‘We must forget about divisions’: one woman’s journey home 75 years after India’s partition

Chance encounter on Facebook led Reena Verna, 90, to visit family home she was forced to abandon in 1947

For decades, Reena Verna would return to her home in Rawalpindi in her dreams. She would wander down the narrow lane to the three-storey house and walk through the rooms where she had lived with her five siblings, parents and an aunt for the first 15 years of her life.

But for 75 years, this was a home located across a seemingly impenetrable national border, one Verna could only visit as a painful memory. That was, until July this year. Now 90 years old but still sprightly, a chance encounter on a Facebook group helped her find and visit the family home she was forced to abandon 75 years ago, located in what is now Pakistan.