It was on the 13th of August 1947, it was announced that the beautiful city of Lahore on the banks of river Ravi, would anymore belong to Pakistan. The partition led to a massive movement of the Hindu and the Muslim crowds to the other countries.  It was told to be the largest mass movement of people apart from the world wars. People almost scared to death, began to run over each other to save their own lives. Here is an outline of what a person could have gone through at the time, as described by Mr O P Khanna, Managing trustee & Chairman of Needy Heart Foundation, who was then a small child who was a nine-year-old, who witnessed every struggle in families that wanted to simply move to a safer place.

It was the only last train that was leaving to India. So you can imagine the Hindu crowd inside the train and the crowd trying to somehow get into the last train to go to a safer place.

Mr Khanna’s father worked with the railways and had already left to work early in the morning. It was in the afternoon that they had to leave the place and there was no way other than a call from the railway office, that his family could let his father know about their situation. The family left a message at the railway office that would be sent to his father, using the then MORSE system, that was the only means for long distance communication.

The family with the pregnant mother, Khanna and his sister slowly started to walk pushing themselves through the running crowd, over the dead bodies of thousands of people and somehow managed to get a little place in the train, while people made little space because of his pregnant mother (The child was later named Raksha – meaning ‘save’ since the baby saved them from getting killed). You may never get to witness in life, a train in that way, filled with people inside, at the front, and above it.

The train began to slowly move with huge rows of army marching on both sides of the train, protecting the people. Imagine a train that should have reached the destination in 3 hours, took 15 long hours to reach the Indian border. It took 6 weeks for O P Khanna to meet his father again after the large losses of lives for days together.

While people were moving with much struggle inside the towns in caravans, one of the miscreants took hold of a gun and this led to the order to shoot; people began to rush into homes to get safe. The firing had already taken away the lives of many. The young 9-year-old Khanna saw this and ran towards his house, but unfortunately people inside couldn’t hear him and the door remained closed. He tried to hide himself somehow from being fired and he hid at a corner. While he was hiding, he felt something really hot and that was when he realized a bullet just passed few inches from him. For a moment, he had accepted that he would die. One of those shooting men almost came near him, but the young boy was fortune enough to have not been noticed by the man with the gun, who went away thinking there wasn’t anyone.

Mr. Khanna soon realized that god saved him for a purpose; he felt he was reborn that day; he was given a chance to live to fulfil something in life. It made him stronger and is today one of the reasons for him to inspire the world through his actions.

It is devastating to even imagine the number of families shattered, the dead bodies laying on the roads, the crying sounds of every family of the dead ones. The fact that this division caused grief in hundreds of thousands, can never be erased from history. But what we can actually do is, to be thankful to the universe and the people that are supporting us and keeping us safe, to be thankful for every morsel of food that we eat, to be thankful for every penny we earn, and be thankful for just being given another day, another chance to live our lives.

It’s time you understand that you are truly blessed to live the kind of life you currently do. It’s time you begin to utilize the opportunities around you. It’s high time you believe that you possess the strength to win the hearts of many. And It’s time for you to become the reason for the smallest change!