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Writer Mod Date & Time
PARTITION: Tape 31 * 255MODEM 255MODEM Jan 18 13:13
TAPE 31
Khorshed ITALIA (nee Mehta)
interviewed at her home in central Delhi, 18 January 1997
[she asked that her maiden name of KHORSHED MEHTA be used on air]
Ms Mehta worked for two months in the summer of 1947 as a
voluntary welfare worker with displaced women in Delhi; she's a
Parsee, born 1922, and has lived in her present second-floor flat
in Connaught Place, almost without a break, since 1937; she was
living there at the time of partition
Side A
19 - born 8 Aug 1922
13 - used to be 'honorary worker' in Hardinge hospital; all
asked 'to go to the Old Fort and help the women that
will be coming in the refugee trains or by trucks ...'
25 - shops started being looted, 'all the Muslim shops ...
just take everything in a tonga and run; 'Nehru came
himself over here ... he came and ran with a lathi
trying to hit these chowkra boys ... I saw N by my own
eyes from my balcony, running ... then the police men
came ... N running to control them, stop all this, stop
all this, .•• bas karo, bas karo ... he had a lathi
in his hand'
50 - 'many shops were looted, many ... many used to catch
the material, overload the tonga and run ... how they
looted it'
57 - 'a road from here, where we go to ND station, that road
was nothing but full of dead bodies, horses killed,
people killed, and I had to cross from Hardinge to
that road, ah, I sd I am not crssing road, they sd
you'll have to do it, I got hold of somebody ... and
we managed to cross and we went to Old Fort'
66 - 'first a truck came with all women, old, young, middle
aged, and ... whoever used to come they sued to give
us a rpt, their wife is missing, their mother is
missing, their sister is missing, ... each time the
women came, we had to ask, who do you belong to, what
is yr name, ... and then the lady doctors used to
examine them, whether they were raped'
80 - [not sure of exact date] 'it was a summer month ... May,
June ... when it started'
95 - story of local M deserting his petrol pump; 'so many
people became rich oevrnight, overnight; I'll give
you this, and send me out from here ...'
110 - 'we had made camps for every women, and we divided the
widow, the old, the young, ... mother and dau put
together, dau in law put in one camp; there were young
girls, 16, 17, you felt so bad, tyhen we had to give a
cert that they had been raped or not raped, .... we
used to give injections and just have the aborted,
and some were in advanced stages ... ' |
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