People looked on helplessly as a child or parent was slain, a wife or daughter raped and killed, an infant tossed in the air and caught by a bayonet or spear. Breasts were knifed, vaginas speared. In both halves of Punjab, deeds and sights more horrible than could be imagined were done and seen. Often the trauma was stretched out. You were seized, raped multiple times and brutally killed. Or, leaving behind dead or living relatives, you fled from an attacked house, joined a column of escapees, slipped into a clump of trees when the column was shot at, found a fresh group of assailants, eluded
...more
