Gujranwala to Gurgaon

 

On June 10^th, 2025, exactly a year ago today, my mother, Raj Jaggi, left us at the age of 92. I had long meant to write a eulogy for her, but for various reasons I was unable to summon the courage to sit down and write about her life.

This was an immense personal loss. I needed time to process it, and I consciously shut my mind down because whenever I began to reminisce about her, I would be left in a state of stupefaction. Unfortunately for me, mental torpor is not a state I like to inhabit. It has taken time, but I have finally begun to shift from grieving her death to celebrating her life.

My mother was born in Gujranwala, near Lahore, now in Pakistan, on July 11^th, 1932. She was one of six children: three older brothers, one older sister, and one younger sister. My grandfather was a civil engineer who worked for the Maharaja of Kashmir and spent significant time in Jammu and Kashmir. The family was education-oriented and deeply conservative, and like most families in the 1940s, educational opportunity was directed primarily toward the men. Her oldest brother became a banker, and the other two brothers became engineers.

 

The year 1947 marked the imposed breakup of our country into artificially drawn boundaries by imperial powers. It triggered one of the largest mass migrations in human history, accompanied by staggering violence and loss of life. Like so many others in East Punjab, my mother had to leave behind her home and move. Her journey is beautifully documented by the 1947 Partition Archive, a volunteer-led effort to preserve the personal stories of those who survived this treacherous period.

On or around August 16^th, 1947, my mother lost her father and one of her older brothers on a train coming from Pakistan. Unconfirmed reports suggested that a bomb blast at a railway station near Pathankot caused  massive loss of life. It is assumed that they perished there. Their bodies were never recovered by the family.

 

Establishing yourself in a new city is hard enough under ordinary circumstances, but losing the patriarch of the family, and under such tragic circumstances, was devastating. The people arriving from West Punjab were labeled refugees. To be forced to move within your own country, from one region to another, and to be called a refugee for it, is its own cruelty. Regardless, people gathered the pieces and moved forward. With little education and little to no money, my mother volunteered to work at the age of 17 to help support the family. She was hired as a punch card operator by the Indian Air Force, where she would eventually work for 43 years. Little did she know then that this single act would enable her to provide shelter and support for her future family: my father, my older brother, and me.

 

The year was 1954, and by then my mother had already been working for seven years when, on an otherwise unremarkable DTC (Delhi Transport Corporation) bus ride to work, she met my father. In today’s world, that might not raise an eyebrow, but back then, dating and falling in love were taboo. Arranged marriages were the norm, and here was my mother with the audacity to fall in love, and with a man whose family background stood in stark contrast to hers. A story that could easily be turned into a Bollywood film followed. Her two older brothers had by then become the patriarchs of the family, and they opposed the marriage. She did not care. Unconfirmed reports say she was ready to elope. Eventually the family relented, and my mother and father were married on September 12^th, 1954.

 

After the marriage, my mother was allotted accommodation by the Indian Air Force: a one-bedroom flat of about 700 square feet in Laxmi Bai Nagar, New Delhi. In 1956, she gave birth to my older brother, and I followed nine years later. I have distinct memories of Laxmi Bai Nagar. She would walk about a mile to the bus stop near Safdarjung Hospital, which may seem trivial, but it was anything but trivial, especially during the summer months in sweltering heat. From there she would board a DTC bus to R.K. Puram and make the same journey back. Every day, for 43 years. Eventually we moved to Lodhi Colony because of a promotion she received: a bigger apartment, but farther away. Given the fickle nature of my father’s business, it is fair to say that it was because of her that we survived and were educated in private schools that she could scarcely afford at the time.

 

A voracious reader, my mother taught herself fluent English simply by reading books. She read every single day. Despite losing sight in her left eye and undergoing two corneal transplants in her right, she still used a magnifying glass and kept reading. She did not need formal schooling to educate herself; Reader’s Digest was her tutor.

 

I moved to the United States in 1986, and not long afterward my mother joined me to help raise my daughter, who had a complicated birth, at a time when I was a single father. She lived with me through all my years in the United States, and I was fortunate beyond measure to have her. During that time she traveled to several countries. She was my rock and gave me unconditional support. In the end, because of her health, I had to move her back to India, where she spent her final years in the country from which her journey had once so violently begun.

 

The distance from Gujranwala to Gurgaon, as the crow flies, is only about 480 to 520 kilometers, roughly 300 to 325 miles. But her life was not measured in straight lines. It was measured in upheaval, endurance, labor, love, sacrifice, and grace. Her journey took long detours across history and around the world, only to bring her back, in the end, to her roots.