Reena Varma arrived in the country via the Wagah-Attari border and soon departed for her hometown Rawalpindi, where she received a rousing welcome to the music of dhols
Reena Varma at her ancestral home in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Twitter/ @ShirazHassan
Reena Varma’s long-cherished dream of visiting her ancestral home in Rawalpindi became a reality after Pakistan granted the 90-year-old a visa and she arrived in the country via the Wagah-Attari border — 75 years after leaving the place during the Partition.
After arriving in Pakistan, Varma soon departed for her hometown Rawalpindi, where she received a rousing welcome with dhol beats. An overwhelmed Varma also danced with some of the residents. A video from her visit was tweeted by journalist Shiraz Hassan.
In the video, Varma could be heard singing ‘Yeh galiyan yeh chaubara’ as she visits her ancestral home. The video has received more than 45,000 views on Twitter.
Reacting to the video, a user wrote, “Such a lovely story. If only the Indo-Pak border was open, more people would reconnect with what they left behind 75 yrs ago, and get to experience the love, bhaichara, Punjabiyat that still exists. My personal wish is to travel to Lahore, a place I’ve journeyed to in my writing.”
Another wrote, “Really puts into perspective that one could travel to Venice easily, a city that was thousands of kilometres away but there may be a need to move mountains to visit one’s ancestral land which may be a few hundreds of kilometres away.”
“She is one of those few ‘lucky’ Punjabis who could see their birthplaces ‘once again in life’. Millions could only long for this,” wrote a user.
Varma, who now stays in Pune, was happy to find that the house – built by her father – was not altered much. In a media interaction, Varma said that her father made the house with much hard work and was very happy that the house was mostly the same. She further added that it had changed only a little and those who were staying there were lovely.
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