. My Naani (maternal grandmother) already had a little son when she had come to India, and then after that she bore five more children. My Daadi had six children too. Their children grew up together. We talked for a long time, and we sat chatting till after midnight, and after that I sat thinking in my room about all that she told me. I came to know so many things for the first time in my life. The most surprising one being that my father and mother had a love come arranged marriage. I never knew that! My grandparents came to know only after they were engaged. My mother's brother was my father's best friend, and he chose them for each other.
There are so so so many things that I came to know yesterday. How life completely transforms itself. Two people living in different places become a part of one another's lives. I'll never forget yesterday, and all that we talked about