Abstract

There is a particular kind of longing that only those displaced by Partition can truly understand: the yearning to return to the soil where one first breathed, where one's roots run deep beneath houses now occupied by strangers, beneath streets that carry different names, beneath a sky that belongs to a different nation. Hardev Singh Virk's Meri Janambhumi (Pakistan) Diyan Yatravan is an intimate, deeply personal account of that longing being fulfilled, not once but four times over four decades. Written in Punjabi, the book chronicles the author's journeys to Pakistan in 1981, 1983, 1988, and most recently in 2024, weaving together the threads of personal memory, scientific achievement, cultural observation, and the bittersweet experience of returning to a homeland forever altered by history.