Excerpts from Across Borders, in the words of the protagonist Maya…
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Excerpts from Across Borders, in the words of protagonist Maya…
Chapter 1: That day in 1948, Kalpana and I left to cross over to another life with Ronjit uncle across the Pakistan border. There was no Bangladesh yet and was not going to be for a long time. Mihirpur is a small town near the city of Dacca, in erstwhile East Pakistan, currently Bangladesh. I was about to transcend the border of my childhood. After the age of eight, I was sucked into adulthood like quicksand. It would only be fifteen years hence that I would again cross the border, back into India. After my graduation in 1964, I would return to work, marry, raise a family and live the rest of my life on the Indian side. A few years later, in 1971, the home that I grew up in was to become a part of Bangladesh, no longer of East Pakistan, as when I would leave it. As the country was re-contoured into Pakistan, Bangladesh and India ensuing much turmoil, so did my life across its border in developing three distinct identities – childhood, adolescence and adulthood – get chiselled by the rough hands of time and experiences…
Chapter 5: My mother’s helplessness in the face of father’s treachery always came to mind in times of indecisiveness like this. It propelled me to stay on in Dacca, in spite of the arsonist mood I was enveloped in. Though I was to never literally take up arms, I was intrinsically combating with life itself. How then could external forces deter my battle to win a good life, to hoist the flag of my success in front of my father? Therefore education and resultant economic autonomy I chose over the security of life at the time, deciding to leave East Pakistan only on completion of my final examinations. My personal experiences of the riots still give me the shudders. Even now, I wake up from sleep after vivid dreams of the violence, breaking out in a cold sweat as if I were in the midst of it…
Chapter 6: After the outbreak of the riots and attacks on a number of girl’s schools and hostels, it is difficult to pre-empt what may happen next, so all of us girls have vacated the hostel. However, of the twenty-two of us, only four of us who are Hindus, are in actual danger of our lives, if detected. As our truck rolls out into the neighbourhood, we can hear agonizing screams, as people are running crazily pushing one another, overturning wheelbarrows of fruits and vegetables, trampling over the crushed as well as fresh ones they might have just bargained hard for. There are small to large fires everywhere, with a putrid burning smell mixed with that of blood, sweat and fear. People are running arbitrarily — not sure in which direction. They are unsure of who is killing whom, not even aware if the man running alongside is a potential slayer, to escape the vandalism that has erupted on the streets.
There are lungi clad men on the trot, with lathis, daggers, spears and burning torches, against the fading light of the setting sun. All shutters of shops are either closed or are being frantically pulled down, as those late to react will be looted and ransacked, lucky if they can manage to save their lives. People are making a dash for shops or godowns still open, in a bid to hide, not sure if they should stop to pick up a wailing child separated from the mother in the frenzy. There are partially burnt hulks of cars, serrated holes in place of their windows and windshields, dotting the city like campfires in a National Scout Jamboree amidst pitched tents, silent witnesses to the mass destruction and massacre. Thick smoke is wafting about, heavy with the stench of burning flesh, tyres and charred cars, buses and rickshaws.
There are pools of blood on the pavement, where a man might have been beheaded with one flash of a machete. The body, its skin ashen in death, has perhaps been removed by relatives or shop assistants after the rioters have moved ahead. Ambulances and police jeeps are rushing past, their blaring alarms merging jarringly, the red lights blinking furiously. Hospitals are thronged with the dead and the wounded; their mortuaries being combed in search of loved ones, in earnest prayer that they are not found, giving hope a chance to linger. Photos of missing people have been taped on walls of markets and stores. By now, trips to newspaper offices clutching photos taken at weddings — whether the missing person’s own or attending that of loved ones, is forming queues…
Chapter 4: At the very outbreak of the riots, Sudeep arranged for Kalpana and Swapnil to leave for Calcutta immediately. He would not take any chances with their security. I was able to convince him telephonically of my need to stay back, promising to leave right after my exams. He himself stayed back in a refugee camp, in wrapping up his business for a few more months. The evacuees from Vishnuganj who took shelter in two mills as reported by The Pakistan Observer were 24000, though the unofficial estimate of the evacuees was 150,000. As I learnt of this in the safety of my Muslim friend’s house, knowing that Sudeep was in that count, I fervently prayed for his safety and reunion with his family. I constantly fought my fear of being brutally murdered if detected to be a Hindu. It truly was the acid test of my ability to fight any threat life would pose thereafter…
I quote V.S Naipaul here, from his book “India: A Million Mutinies Now” which aptly describes my attempts to define Maya –
“She was still part of the story she had told me, over two or three meetings. She was full of the emotions of it, and unable to see in it the historical progression that I thought I saw.”
