Om Kumari Baveja with Story Scholar Sobia Saleem

Om Kumari Baveja was born in Ludhiana, Punjab in 1931. She remembers Ludhiana as a place with diverse communities. She recalls that many families moved away in 1947. It seemed unnecessary to her, she remembers, because she felt that there wasn’t any real distinction between people of different faiths.
Mrs. Baveja recalls that there was a large influx of migrants into Ludhiana, many of whom had faced violence in the towns they had come from. Mrs. Baveja’s mother would make food and deliver it to them at the refugee camps where they were staying before they moved into the vacated homes. Mrs. Baveja’s husband was also a migrant. She shares the stories of his family members disguising themselves to avoid possible harassment before they later migrated across the border.