For children: In 1948, Amil and his family are trying to rebuild their lives in Bombay in free India

Amil lay stretched out on the daybed in the living room, trying to balance a thick charcoal pencil on the tip of his nose, his sketchbook sitting open on his chest. He finally got the pencil balanced, and it stood proudly, extending into the air.

“Look!” he said to Nisha, trying to keep his head still.

Nisha’s head jerked up from her writing just as the pencil toppled to the ground. She was always writing something. She used to write every day in her diary. Now she wrote secret stories she wouldn’t let anyone see. She stopped writing in her diary because she said it hurt too much to think about the before. She didn’t want to think about the old India – before their horrible walk across the new border; before Amil almost died and Dadi almost died; before the man with the knife tried to attack Nisha; before they saw what they saw on the train.

“You’re distracting me,” she said when the pencil hit the floor.

“Aw, you missed it,” Amil said.

“Missed what?” she asked, absorbed in her writing.

“Forget it,” he said and sighed.

He got up, grabbed the pencil off the cool tile floor, and plunked himself back on the daybed. He decided to draw a quick self-portrait for his mama of what he looked like now. It felt like a message he was sending to her that was somehow different than what she could perhaps see of him in real life.

Amil had never known his mother. She died the day he and Nisha were born, and now, more than twelve years later, his family had travelled far from where his life had briefly connected with hers, one ending and one beginning. Did she wonder where they went – Amil, Nisha, Papa, Dadi, and Kazi? Or had she somehow travelled with them?

Maybe she was just gone, like the way a cloud moves across the sky, changing into something else and eventually disappearing into the atmosphere. He hoped she did watch over them, though. He wanted her to see what it had been like after everything happened, the way Nisha kept a diary written to her about what happened before. He wanted to capture what it felt like when the before became the after the second it went by. It was like catching air.

He liked drawing much better than writing. Writing was not his favourite thing to do, and reading was even harder. Nisha loved his drawings. She said it was like magic, how he could think of a thing and create it on paper so easily. Drawing set his fingers free.

It was hot for January, so they stayed out of the sun on this sleepy Thursday afternoon while their dadi wrote her letters and Kazi prepared dinner. Papa did his “paperwork”. Neither Nisha nor Amil knew exactly what that meant, but Papa sure seemed to have a lot of it.

It wasn’t just any old day, though. It was New Year’s Day, 1 January 1948. Last night, on New Year’s Eve, Papa had let them stay up late so they could walk to the pier at Apollo Bunder just before midnight. Amil was surprised that Papa wanted to do this. He never seemed to be in a mood to celebrate anything lately, but something about last night felt different. Even Kazi and Dadi came.

Amil saw a few other people gathered along the harbour, mostly young men and a few families with older children. Two boys around his age were holding sparklers. When Papa’s watch struck midnight, the boys called out, ‘Happy New Year!’ and someone set off a firecracker into the inky sky over the water. He watched the boys’ sparklers light up the harbour and send sprays of gold into the air. He turned and saw Papa, Kazi, Dadi and Nisha also taking in the glow, their faces bright and happier than he had seen them in a long time.

He couldn’t help but think of another midnight, the one last August when the first prime minister of India had announced India’s independence. Amil had heard Prime Minister Nehru on the radio in their old house. He had only listened to part of the speech because it had gone on and on, and Amil had grown bored. But he would never forget what Nehru said in the beginning:

“At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.”

That’s when India became free from British rule, partitioned into two countries, and Pakistan was born. Many people had to flee their homes like Amil’s family did because they weren’t safe anymore. Most Muslims went to Pakistan. Most Hindus, Sikhs and other non-Muslims went to India, and everyone started fighting and killing one another. Many starved or became ill and died on the journey. Many people did not awaken to life and freedom.

This midnight felt different, though. Amil knew it wasn’t anything other than a new year on the calendar, but there was something that did feel like the beginning of a new life. It was so strange to think that only a few months ago they had thought they’d never see another celebration. Now, here they were, somehow okay and starting over once more. Nothing could wipe away the past, though.

The Partition wasn’t really in the past anyway. Amil saw headlines in Papa’s newspaper and heard reports on All India Radio when Kazi and Dadi listened about people still fleeing over the border and communal riots continuing to happen. He couldn’t always understand everything he read or heard, since it was mostly in English, but he understood enough.

Excerpted with permission from Amil and The After, Veera Hiranandani, illustrations by Prashant Miranda, Puffin Books.