Produced by: Mohsin Shaikh
Every night, Balraj Bahri Malhotra would close Bahrisons Bookstore and detour to India Gate, buying a jasmine gajra for his wife Bhag Malhotra. She’d sleep with it in her hair—fragrance folding into dreams of a love born from loss.
In the crowded lanes of Kingsway Camp, home to 30,000 Partition refugees, Balraj and Bhag never exchanged love letters or took walks—just glances across relief tents. It was a courtship written in silence, not speech.
Before Bahrisons Bookstore existed, Balraj Bahri Malhotra was a displaced teenager selling coal on train platforms. He later peddled fountain pens in Chandni Chowk—hustling, surviving, and slowly building his future.
AI Generated/Representative pic
At the social service camp where Bhag volunteered, Swaran Lata—Balraj’s adoptive sister—introduced them. There were no grand gestures, just quiet familiarity amid hunger lines and heartbreak.
AI Generated/Representative pic
At 19, Balraj was uprooted from Malakwal. Bhag, 16, fled Dera Ismail Khan. Both lost their homes to Partition’s fury. They found each other in a city that didn’t want them—but love did.
AI Generated/Representative pic
Rejected by Delhi and crushed by despair, Bhag’s mother nearly returned her children to the station, declaring, “We’ll die on our land.” But the stench of blood and chaos at the tracks stopped her. That decision gave love a chance.
Balraj lived in Reeds Camp, Bhag in Hudson Line—two sections of Kingsway Camp. They crossed paths not in coffeehouses, but among bunk beds, ration queues, and whispered names.
By 1953, Balraj had secured a refugee-allotted shop in Khan Market. That same year, he met Bhag for the first time. One encounter sparked a lifetime—and what would become Bahrisons Bookstore.
Their granddaughter, Aanchal Malhotra, preserved their story in In the Language of Remembering. Today, Bahrisons Bookstore is not just a literary landmark—but a testament to two refugees who turned survival into love, and love into legacy.