Jagdish Lal Sharma fled with his wife and five kids:
I am a Pandit and also did some hakeemi on the side with natural medicines. There was no problem in our village till very recently. I had a very small temple near my home. One day, some other villagers came and said the presence of your temple is a threat to our religion. It should not be there. I pleaded with them to spare the temple but had no other option but to take the idols inside the house.
On October 2, we got a visa to India and I had a cousin in Amritsar. But the procedure is such that, I had to first go to Delhi -- where I knew no one -- and get my papers to come to Amritsar. You know very well how it is getting work done with the government. By the time I got the required papers to come to Amritsar, most of the money I had with me was spent.
It is a good feeling having at last come to Amritsar. The Punjab region is more or less the same on both sides. But we do not know how long we are going to be here. That is one issue we are worried about. The other is what we are going to do about our children. They do not know Punjabi and hence cannot get admitted to a school here. We have to find a way.
Our forefathers thought that staying back in Pakistan was a good idea. Now, we are thinking about our children and want them to grow up here in India.
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