Have you read The Diary of Anne Frank? Did you like it? If
you did then I would recommend you to read The Night Diary by Veera Hirandani.
An young Adult historical fiction which has won Newbery Honor in 2019.
Some of my favorite lines from the book:
👉“Everyone knows who is
Muslim, Hindu, or Sikh by the clothes they wear or the names they have. But we
all have lived together in this town for so long, I just never thought much
about people’s religions before.”
👉The British people are going
to free India but there is a talk of
India being separated into two countries where Muslim have to go one place and
the Hindus the Sikh and everybody else
have to go to another place. I told him that sounded insane why would India
suddenly become 2 countries?
👉You don’t underdstand .You
could be killed ! you cant change people’s mind s now.Its the only way to
protect yourself. When we leave for the New India,things will be better. I hope"
👉Pakistan is for Muslims and everybody else will go to India, which isnt here anymore. I wonder if any Hindus were staying anyways. Papa says its not safe and the fighting will probably get worse. Papa says it was a group decision between Lord Mountbatten for thebritish , Jinaah for Muslims and Nehru for everyone else,They all agreed to the partition.
Nisha , who is twelve years old writes a diary dedicated to her mom, who died while giving birth .
Nisha’s father is a doctor and works for a hospital in Mirkhaspur. Nisha lives
with her grandmother, Kazi the cook, her brother Amil and father.
Though Nisha was
Hindu but Nisha’s mom was muslim.
This novel has been written as documents/ recordinsgs. It recounts India’s independence and the horror of
Partition through Nisha’s recordings.
At times this book
just gave me shiver on how much people had to struggle to be in the
country they want to live.
As per Nehru, Jinnah and MountBatten, Muslims must move to
Pakistan, while Hindu Sikh Christian, Jain, Parsis should move to New India. 14 million people crossed the border and atlest 1 million died. Partition was one of the largest Mass
movement in the history. The book is loosely based fiction..so when you read
remember there are things which are true
and happened to the author's father''s
side.. The locality she lived everyone stayed united until the killing started. It was beautifully expressed how Muslim and
Hindu friends saved each other life in the misdt of all the chaos, staying
together.
On 15 Aug 1947, Nisha and her family had to leave Mirpur Khas which became part of Pakistan… Millions of people started walking leaving everything behind, to enter New India as refugee without food and water .
From a child's point of view reading about the partition, you can feel the innocence in every question Nisha ask to her mom in the diary.
Highly recommended for Young adults and also Adults.
