Childhood friends separated by India-Pak partition set to meet again
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New York: The Indo-Pak Partition in 1947 has forever changed the subcontinent but the bond that people shared before partition has not, which becomes stronger with the passage of time.
The horrors of those days had many neighbours living in the same streets displaced across the borders but memories never cease to lure them back to the past.
Hence somebody keep emerges from those days, although old and fragile, looking for a friend or a family member.
The most heartwarming of them is the story of two childhood friends Suresh Kothari and AG Shakir who were around 12 years old when they were separated in 1947.
AG Shakir fled with his family on a boat to Pakistan in the middle of the night in October 1947 when Suresh Kothari was studying in Bombay.
When he returned to the village, Suresh Kothari was devastated to see the irreparable change that the partition has wrought in his life.
A video showed the friends meeting in the US after several years of having grown up together in Deesa, Gujarat.
Suresh Kothari’s granddaughter Megan Kothari, 32, recorded the precious moments of her grandfather meeting his childhood best friend in October 2023.
‘When his friend reached Pakistan in 1947, he wrote to my grandfather that he had reached and shared his address in Rawalpindi (which to this day my grandfather has memorized). They tried to write to each other over the years, but the tensions between the two countries eventually made it impossible,’ she wrote in a video shared on Instagram by Brown History.
They had no contact with each other between 1947 and 1981. The first time they met was in 1982 through a mutual friend in New York.
Nearly 41 years later they met in October 2023 again and were seen in a video hugging and sharing memories.
‘The love and respect they still held for each other, despite the geographical and political barriers that had separated them, is profound. It serves as a powerful reminder that the power of human connection cannot be extinguished by any government or border,’ the caption read.
The two friends will see each other again on the occasion of Suresh Kothari’s90th birthday in April.
Many on social media profusely adored the video of two friends meeting after several years, with one user writing: ‘We're brothers and sisters after all. Don't let political hate divide us.’
