Nothing Dramatic Happens at the Border

The men from the administration arrived in Pargwal in the middle of the morning, walking slowly with a measuring tape and a notebook. They stopped every few steps, bent down to study the ground, wrote a few lines, and moved on. Avtar Singh stood nearby and watched. No one spoke to him. They did not need to. This was not the first time he had seen his land measured without his consent.

The plot lies close to the river and not far from the border. Singh is eighty-five years old and has lived here for decades. When the officials finished marking the ground, they folded their

papers and left.

“They say this land is not ours,” Singh said later. “They say it belongs to the state. Wetland. Security land.” He paused before adding, “But our real land is across the river.”

He pointed toward the water. Beyond it lies Deva Vatala, the village where he was born and where his family once lived. It is now in Pakistan. Singh has not seen it since 1947.

Singh was seven years old when Partition tore through the region.

“In those days, blood and chaos were everywhere,” he said. Fear travelled faster than people. From what is now the Indian side, he watched Muslim neighbours flee across the river at night. They crossed in small boats built from whatever material they could find. The river, once part of daily life, turned into a route of escape.

Borders here were not abstract lines. They cut directly through rivers, fields, and families. People could still see one another across the water, sometimes close enough to recognise faces but could not cross. Fathers pointed to land they would never touch again. Children grew up knowing the shape of villages they would never visit.

Soon after, Singh’s own family fled. They left under cover of darkness, uncertain of where safety lay. Not everyone could move. The elderly, infants, and those too weak to walk were

left behind. “Some were never seen again,” Singh said. Families still do not know what became of them.

His father carried the loss quietly. “He remembered that land all his life,” Singh said. “He would cry in silence.”

The crying happened at night. Singh remembers murmured prayers, hurried conversations, and the sound of the river outside. Adults believed children slept through grief. Singh did not.

The journey to India was not an arrival. It was the beginning of another uncertainty.

Displaced families were resettled in the Jammu region under post-Partition rehabilitation policies, with land allotments that varied widely and often remained legally uncertain. What was meant to offer stability rarely brought permanence. The land was unfamiliar. The soil behaved differently. And the sense of temporariness never fully lifted.

For many families displaced from what became Pakistan-administered Jammu and Kashmir, rehabilitation unfolded unevenly over decades. Aid arrived sporadically. Ownership remained unclear. The emotional cost of displacement went largely unacknowledged.

Reaching India did not bring stability. It brought waiting.

Displaced families were resettled across Jammu through rehabilitation schemes. Land allotments varied, and ownership often remained unclear. The soil was unfamiliar, and the sense of permanence never arrived.

Singh’s family lived as many others did; waiting. Fields were tilled cautiously, knowing the land might not remain theirs. Bonds formed with other displaced families, tied together not by place, but by shared loss.

Wars followed. Shelling returned. Living near the border meant evacuation and return, again and again. At the first sound of firing, families packed what they could carry and fled. When the guns fell silent, they returned to rebuild.

Temporary homes rose from mud and wood, only to be abandoned again. Children learned early how to pack quickly. Adults learned not to grow attached.

“Our land is there,” Singh said, again pointing across the river. “Here, we have no real claim.”

Life near the border allowed little rest. Just as routines began to form, uncertainty returned through shelling, evacuation orders, or sudden administrative decisions. Weddings were postponed. Harvests interrupted. Childhoods unfolded against the background of anxiety.

In recent years, even this land has felt unstable. Officials arrive, measure, write, and leave. Singh watches without protest. He has learned what protest does not change.

“They say this land is not ours,” he said. “But our real land is across the river. That is gone. And now even this place is slipping away.”

Displacement did not end for him. It hardened into a permanent condition.

Several hundred kilometres north, in Teetwal, the border takes another form. Here, it is a river. Narrow. Quiet. Absolute.

If Singh carries the border inside memory, Ghulam Sarwar Awan lives with it directly in front of his eyes.

Ghulam Sarwar Awan stood beside it one afternoon and pointed to a modest house near the bank. “This is my house,” he said. “There is nothing to hide here.”

He watches life unfold on the opposite shore every day. People graze animals. Children walk along the water. The land looks almost identical.

“We live here. They live there,” he said. “We drink the same water. The only difference is the river.”

The river is only a few meters wide. Crossing it is impossible not because of distance, but consequence.

“It is so close,” Sarwar said, “that visiting the next village is harder than going to Pakistan. And then going to Kanyakumari would be easier than crossing this river.”

In Teetwal, the border is not marked by fences or visible barricades. It is defined by water, silence, and constant watchfulness. The absence of infrastructure makes the division feel intimate and inescapable.

The road ends before the final village. From there, one must walk by foot to reach Seemari, where the last army post stands. Beyond that, there is only the river and the silence around it. Life narrows. Movement feels restricted not by walls, but by awareness.

At every call to prayer, the sound carries clearly across the river. It is familiar, almost ordinary, yet somehow unsettling.

As Sarwar spoke, two boys walked past us along the riverbank and showed their phones.

One screen showed 1:21 — Pakistan time, the other 1:51 — India time. Thirty minutes apart, separated only by the river. They said it happens often, with the time sometimes catching differently across the river.

Sarwar’s family was divided by what he calls the bloody line.

His father stayed behind to guard the ancestral home. His elder uncle was already working as a ranger in the forest department in an area that later became Pakistan. During the upheaval of 1947, he returned, gathered Sarwar’s grandparents, aunts, and other relatives, and took them across the line leaving Sarwar’s father behind to protect the house.

“They said, ‘When this line disappears, we will return,’” Sarwar recalled. “That line never disappeared. It stayed in our hopes.”

Decades followed of shelling, earthquakes, and isolation.

“My father cried at weddings,” Sarwar said. “Even during celebrations.”

Over time, caution turned into routine. Phones are checked at checkpoints. Communication across the line is almost entirely avoided. Calls are not made. Messages are not sent. Numbers are not saved. Even carrying a contact can invite questioning. Silence, here, is not choice but caution.

Jobs are scarce. Young men with bachelor’s and master’s degrees even some with doctorates remain unemployed, restricted more by geography than ability. Many graze sheep and goats. Some sell eggs. There is little else.

“Lions and goats once drank from the same ghat,” Sarwar said. “No one imagined killing. Now fear shapes daily life.”

For decades, Teetwal survived on distant political promises made in Shimla, in Delhi, at the United Nations.

“Today there is a meeting. Tomorrow there will be peace,” Sarwar said. “Then time passed.”

“The world passed into graves,” he added. “People died waiting.”

The river continued to move beside him. On the opposite bank, life went on visible, audible, unreachable.

The elders left one request. When the line disappears, come to our graves. Tap them. Tell us we are one again.

Sarwar looked at the water. “That day never came.”

He recited a couplet softly.

Hum qafas mein aa ke khamosh ho gaye

Thay hum safeena faida kya haq ke shor ka

We fell silent in the cage. We were once ships. The cry for rights changed nothing.

Sarwar paused before leaving. Looking towards the river, he said softly:

Ye border ilaqa badan kaanpta hai

Maweshi samajh kar har ek haankta hai

Laayein kahan se jo tum maangta hai

Hamaari ye haalat Khuda jaanta hai

(This borderland shivers under the weight of life.

Every soul treated like cattle, herded and shouted at.

Where would we find what you demand?

Only God knows the state we endure.)

In Pargwal, the border is fenced and guarded. In Teetwal, it appears as water and silence.

The form changes, but the weight does not.

For the people who live here, the border is not an event from history. It is a condition that

shapes where they go, what they say, and what they leave unsaid.

Each morning, Avtar Singh wakes carrying a village he cannot reach. Each day, Ghulam Sarwar Awan stands beside a river he cannot cross.

Nothing dramatic happens. That is how the border works.

History holds its ground. People wait.

Dusk settles over Teetwal, seen through the railing of a house verandah.

A figure stands behind a barred window inside a house in Teetwal.

A porch light glows outside a single-storey house in Teetwal at dusk, marking the pause between day