Just a narrow corridor away from the 67 charred bodies lying in the mortuary, 60-year-old Kamruddin is the lone survivor in the Panipat Civil Hospital of the attack on the Attari Special, which was to take him to Multan. Several hundred kilometres away from home, Kamruddin is celebrating not only the fact that he is alive but also the death of his notion of the “religious divide” between India and Pakistan.

“I come to India almost every alternate year. But this visit and the burning train was like a ghastly reminder of the Partition days. The only difference was that there was no malice anywhere this time. The people, police, doctors of your country have treated us like their own. Shame on the people who did this,” a moist-eyed Kamruddin says.

His legs and fingers singed, he frequently runs short of breath trying to recount those minutes on the burning train. “I started from Delhi with my brother-in-law and nephew with packets of India's betel leaves, some bangles for the women at home and other gifts. We were talking of the wonderful time we had in India when around midnight there was a loud sound like a bomb and I fell to the train floor. My brother-in-law Moinuddin and nephew Mudlah also fell down... Then suddenly there was fire all over, even as the train sped away. Bodies were burning, children shrieking...”

Kamruddin remembers two young men pulling him out. “Allah ki marzi thi aur un ladkon ki insaniyat (It was the will of Allah and the kindness of those men),” he says. There was no news of Moinuddin and Mudlah till the report was filed.

... contd.