75 years after partition, a 90-year-old Indian woman visits her home town in Pakistan

Lahore: The 90-year-old Reena Chhibber Varma lived in her ancestral home in Rawalpindi in Pakistan until she was 15 year-old when she left for India after the two nations were born in 1947.

Now 75 years later, Varma fulfills her long-cherished dream of ever visiting her home on Devi College Road in Rawalpindi, where she has many friends from those days.

Varma, who is from Pune, Maharashtra, arrived here in Rawalpindi via Wagah-Attari border on Saturday after the Pakistan High Commission in India issued her a three-month visa, according to India Today.

Moist-eyed on her arrival, Varma will visit her ancestral dwelling Prem Niwas, her school, and meet her childhood friends.

In a video of hers appeared on social media, Varma said she studied at the Modern School alongside her four siblings. Her brother and a sister went to the Gorden College located near the Modern School.

Verma recalled her father was a man of progressive ideas who had no issues girls and boys mingling and her elder siblings had Muslim friends. Back then there was no Hindu and Muslim issue, she recalled, as it emerged after the Partition.

As well as saying that the partition of India was wrong, Varma said now both countries should work together to ease via restrictions for people.

She applied for visa in 1965 but was denied when tensions between two countries were high following the war.

Last year, she expressed on social media her desire to visit her home.

A Pakistani citizen, Sajjad Haider, sent her the images of her home in Rawalpindi.

Afterwards, Verma applied again for a Pakistani visa which was also denied.

Fulfilling her dream, Pakistan's Minister of State on Foreign Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar facilitated her visa to visit her ancestral town.

PTI with editing