"There was a Sikh temple in our village, so she ran inside the temple to take refuge. She paid her respects to the holy book … doused her body in kerosene and set herself on fire."
She wasn't the only one of Sardar's neighbours who died. He recalls what happened to the men of the village when the attackers arrived.
"Out of the 25 men who were there, they murdered 18," says Sardar, now 86.
"I cried a lot. Now I think of it, I feel that something happened to all of us. It's as if humanity had died. Everybody became a devil."
A woman worships at the Monkey Temple in New Delhi, India. In 1947, when independent India and Pakistan were created, Hindu, Sikh and Muslim mobs attacked each on the streets of the capital and other places throughout the Indian subcontinent.
The atrocities have spawned decades of hostility between Pakistan and India, but on both sides of the border, there are efforts to chip away at the hatred that remains.
In the Indian city of Amritsar, a new museum is helping keep alive the memories of that era.
With survivors ageing, curator Mallika Ahluwalia says it was crucial that the Partition Museum be established while there is still a living connection to the personal stories of that era.
"It's about the impact on each person who went through it. And what it would have felt like for them to leave behind their homes, to leave behind their friends, to leave behind the lives they've known and to move to a new land," Ahluwalia says.
"It was less migration of people or partition of assets - it was this collective migration of sorrow."
But Mallika wants the museum to be more than just a place of sad reflection. She wants to commemorate the acts of kindness that crossed religious divides and saw Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus protect each other from violence.
"I think it's really important that we highlight those stories of humanity, that we highlight those stories of friend helping friend, neighbour helping neighbour … stranger helping stranger," she says. "Those narratives shouldn't get lost."
On the other side of the border, the Citizens Archive of Pakistan has recorded the stories of more than 2,200 survivors in the last decade.
Aaliyah Tayyebi, a senior project manager for the non-profit organisation's oral history project, says hearing the perspectives of ordinary citizens who lived through partition is vital.
"I feel if narratives of people who have suffered from both sides, whether that be a Hindu, a Muslim or a Sikh, come to the forefront and people get to hear it, then it will make them realise the horrors of war," she says. "It would make them understand that killing one another does not solve anything."
Aaliyah believes today's generation needs to learn from Pakistan's history.
"We can use it as a tool to make us better people or we can just run from it and never look back and pretend it never happened, but then we will just be foolish," she says.
Creating a better understanding of what went on when the country was created would help foster better relations with India, Aaliyah believes.
"We are neighbours. We need to understand that for the greater good of both countries, it would benefit us to respect one another, tolerate one another, understand from our past and come to a better future."
But some survivors, like Salahuddin Khalid, say there's no way they can forgive the brutality they endured.
"How can I?" he asks. "You can give me tonnes of gold, tonnes of money, can you give me my mother?"
Mallika Ahluwalia is a co-founder of the first museum to commemorate the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. The museum, in Amritsar, India, recounts not only the tragedy of partition, where more than a million people died, but also the positive stories where Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims helped each other.