Searching for Shahrukh: A 1948 hockey love story

When Lahore-based Shahzada Syed Shahrukh, former vice-captain of undivided India's hockey team and then of the Pakistan national team, saw a photo of his old teammate Keshav Dutt living in his late 80s in Kolkata a few years ago, he broke down in tears.

This is the most poignant scene of 'Taangh', a new documentary made by the daughter of one of India's 1948 Olympic gold medal winning team members. 'Taangh' (longing in Punjabi) traces a former Pakistani teammate who saved many Hindu and Sikh lives - including that of Keshav Dutt, one of the most stylish players of the 1948 and 1952 gold medal winning teams.

"Keshav used to play for my Punjab team. There were many others like him," Shahrukh breaks down in the documentary. Almost like when Oskar Schindler breaks down in his final scene of surrender in the 1993 Hollywood classic - 'I could have got more out, I didn't do enough.'

"I used to love Keshav a lot. Keshav also loved me a lot. Who knows what went where. Partition ruined a lot of families," says Shahrukh.

Made by Bani Singh, the 59-year-old daughter of Nandy Singh, this film which premiered last December, is a priceless tale of a cross-border story of love between two hockey players hewn by the axe of Partition. In the seven years that it took the filmmaker to bring it out, all three central characters of the film - Shahrukh, Keshav Dutt and Nandy Singh - passed away. Their gift lives on in this film.

"Me, Keshav, Amir Kumar - we were the half line for India. I went over to the Pakistan side after Partition, Keshav went to India," says Shahrukh.

How Keshav Dutt was smuggled out of Pakistan

The 1948 team selection for the Olympics captured a moment of transition in Indian history. Punjab - which had the best players in the world and had won the nationals both in 1946 and 1947 - played as an united team only months before the selection. The bulk of both the Indian and Pakistani teams would be formed from this Punjab team. All the players interviewed remember an underlying tension within the combined team because of the atmosphere of communal violence in the larger political sphere.

When Keshav Dutt returned to Lahore from the London Olympics in 1948, it was one where he felt unwelcome.

"The political situation had turned extremely bad. As the Sun went down, religious chanting used to start, slowly getting louder. And then there was firing. Sleeping at night became impossible," he says.

Fearing for his life, Keshav turned to Shahrukh, his classmate from Lahore Government College and a former teammate for Punjab and India. Balbir Singh, one of their teammates, recounts how Shahrukh kept many Hindus and Sikhs in his house to protect them before sending them to India - one such person being Keshav.

"Shahrukh stayed with me for a couple of nights because I was frightened and couldn't sleep. Finally he brought his uncle's car...or whatever he did I don't know...and then he took me to Lahore railway station and sent me off. Must have paid for my ticket also," Keshav remembers his part in the largest mass migration in human history.

Shahrukh remembers that last journey too.

"There was no mercy those days. 'He's a Hindu, kill him. He's a Sikh, kill him'. Sikhs were easier to identify because of their turbans, Keshav - he was harder to spot. I told him, you don't go outside, you stay home, pack a few belongings, hid him in my car and took him to the station. When anyone asked me...they wanted to kill him...I told them he wasn't going away. He was going to bring back someone from India who was in danger (winks). He must have reached, what else happened on the road I don't know, we never talked since then," he says.

Never went back to Lahore: Keshav Dutt

There was one final meeting between Shahrukh and Keshav later, when the Pakistan team came to play in Mumbai. Shahrukh asked Keshav to come to Lahore, but the Indian player said he could never make it. "Not out of fear or anything...but something always came up, I never went back to Lahore," says Keshav.

"Messages used to come. People who came from Lahore told me he had asked for me to come to Pakistan, but I said no. Yes we were good friends, but that friendship more or less broke. Broke not because our wish was to break it, but because the political position had become extremely bad," he says.

Shahrukh says of his old friend: "Friendhsip dil me hotin hain, pyaar mein hoti hei, jab bhi kabhi mil jaye toh...(Friendship and love are matters of the heart, who knows when we meet again then...)"

At the 1948 Olympics, both Shahrukh and Keshav were told by the Pakistani and Indian team managers respectively to stay away from each other. Both of them found it absurd then but neither knew the storm that was coming in their hometown Lahore soon. When Keshav (1925-2021) joined Shahrukh (1926-2015) in heavenly abode last year, undivided India's half line would have reunited in the skies, perhaps in their familiar 5-3-2 formation.