When Manmohan Singh met his childhood friend from Pakistan

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Dr Manmohan Singh, India's former prime minister and the architect of the country's economic reforms, died at the age of 92 on Thursday. Among the many stories about his life that resurfaced, one was from 2008 when he met his childhood friend Raja Mohammad Ali, a resident of Pakistan.


Dr Singh was born on September 26, 1932, in Gah, a village in the Punjab region of undivided India, now part of Pakistan. The Partition in 1947 led to his family's migration to India, leaving behind their native home and friends.


In 2004, when Dr Singh assumed the office of Prime Minister of India, the news reached his village in Pakistan, sparking a desire in his old schoolmate Mr Ali to reconnect. The two were close friends before Partition. He would affectionately call Dr Singh by his childhood nickname, 'Mohna'. They studied together in the same primary school.


In May 2008, Mr Ali arrived in Delhi for an emotional reunion with Dr Singh. The two septuagenarians shared a heartwarming embrace and exchanged symbolic gifts.


Mr Ali brought soil and water from Gah for Dr Singh, along with a photograph of the village. He also presented a 100-year-old shawl to Dr Singh and two embroidered salwar kameez suits to his wife Gursharan Kaur. In return, Dr Singh presented Ali with a turban, a shawl and a Titan watch set.


Two years after that meeting, in 2010, Mr Ali died at the age of 78 in Pakistan's Chakwal district.


Dr Singh was India's first Sikh prime minister, serving two terms from 2004 to 2014 as the head of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government.