During the chaos of partition in 1947, something dreadful happened in
the city of Jalandhar in Punjab. As a result of this, Salman Rashid's
family fled Jalandhar for Pakistan, the newly created country across the
border. They were among the nearly two million people uprooted from
their homes in the greatest transmigration in history. Besides those who
fled, other members of the family became part of a grimmer statistic:
They featured among the more than one million unfortunate souls who paid
with their lives for the division of India and creation of Pakistan.
After living in the shadow of his family's tragedy for decades, in 2008,
Rashid made the journey back to his ancestral village to uncover the
truth. A time of madness tells the story of what he discovered with
great poignancy and grace. It is a tale of unspeakable brutality but it
is also a testament to the uniquely human traits of forgiveness,
redemption and the resilience of the human spirit.