As Jameel Gulrays recalls lines from a story from Krishan Chander's Hum Wahshi Hain (We Are Savage), depicting a gut-wrenching scene of a train carrying refugees — dead and alive — across the newly formed border between India and Pakistan, he takes a moment to regain his composure; his voice nearly choking. A collection of short stories set in the time of Partition, they recount, as the title suggests, the horrors of violence men unleashed on one another, making it one of the bloodiest events in human history.

"These stories are prose in the form of poetry; poetry that gives you goosebumps, leaving you shattered," shares Gulrays, founder of Katha Kathan, an initiative to bring people closer to Indian languages through literature. This evening, he will present Amritsar Azaadi Se Pehle, and Amritsar Azaadi Ke Baad from Chander's short story collection, Hum Wahshi Hain, along with over 15 of Saadat Hasan Manto's tiny tales that revolve around the trauma of Partition, for the session Taqseem-e-Hind (the division of India).