Reena Varma: India woman who visited her Pakistan home after 75 years

On Wednesday, 90-year-old Reena Varma finally went back to the house within Pakistan’s Rawalpindi city that she got dreamed about for seventy five years.

Ms Varma, who got travelled to Pakistan from the western Indian city of Pune, had been showered with increased petals as the girl walked towards the house on College Road. People played drums and danced with her as they celebrated her arrival.

Microsoft Varma’s family had left Rawalpindi within 1947, weeks prior to the partition which resulted in the creation of two independent countries, India and Pakistan.

The partition resulted in mayhem and bloodshed, especially in Punjab, when millions of people fled their own homes to mix the border right after religious riots pennyless out.

Via all the pain plus trauma, Ms Varma never stopped thinking of her childhood home which her father had built with his savings.

In 2021, she became a social media sensation in India plus Pakistan after she spoke longingly of the house she had put aside in an interview.

Active supporters and workers from a Facebook team called India-Pakistan Heritage Club started looking for her ancestral house in Rawalpindi and finally a female journalist found it.

But Ms Varma didn’t want to travel to Pakistan last year because of travel limitations imposed due to Covid-19.

And in March, when she applied for a visa to visit Pakistan, it was rejected without assigning any kind of reason.

Indian and Pakistan happen to be involved in a number of battles and conflicts since the partition and relationships between the South Oriental nuclear rivals are mostly hostile. As a result of the friction, people can not travel freely throughout borders.

“I was shattered, I actually never expected the fact that application of a 90-year-old who only wished to see her house before she died could be refused. It was unthinkable for me, but it did happen, ” Ms Varma states.

She decided to reapply, but before she can, her story caught the eye of a Pakistaner minister, who instructed the country’s higher commission in Delhi to immediately process her application.

“I was overwhelmed when I received the call from the Pakistaner high commission. They will asked me ahead and take my visa. It happened within a few days. ”

But there have been more challenges: the weather was extremely incredibly hot. Ms Varma, who also recently lost her son and was planning to travel by itself, was advised to wait for a few more a few months.

The wait was “excruciating”, the lady said, but the lady didn’t want to take the risk of falling ill so the girl waited and finally arrived in Pakistan on sixteen July.

On 20 July, Ms Varma finally managed to get to her ancestral house. When I met her, she was dressed up colourfully and thoroughly and her eyes sparkled as much as the girl earrings.

Sipping her lemonade, she informed me she had blended feelings about the check out. “It’s bitter plus sweet, ” the girl said.

“I wished to share this minute with my family, but they are all gone. I am happy to make it right here, but I’m also feeling lonelier today. ”

Microsoft Varma said that when she left the girl home in the summer of 1947, she plus her sisters certainly not thought that they would have the ability to return.

“One of my sisters was married in Amritsar. My brother-in-law visited us within April 1947 and persuaded my father to deliver us with him. He knew that will trouble was making. So , in the summer of the year, we were sent to Shimla, which is element of India, instead of Murree where we would usually spend our vacations. ” Murree is really a hilly resort about 88km (55 miles) from Rawalpindi.

“My parents opposed but joined all of us a few weeks later. We all accepted partition gradually, except my mother. She couldn’t sound right of it and would always say what difference could this make to us. First we were living under the British Raj, now it would be a Muslim Raj, but just how can we be forced to keep our house. ”

Microsoft Varma says that her mother didn’t accept the house these were granted as asylum seekers in compensation for that one they had still left in Rawalpindi. She believed that if these people did that, they will never be able to reclaim their own property about what had now become Pakistan.

When Ms Varma entered the girl childhood home, reporters were stopped outdoors. The olive-green façade of the building was freshly painted. The outlook of the house has been slightly modern, but the structure was aged.

Meanwhile, more people were gathering in the street just to get a glimpse of the visitor or even take a selfie along with her.

Microsoft Varma stayed within for a couple of hours. Whenever she reappeared, over a dozen cameras were waiting for her.

The weather was humid and the street congested, but Ms Varma looked composed, completely unmoved by the unhappy crowd around her. She told reporters that the house has been still very much the same : the tiles, the particular roofs and the fireplace – and that this reminded her from the beautiful life she once had here and the loved ones that will she had lost.

“My center is grieving yet I’m thankful to become around to experience a flash I’ve been waiting for a very long time, ” she said.

Many in Indian and Pakistan believe that her charming story has given wish to the region where the politics of hate as well as the othering of communities have dominated the narrative for so long.