Memories
A marked man in 1971
(This is the first segment of a two-part write-up, the second installment of which will next week)
Boom!
Thunderous shock waves made the ground shake and the tin roof of our house reverberate.
A few seconds later another boom and then a few more with increasing frequency invaded the rural tranquility. Shocked and terrified, mother and I rushed outside to the yard of our Bishnupur house -- about five miles from the town under siege.
"Chandpur is being crushed!" I said.
The Pakistani military was closing in by bombing and shelling -- demoralizing the freedom-seekers, and energizing the collaborators.
The waves brought along messages of horror and panic.
"What do we do? We just left Matlab. Where do we go?"
A Hindu name in Tapan, a Brahmin caste in Chakrabarty, a university-age adult in appearance, and a hidden physical feature that the soldiers had been checking out as a litmus test for a male adult's loyalty to Bangladesh or Pakistan. With those names and features, I was a marked man -- to the Pakistani army or its collaborators.
It was early April in 1971. I was in third year chemical engineering (ChE) at the East Pakistan University of Engineering and Technology (EPUET).
The EPUET, along with the Dhaka University and other educational institutions, had been shut down to prevent escalating student processions, following the March 7, 1971, fiery speech by Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman at the Ramna Race Course, in which he proclaimed: "The struggle this time is for emancipation. The struggle this time is for independence. Joy Bangla!"
While going to the village to be with my mother at Matlab, I did not take all of my belongings, leaving inside a suitcase in the Ahsanullah Hall (A.H.) two cherished valuables. I thought I would be back to Dhaka soon.
That "soon" won't come for another nine months.
Then on March 25, 1971, the Pakistani army cracked down on the capital city with tanks, targetting students and intellectuals. Slowly and cruelly, it was taking control of other large cities, towns, and villages, in that order.
"Chandpur today, and Bishnupur not far away," I said to mother.
It did not take long for both of us to decide what to do and where to go.
Staying with strangers for several days in many villages on our way, we finally crossed the border to India's Tripura state, after walking all night to avoid pernicious encounter with the Pakistani army or its collaborators.
So mother and I became refugees -- adding two more to the millions, who had fled to India.
Ten millions became refugees and three millions would lose their lives because of the self-serving decisions by the power-hungry politicians from West Pakistan, and the cruelty of the malevolent military unleashed against the defenseless citizens from East Pakistan.
East and West, two wings of Pakistan, were like two pieces in a jigsaw puzzle that never meshed. Geographically separated by 1600 km of Indian land, the two diverged in language, culture, physique, and psyche of the populace. Blinded by a false sense of superiority, the West minority dominated the East financially, politically, and militarily, and at one point tried to impose its language, Urdu, on the Bengali-speaking majority. And then when the majority from the East won the national election fair and square in 1970, the haughty minority from the West, with the backing of the military, balked. Politicians rendered powerful speeches. Processions by students and supporters of the winning party, the Awami League, followed. Bullets and tear gases were sprayed indiscriminately over the students. The intellectuals left classrooms and offices, joining the protests. Stronger processions and seditious speeches by politicians led to more severe retaliation from the military from the West. Then the army was ordered to quell the protests, once for all, by eliminating the students, the politicians, their supporters, the intellectuals, and the minority Hindus. It was an order to commit genocide, as defined in Article 2 of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
On the night of March 25, 1971, the army stormed to, among other targets, the Jagannath Hall, a minority student residence of the Dhaka University, where it lined up the petrified students outside in the play ground, shot them point-blank, booted the bodies into freshly-dug trenches, covered them with dirt, and then hurried to their next targets. Many mothers won't see their sons again; the sons they thought would graduate, get jobs, and pull some of them out of the trenches of poverty.
"If only Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the second-place winner from the West, would have played by the rule, and accepted the election results, clearing the path for the first-place winner, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman from the East, to form the national government!" I mused.
We had no money, no well-to-do or willing relative, except two, to help us out in India. The main support was from an aunt, who gave us a place to stay -- a small straw-roofed hut in an area of the village, which one local once referred to as a slum.
While lying on the bed, I once saw a snake crawling in the attic of the hut. Sighting of the snake was ominous, as an aunt had been bitten by a snake on her yard in a village near Serampore, the very first night we were in West Bengal. My mother and I had walked on the same yard in the darkness of the night, a few minutes earlier. The aunt succumbed to the poison in the early morning, leaving six of my cousins in the custody of an uncle, who had difficulty in making ends meet.
The other support was in the form of occasional visits to a sister, who lived in an area of the Bansdroni Govt. Colony, which I was advised by many not to visit, because of ongoing violent clashes between supporters of two political parties: CPIM and Naxalites. Adults of my age were the most vulnerable, and the most dreaded there. The very first day I went to Bansdroni, while mother was still taking care of and consoling the deceased aunt's family, I saw a lady who was serving lunch to an adult in the kitchen. One look at me, she jumped over his plate, and blocked the door to protect him from me, and started screaming.
"Who are you? What do you want?"
"I am Tapan. From Joy Bangla."
"Tapan? Where is ma?"
"Serampore."
My sister saw me last as Tapan, her innocent kid brother, when I was nine. The person at her door then was an adult, and, to her, a potential killer of her brother-in-law.
But she also knew of her brother and mother, the turmoil in East Pakistan, and millions of refugees, referred to as Joy Banglas, flooding into the West Bengal state of India.
That night when my brother-in-law came from work, the family called a meeting behind my back in the other room of the two-bedroom, tin-roofed, tiny house, shared by nine people, and which was a gift from the Indian Govt to the 1947 refugees from Matlab's neighbouring village Dighaldi in East Pakistan. After dinner, my brother-in-law started asking me family questions, the answers of which only the real Tapan would know.
In the morning, the sun cleared the Bansdroni fog. The suspecting lady, from the day earlier, became my blood sister, and shared her suspicion about my identity, and the reason for the family's paranoia.
Near her house a hot bed of political killings by rival gangs I became a marked man again in the country of my refuge. I was targeted, but the trigger was not pulled, I was told later, because the shooter was not sure, and sent a small kid to check if I could be a Joy Bangla. Bangalees from West Bengal, regardless of their internal strife and spitefulness, were united in support for the Joy Banglas. The would-be shooter, a political ally of my brother-in-law, warned him not to let me walk around in the community like that.
One day, my sister got the words that an adult matching my size and age had been shot, and lying lifeless on the street from her house to the Netaji Nagar bus stop, at around the time I had left for the bus. When she saw me next, she said, "You came to India to escape killing by the Pakistani army; here you will get killed by the locals from Bansdroni."
So my stay in India was essentially limited to the hut in Bara Jagulaia village near the Harin Ghata refugee camp. Our sustenance came from rationed rice and lentils from the camp, and free ground transportation all provided through a Joy Bangla card issued by the Indian government.
Seeing me getting malnourished, and with no hope for returning to Dhaka in the near future, my mother's dream of seeing her son becoming an engineer against his wish was about to be dashed.
Always wishing to study medicine, I took biology as my optional in HSC. Although selected for admission by the Dhaka Medical College, as the second-ranked candidate, mother insisted that I should apply to the EPUET as well, arguing that engineering was more prestigious than medicine and that there were more doctors in the village than engineers. She ignored the fact that many of those self-declared doctors did not have any medical training. The engineering drawing test (now abolished) at the EPUET was a definite disadvantage for rural candidates with scant resources, like me, as it required staying in Dhaka to get coaching from engineering students or engineers. I did not prepare much for the test, thinking that a poor score could be used as a convenient way of eliminating the engineering option. In the test, I felt stressed in not being able to answer so many questions, for the first time in my life. With a mixed feeling, I got out of the exam room, and received the news that my name, along with those of a few others, was in the admitted list already posted.
"How is that possible? We just wrote the test. How could they mark it so fast?"
It turned out that my HSC science and math marks were so high that even with zero in the drawing test, I would be admissible.
So with more pressure from my mother and others, I got into the EPUET rather reluctantly. The reputation of the EPUET in attracting top students and providing a quality education helped tip the balance in its favour.
Coming from a corrugated tin-roofed house and a kerosene lantern-lit room, and staying in the A.H. protected by a large iron gate at the entrance, a landscaped front yard, a polygonal flower garden in the court yard, electric lamps lighting the hallways and the exterior, and a goose-neck study lamp in my room was a significant improvement over my humble, rural life style.
As a refugee in India, while I was walking from the Sealdah Railway Station toward Tollygunge through the Free School Street area in Kolkata, I saw people living by the road side, which reminded me of walking from the A.H. towards the EPUET campus and over a rail track, on both sides of which poor hard-working people lived with their families. Some used to complain about them, whom I found inspiring for trying to do the best with the hands they were dealt with. The father there had the same love for his son or daughter, like my school teacher father had for me. The mother there had the same desire to provide nourishment to her children, like my mother had for me.
Walking by the Kalighat Kali Temple in South Kolkata one day, I remembered going to the Dhakeswari Temple in Dhaka, not far from the A.H., in the older part of the city. At the A.H., we worshipped the Goddess of Learning to better our marks with less studying. And I needed her blessings badly. In our onerous yearly system, we had one year-end exam for each course, requiring us to study almost all night to review a year's worth of materials.
When walking by the walls painted with political figures and slogans in Kolkata, I remembered how politics had entered the EPUET when I was there. It was difficult not to be involved given that time in history. In Dhaka, I participated every year in the Ekushey (21st) February celebration, which evoked patriotic emotions and unfathomable respect for those who gave their lives for keeping their and our language alive, and whose sacrifices inspired independence.
(To be continued)
Tapan Chakrabarty writes from Canada.
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