A little girl was woken up in the night. The family will immediately travel to India from their idyllic home near Lahore, now Pakistan.
Along the way, she saw overturned ox carts, burning villages and beheaded corpses floating on the canal.
Elsewhere, a young boy is also about to embark on a journey – heading in the opposite direction, from India to the newly formed Pakistan.
Riding in a truck, he saw bloated vultures foraging for food on carcasses on the side of the road. He was holding a gun in his little hand.
Seventy-five years later, now that they are in their 80s, the division of India is still imprinted in their memories.
In August 1947, the Indian subcontinent won independence from the British Empire. Bloody divisions hastily divided the former colonies along religious lines — sending Muslims to the newly formed state of Pakistan and sending Hindus and Sikhs to newly independent India.
According to scholars, an estimated 15 million people have been uprooted and between 500,000 and 2 million people have died in the outflow.
Today's tensions between India and Pakistan are "the way the two countries were born, the result of violent partition," said Guneeta Singh Bhalla, founder of the 1947 Partition Archive, a community-based archive that documents more than 10,000 oral histories, located in Delhi, India, and Berkeley, California.
"We can't move forward without understanding partitioning, addressing the past and healing our wounds," she told CNN.
On August 26, 1947, an ox cart loaded with household items belonging to children and Muslim families drove toward Lahore, Pakistan.
In addition to India and Pakistan, partition also contains important lessons. "We're seeing the rise of political polarization — left versus right, religious versus non-religious, or one religion versus another — in many parts of the world," Barra said. "A lot of the rhetoric we hear now is similar to the kind of rhetoric in the public sphere before the violence of the partition era in 1947," she added.
"Partition is an example of the real human cost of this polarization in society," Barra said.
Here, Baljit Dhillon Vikram Singh and Hussan Zia, two people who lived through this pivotal moment in South Asian history, share their memories – and the legacy of today's divisions.
Girl traveling from Pakistan to India
"We are the lucky ones... Don't cry for my hands."
Baljit Dhillon Vikram Singh's point of view
Baljit Dhillon Vikram Singh was 5 years old during the indian split. She moved from near Lahore (now Pakistan) to the city of Sri Ganjanagaal in the Indian state of Rajasthan. Vikram Singh lives in Los Altos Hills, California. The views expressed in this comment are her own.
My childhood was idyllic. I was born into the Dhillon clan, a lion in Punjab, a landlord in many villages. Our village was Nayanki, on the outskirts of Lahore, now Pakistan.
We had all the comforts we needed - the carriage could be ridden, the imported puppies could play, the messenger pigeons could fly. All the elders in this lucky family are bathed in love.
We don't know who is Muslim, Sikh or Hindu.
Then, on a fateful night, I was woken up with my two younger brothers and hurried into the jeep with my father, mother, uncle and aunt. In my mind's eye, the journey is crystal clear, even today, at the age of 80.
The Dillon family — including infant Bargit — took photos in an ancestral home near Lahore in the early 1940s.
I witnessed horrors when I was almost 6 years old: death, dismemberment and decapitated bodies floating on the canal. Overturned trucks, cars, bullock carts and more savage bloody men.
The armed men — soldiers in white uniforms on the Pakistani side — pointed their rifles at us and my mother's courage as she jumped out of the jeep and placed her dupatta (traditional shawl) at the captain's feet, begging for mercy for mercy for her little child.
No markings, no crossovers. No one even knows where the border was drawn.
I remember a village on fire along the way — the uniformed white soldiers who stopped us were ordered to burn it — as we fled the back road again, trying to reach safety in my grandparents' home in Tarn Taran Sahib near the city of Amritsar.
After a short stay with my Nankas (maternal grandparents), we moved to Sri Ganganagar, our new home in Rajasthan. (About 200 to 300 km from our starting point). At least we had a place to go.
No markings, no crossovers. No one even knows where the border was drawn.
Baljit Dhillon VikramSingh
My mother said that now we are real refugees. We came to a room, a tin-roofed kitchen, no servants, no lush groves of mangoes, no buggies. Dust storms and dust ravaged everything. We drank wine from the same diggi (pond) as the animals, rode camels, learned Bagaldi (Rajastani dialect), read with the glow of kerosene lanterns, and dressed like villagers in the gray clothes worn by the family.
Life is cruel; Hot and dusty summers, cold desert cold in winter. The elders never complained. They carried bricks and mixed cement to build houses. They leveled the ploughs and planting grounds.
The hands I wrote these words evoke the memory of my grandfather crying on my mother's hands as she gave him a glass of water she had purified and filtered through three layers of muslin.
He cried and said that her hands were so worn and brown that they were no longer the hands of the daughter of an aristocratic family. We were the lucky ones my mother answered. We're together. Don't cry for my hands.
My heroes are my grandfather, mother and father. How did they become so stoic, manage life, and still bathe us with love? They sacrificed to send us to universities and military academies.
My marriage was arranged in 1959 for a Stanford graduate, an engineer. We moved to the United States in 1967. He went first, and a year later I followed our four daughters.
I take care of 50 cents an hour so I can go home and raise girls. The hard work, tenacity and patience learned from the legacy of partition, as well as the example of the love and care of my elders, made it possible to build life in a new country far from home and loved ones.
I got material rewards, but I lived a simple life.
The word "split" doesn't give a sense of life tearing apart, simply because those in power draw a line. Friends and neighbors who have lived peacefully for generations are now enemies.
Many years later, I saw my strong father standing at the border crying and gesturing to Pakistan.
Baljit Dhillon VikramSingh
Both of my brothers are officers in the Indian Army and have fought Pakistan in multiple unnecessary wars. My brave mother was always a little scared that we needed to flee again because we lived so close to the border.
Many years later, I saw my strong father crying, standing at the border, gesturing toward Pakistan and saying, "Bawa, the train from Lahore used to come here." Grieved for his home, his memories and all that he had lost. He would say we were brothers, we shared the same food, why should we kill each other?
That's why we didn't leave immediately, but had to flee when the madness came.
The cut-off wound will always be pristine, even after 75 years. The effect on me is that I will always have empathy for humanity. I am anti-war. I would always lift people up if I could and never let them down.
These are all lessons learned from my elders. And the lessons taught to my descendants.
A boy traveling from India to Pakistan
"We kissed the ground... It felt rough and tasted salty"
Hassan Zia.
Hassan Zia. opinion
Hassan Zia. He was 13 years old during the Partition of India. He moved from Jalandal, India, to Siyarkot, now Pakistan. He later served in the Pakistan Navy and was the author of several books on division, including "Pakistan: Roots, Perspectives, and Genesis," "Muslims and the West: A Muslim Perspective," and "The Division of Muslims and India." He lives in Canada. The views expressed in this commentary are his own.
"If they kill me first, don't get all the bullets out." Keep one for your mother and sisters each," my father told me, and we stood on the roof watching, guns in hand. "Make sure to kill them before you die."
This terrible thought still haunts me to this day.
At the time of the partition, I was still a few months away from the age of 14 and lived in Basti Danish Mandan, on the outskirts of jalandar, in the Muslim-majority jalandar region, which is now part of the Indian state of Punjab.
Basti Danishmandan was inundated with thousands of Muslim refugees, many of them injured and sick, without food or medical facilities. At night, when one of them' nightmarish cries caused the alarm, my father and I would rush to the roof with guns in their hands. This was to prevent the "jathas" (Sikh armed groups) from frequently attacking Muslim settlements at night.
I belong to the Patan community and have lived in a settlement on the outskirts of the city of Jalandal for over 330 years. My father was a judge and chose to serve in Pakistan after partition.
A street sweeper works after a community riot in Amri, Punjab, during the partition of India in 1947. Otherwise, the streets were abandoned under a curfew imposed by the British army.
On August 27, the Pakistani government sent two trucks to Basti Danish Mandan to evacuate government officials and their families. The roads to Lahore are mostly deserted because mass migration has not yet begun. However, the evidence of administrative, violent and atrocities breakdown is clear. We saw scattered objects, many corpses, bloated vultures and dogs feeding on them on the side of the road.
Both trucks were parked in Amritsar , a Sikh stronghold about 15 miles from the Pakistani border. There were moments of anxiety as Sikhs began to gather around the trucks armed with spears, swords and daggers. Fortunately, the sound of our gunshots once again deterred them.
Shortly after leaving Amritsar, someone shouted, "We're in Pakistan!" "There are no checkpoints. Everyone stepped out and spontaneously kissed the ground. I remember it felt gritty and tasted salty.
In Lahore (about 130 km from our starting point) we were placed in a bare room without any furniture, and the house had a Hindu family who had moved to India. My father was temporarily sent to help in a huge refugee camp at the airport in poor conditions.
The usually busy city looks desolate, with offices, businesses, shops, schools, hospitals and other institutions closed. (These were mainly owned by Hindus and Sikhs, who migrated to India very early.)
During the partition of India in 1947, the Hall Market Shopping Centre in Amritsar, Punjab, was burned down. Fighting took place between the Muslims of the city and the Sikh and Hindu inhabitants.
Once, I saw my father rush to help a man who had fallen across the road. It turned out that he was a stabbed Hindu. He was dead, or dead in my father's arms. He had an application for police protection in his hand. It was a quirk of fate, and if he took a few more steps forward, he would safely enter the local police station!
In early October, we moved to the city of Sialkot in the Pakistani state of Punjab, where we lived in a house next to a locked building. One day I saw someone in one of its slightly open windows, telling my mother. She told me not to tell anyone. Then she prepared a vegetarian meal and asked me to leave it in the window to the residents, an old Hindu, who was left behind as the family emigrated to India. She continued this daily routine until arrangements were made to send him to India.
In the end, the partition killed about 1 million people, uprooted 9 million Muslims and 5 million Hindus and Sikhs. Everything we witness and experience profoundly affects all of us. It robs us of the joy in our lives and replaces it with long-lingering feelings of loss, sadness, and despair (PTSD).
It is often assumed that the madness of 1947 was rooted in religion. But Hindus and Muslims have lived peacefully in India for 12 centuries and have never been involved in such mass killings and expulsions.
Unwisely hasty acceleration of the transfer of power does not give enough time to establish an effective administration, particularly in Eastern Punjab. (In February 1947, British Prime Minister Clement Attlee announced that Britain would transfer power by June 1948.) Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last Governor-General of British India, pushed this date forward to August 1947).
The hasty withdrawal of British troops allowed anyone to loot, burn, rape and murder with impunity. The cowardly abdication of responsibility by the British, with the help and encouragement of the Congress party, which insisted on their swift withdrawal, was the main cause, if not, of this catastrophe.