BushraWaheed was born on September 7th, 1930 in Ludhiana, British India. During the partition of the subcontinent Ms.Waheed and her family migrated from Delhi to Karachi via train. In her second interview with the OHP Lahore team, Ms. Waheed recalled the morale and hopes of people during the initial years of Partition. Migrants faced a plethora of hardships, the largest of which were lack of sufficient accommodations and lack of food. Ms. Waheedremembered that it was the norm for 10 people to be living together in 1 room. Yet despite the gruesome conditions, the migrants were so grateful that they had succeeded in creating their own country that they made light of their circumstances, saying that they would sleep in the cupboard and put the kids in the drawers. Additionally, the hospitality that Pakistanis are famous for was present even in such trying circumstances, with everyone sharing food, regardless of how much or how little they had, and all without complaint. One of the saddest things that Ms. Waheedrecollected was how people had to adapt their burial customs as well: due to a lack of cloth available for shrouds, the dead were wrapped in banana leaves before they were buried.
However, it was not only the poor migrants who faced such difficulties. The initial governmental offices of Pakistan were also set up in ways utilising everything at their disposal to make up for the lack of appropriate resources. Ms. Waheedmentioned that civil servants used to sit on cardboard boxes in makeshift offices, because there were no chairs available. They would also use their ingenuity when faced with a scarcity of office supplies, in many instances using thorns in place of paperclips.
It is a testament to the will of the newly born Pakistani nation and its people that despite being faced with such hard times that would have felled lesser nations, the people never lost hope. There was always present an air of gratitude that they had a country to call their own, built on such inspirational and idealistic grounds. There was optimism that this country would become something that they could be proud of, that would live up to the dreams and hopes of the founders.
Text and pic by CAP
