The partition he partition of Hindustan has been written about extensively and reminisced through films and documentaries numerous times, yet the stories of the migrants and their sense of isolation still persist. The trauma of partition cannot find words in history books because they belong to people who either didn't live to narrate them or those who survived and cringe at the mere mention of those wretched memories. It has remained etched in their psyche like an inexorable nightmare.
Though God is a river is a work of fiction, there are real life. Instances that have influenced it. Anthony de Mello, once quoted, you have to understand that the shortest distance between truth and a human being is a story."
The truth and not just the story that I heard from my grandfather, Lajpat Rai Kapur who migrated from Gujranwala to India in 1947, has given birth to this tale I tell. In India, he tried to find the home he had lost. Son of one of the wealthiest landlords of Ferozwala, and a man of enviable social pedigree, he found himself in the filthy and disease prone camps of Jalandhar. It was galling for him to survive in circumstances beyond his worst imagination as he settled down in a one room shed in the narrow alleyways of Sharifpura Mohalla in Amritsar with his ailing wife and two daugh- ters. Having lost everything in Gujranwala, he was now deigned to take up any job that came his way. However, he vowed to defeat these adverse circumstances with courage, integrity and his per- sonal strength. He went on to circumvent these challenges and reclaim his respect and sense of honour. His story is just one of the millions of similar stories of valiant migrants who went on to salvage life on a war footing.
I owe this book to all those brave men and women who were part of the biggest historical transmigration ever. It is a citation to all those laudable migrants who braved those times, and dared to take up a road-less journey into an uncertain future.
'God is a river' is a story of faith; a story of a child's odyssey into the intricate realm of religion and her quest for her descent. It is also about two people who stubbornly fought against their love to find a reason to hate each other, who could never clear the emotional cobwebs and express their feelings. This dilemma cost them a lifetime of anguish. A love wasted to a requiem of what had never died in the first place.
**Contents and Sample Pages**
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