When I was a child, my grandad’s stories were like portals - they took me to places I’d never been, places full of colour, faith, struggle, and love. Sitting beside him, I could almost hear the call to prayer echoing over the rooftops of his village, feel the warm dust beneath my feet, smell the spices drifting through the air. He was born in a place that no longer exists, British India, and through him, I got to know that vanished world.

He remembered it with deep affection. Life back then, he’d say, was hard - but it was also rich. He spoke of communities living side by side, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, celebrating each other’s festivals, eating at each other’s tables, raising children who spoke in three, sometimes four languages. His eyes would light up when he spoke of it, the way only someone who had truly loved a place can speak of it.

But he never let nostalgia cover the truth.

He told me about the shifting mood before Partition. The war had taken its toll. He and one of his brothers joined the British Army, sent east to defend against the Japanese. He was still so young then, but war has a way of aging a person fast. Even when he told those stories decades later, you could hear both pride and pain in his voice as if he still carried the weight of what he’d seen.

When the war ended, peace didn’t come. Instead, the land he had known began to split. Trust turned into tension. Neighbours stopped talking. Fear grew like fire. Then came Partition - a line drawn across a map that tore lives apart. Overnight, his world changed. Suddenly, millions of Muslims, including his own family, had to leave their homes and flee to a country that didn’t even exist a few weeks before. And just as many Hindus and Sikhs fled in the opposite direction, each side gripped by fear and grief.

He didn’t speak often about that journey. When he did, he kept his voice low, almost reverent. There were things too heavy for words. But I understood it was a time of chaos and sorrow. People lost everything: homes, memories, loved ones. Somehow, his family made it to what became Pakistan, eventually settling in the green valleys of Kashmir. It was beautiful, he said so himself, but beauty can’t always feed you.

Pakistan was still a newborn, trying to stand on its own feet. Jobs were scarce. The trauma of migration had left so many families, like his, with almost nothing.

But one day, hope came to him in the form of a letter. An uncle, working on a coal ship between Pakistan and Britain, had offered him a way out - a chance to find work and build a new life across the sea. My grandad took it.

I often try to picture it: a young man on a merchant ship crossing oceans, not a word of English, almost no money, and only a scrap of paper with a name and address. When he arrived in Liverpool, he showed that scrap to strangers at the dock. They pointed him in the right direction. They helped. And somehow, step by step, he found his way.

He worked first in Liverpool, then in Manchester, and finally Rotherham, the town that became our family’s home. He laboured in the steelworks, sending money back to support his family in Pakistan. Later, he brought them over, one by one, and started to build a life that felt stable, even peaceful.

He always spoke with gratitude about the people he met here: the neighbours who helped him buy his first home, the ones who welcomed him into a new kind of community. He never forgot the kindness of strangers.

I was born and raised in Rotherham. To me, it was just home. But to him, it was the final stop on a long, hard, incredible journey. He passed away in 2010, at around 105 years old - a man who had lived through empires, wars, nations being born, and the forging of new identities.

His story has never left me.

It reminds me that migration isn’t just a headline or a statistic. It’s made up of real people with real losses, real courage, and real dreams. People like my grandad, who left everything they knew for a chance at safety, dignity, and a future. And somehow, in a cold foreign land, found warmth in the hearts of others.

His journey lives on in me in every memory he shared, and in every path I now walk that he once made possible.