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Harish Rajora
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Recently I read a classic novel by a classic author Khushwant Singh named Train to Pakistan.
Train to pakistan is a beautiful book written in a really beautiful language. The words are woven in such a way that while reading you can imagine every scene quite clearly. Coming to the plot, the book is set at the time of partition of India and Pakistan and is a story about a village which is at the border.
The village is peaceful and Hindus and Muslims live in harmony and everyone lives like brothers and sisters. The village has sikhs and muslims and both of them are affected by the partition. The people are happy until a train arrives from Pakistan which is filled with corpses of Sikhs who were living in Pakistan. Muslims sliced them and cut them and sent in the train.
This becomes a really bad news for the people and they are scared by the scene of burning of thousands of corpses. The smell of flesh and bones being burnt remains in their mind forever. They are deeply affected and were just starting to live normally when another train arrives filled with corpses. This time the policemen buries them in the ground with the help of bulldozers due to shortage of wood and oil. People living in the village term this as Kalyug and are afraid to move out of the village. The next highlighting event that happens is that the people of the village see a sudden rise of the river that flows in the village. They are surprised to see many corpses drowning and dead with their body parts cut off in the river. All of them were Muslims. This scared the Muslims living in the village and they start to think about moving to Pakistan.
All the Muslims decides to move to Pakistan and come back after few months when everything has calmed down. They decide to go the nearby village from where the train leaves to Pakistan at midnight. The day they leave is followed by the entry of 2 sikhs who manipulates all the Sikhs of the village to kill the muslims. They start to produce rage in the Sikhs and all of them agrees to kill all the people that will be going to the Pakistan by the train.
But!! There is a twist. I will leave that to you if you read.
Overall the book is exceptional and really keeps you going on. I did not find one character really important though. Khushwant Singh has framed one character called Iqbal Singh who is unreligious and no one knows his religion. He does not tell it either. He is very educated and is kept in the plot for half of the book but he just talks. There is no importance to this character. It would have been just fine without him. If anyone knows, feel free to comment. Overall, its a very very good read.
Train to pakistan is a beautiful book written in a really beautiful language. The words are woven in such a way that while reading you can imagine every scene quite clearly. Coming to the plot, the book is set at the time of partition of India and Pakistan and is a story about a village which is at the border.
The village is peaceful and Hindus and Muslims live in harmony and everyone lives like brothers and sisters. The village has sikhs and muslims and both of them are affected by the partition. The people are happy until a train arrives from Pakistan which is filled with corpses of Sikhs who were living in Pakistan. Muslims sliced them and cut them and sent in the train.
This becomes a really bad news for the people and they are scared by the scene of burning of thousands of corpses. The smell of flesh and bones being burnt remains in their mind forever. They are deeply affected and were just starting to live normally when another train arrives filled with corpses. This time the policemen buries them in the ground with the help of bulldozers due to shortage of wood and oil. People living in the village term this as Kalyug and are afraid to move out of the village. The next highlighting event that happens is that the people of the village see a sudden rise of the river that flows in the village. They are surprised to see many corpses drowning and dead with their body parts cut off in the river. All of them were Muslims. This scared the Muslims living in the village and they start to think about moving to Pakistan.
All the Muslims decides to move to Pakistan and come back after few months when everything has calmed down. They decide to go the nearby village from where the train leaves to Pakistan at midnight. The day they leave is followed by the entry of 2 sikhs who manipulates all the Sikhs of the village to kill the muslims. They start to produce rage in the Sikhs and all of them agrees to kill all the people that will be going to the Pakistan by the train.
But!! There is a twist. I will leave that to you if you read.
Overall the book is exceptional and really keeps you going on. I did not find one character really important though. Khushwant Singh has framed one character called Iqbal Singh who is unreligious and no one knows his religion. He does not tell it either. He is very educated and is kept in the plot for half of the book but he just talks. There is no importance to this character. It would have been just fine without him. If anyone knows, feel free to comment. Overall, its a very very good read.
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