As they left the border town behind, a rural landscape came into view: long stretches of greenery, an old and neglected school building, houses hemmed by trees, an occasional man or two standing or at work without any hurry, a Hutch billboard and shop, and a very palpable silence.

They drove over a narrow bumpy bus road for another fifteen minutes to reach their destination.

She came to see him after half an hour.

Can you recognize me?

He looked at her well and long enough. Memory of a distant and long-forgotten face was popping up.

You can’t. How could you? I was not even born when you left the country.

Are you, by any chance, the daughter of Narayan uncle?

She laughed widely, somewhat surprised but pleased. How do you know?

It’s your mother’s face that comes to my mind. You look very much like your mother.

Oh, you have got a long memory.
But how do you know me?

Everybody in our homeland knew about you. You were a brilliant student, and we have grown up on your stories. Do you know you still retain the record of highest marks in mathematics in the college where you studied your higher secondary?

It’s no longer important . I’ve been out of touch with math for a long time now.

One of our Bengali writers has depicted you as a real-time character in his novel. You’re right there with your real name.

Interesting! Should I sue him?

Oh, no, you would love to read it. He describes you as a nice young chap who loves books, debates and participates in all kind of intellectual activities, and always stands first in the class. At that young age, he has learnt to think things up.

Nice to hear all these from you.

I’ve always wanted to see you. So when Khukudi told me you were coming to attend her daughter’s marriage, I knew I was going to see you.

And now you’re disappointed to see me!

On the contrary, I’m surprised that you look quite young. Your friends have all become grey haired.

How are your parents?

Father passed away three years ago. Mother is still alive, but she’s kind of vegetative.

(What a beautiful woman. Small, but sharp features. Simple, jolly, always bubbling. An old relative would ogle at her when she returned home in wet clothes after taking a bath from the river).

Is she very old?

Her age is no problem; it’s her memory. She can’t recognize anybody or anything. And she always mutters to herself.

(Schizophrenia? What an end to a beautiful woman!)

Didn’t she get treated?

Oh, yes. Father brought her to Calcutta, and some big doctors treated her there. Not much improvement. Then father died all of a sudden.

So, who’s home now?

My dada, and other brothers. Do you remember our eldest brother Nimai? He’s now a police officer, and now visits home only at weekend. Other brothers are in business. You would not know them. They’re even younger than I am.

Shibuda lived beside your house. How is he?

He’s long dead. His wife has also died.

They had a son, I remember. What’s his name?

Sankar. He’s a hardened crook. He duped so many Muslims over there that he had to leave his country for good. He has gone to Bombay via Kolkata. His wife lives in this neighbourhood. Would you believe she works as a housemaid?

(Shibuda , always in a lungi and loose full-sleeved shirt, had a limping gait. Sweet-tongued, always with a smile, hair oiled and backbrushed, he always looked like busy. Like most villagers, he would till his own land, and during some months of the year, he would trade in different seasonal crops.

But the interesting thing about him was that during the winter, he doubled as a female actor in the Yatra company. And toured the districts across the country. It was difficult to imagine her as a female given his bulky body and quite coarse voice, but he saw her acting in a yatra. He could not recognize him until somebody next to him pointed this. He was just fine with his make-up and contrived thin voice. He had a small role, though.
Naturally, Shibuda had a lot of experiences of the bigger world. It was from him that the villagers, perhaps for the first time, knew about the examination of stool as a step to treating problems of abdomen.

He had married a tall, beautiful wife. She was very young, and lively. She was deft in catching a kind of insect from the riverside whose wings she used for colorful “tip” to be used on her and other women’s forehead. But she did her chores with a grudge: she didn’t like her husband. For one, she always disdained his working as an actor, more as a female actor. Then she found it hard to keep the family going when he was away from home on yatra assignments. Paltry money he earned during this time, he would blow up on his own luxuries.
The second thing she disliked about him was that he was way too lusty for a male. She had no problem when she was younger, but she conceived every year, and thus had produced a flock of children, (not all healthy. One of them was deaf in fact). She grew weary of sex, and tried not to sleep with him. But Shibuda would not let that happen. He forced her to have sex every night. When he could not, he beat her, even in front of her growing children.

Shibuda made no bones about his lascivious nature. One morning he made him stop on my running track on the riverside. He had just a vest on, and was ostentatiously cleaning his teeth with a twig of a plant.

“Seen that?” he gestured to the middle of the river. A scantily dressed woman, of the Mitra family, Sobha was bathing alone, freely, perhaps sure of being not watched over in this early hour.

“Let me go.”

“When would you learn to enjoy such a sight, you fool? Running every morning to build the body! What would you do with your body if you don’t know how to use it and when?”

“Let me go.”

“OK. Just tell me what she’s doing over there?”

“Why, she’s bathing!”

He laughed mysteriously. “She’s washing her night’s sin off her body. A neat female body!”

People told a lot of things about his nature. But what was true about him was that he was of diabolical nature, like his dead father, and was jealous of anybody’s prosperity. He took a perverse pleasure in tearing apart many joint families, at that time common in the village and elsewhere.

Luck didn’t help him materially. As long as he was with his uncle in a single united family, he had no problem running his family while going about with his own agendas of life. Then he tried several trades, but in vein. Finally, he began to sell his landed property one by one.
On the family front, one of his sons was electrocuted just after the village got its first electric connection. His deaf and dumb daughter was never to be married. And then a daughter who he had married off into a good family was sent back for her apparent infertility. His eldest son, Shankar gave up his studies, and began mixing with all evil elements of the village.

One morning he had a stroke, and could not get up from bed.

He had been bed-ridden for a long time.

Did you ever visit our land?

Yes, last time when my father died. I stayed out there for a few days even.

How are Pujal and his brothers?
You remember them?

Yes, Pujal, thought older to me, was one class behind me. And we would play together. He had a long line of siblings, all brothers and one sister.

Right, she’s Minadi. I’ve only heard about her. She was fabulously beautiful. They say her hubby’s jaws dropped the moment he saw her the first time. She had been married off long before I was born. And she would not visit her father’s house because her husband never wanted to part with her.

How are Pujal and his brothers?
Oh, they have become poor. But they are all married and in a hell of mess.

It was an interesting family. Bishnu Pal, Pujal’s father, was an impressive figure with his fair complexion, more-than -average height, and baritone voice. He migrated to their neighborhood from somewhere north, and bought a fair amount of agricultural land. Unlike others, he never tilled the land, but had some bargaders to cultivate. So he had little real work at hand, and would spend most of his time playing cards. But this was no innocuous game, as some of us thought initially, and he played it for money. His partner was Kalimuddin, a clerk in a government court, who was the first matriculate in the village. There were days when the game continued from afternoon to late into the night without any respite. On days he won, he would be on a high, and celebrated it with big noises and a sumptuous dinner. But when he lost, there was a pall of gloom over the household.

Pujal was lanky and a bad odour would always come out of his mouth. He was kind of meek, nervous and never seemed comfortable in the school. Once in the class, he used the prefix ‘Md.’ before his name, imitating his Muslim classmates, and became the butt of jokes and ridicule. But outside of his school, he was quite a wise guy. He whispered them secrets of the female anatomy that we till then knew little about. He tried to see and feel for himself the size of our members. He would hammer into our brain that sex was such a nice thing, and was indulged even by our venerable teachers and parents. We didn’t trust him that much, but could not ignore him either.

He was initiated into card game at an early age. And he gave up his studies soon enough.

Naruda is here. The only one of them who had left the country.

Where’s he?

Somewhere near Karimpur. Possibly in some small-time business.

What about Kumaresh Dhar?

Oh, he’s a rich man now. His is a rags to riches story. You have to see to believe it how rich he has become. He owns two large godowns in the town, among other things.

His elder brother was an epileptic.

Yes, he’s dead. He died all on a sudden. One morning he tripped down off the verandah where he was squatting, and died in a minute.

And his wife?

She’s old, sick and dying slowly.
(She was our Malati boudi – sister-in-law. She had fair complexion, an oval face and a thick plate of hair stretching down her back. But she never attracted us the way a beautiful woman did. For one, she was nattering and laughing all the time, and she was slow and heavy. Her in-laws were disgruntled with her manners, but she never cared for them. She didn’t care for her husband either. Naresh, her husband, was a thin-looking irritable person, with a weak constitution and little capacity for work. He was never a match for her, physically and otherwise.

She made friend with Sobha, a housewife of the Mitra family living on the outskirts of the para. Her friend was the exact opposite of her: tall, attractive, sharp, oozing enthusiasm and zest for life in every moment of her daily life. She was a bit coquettish in nature. And the family was an odd one. Dilip, her husband, kept away from home most of the time. His occupation was to take people, Hindus mainly, across the border without passport. On the side, he smuggled in the bidi leaves from the other side. While at home, he would idle away his time smoking hookah and telling wild, absurd tales about India. He was not comfortable with his neighbours, and showed off his connection with powerful Muslims of the village. He lived for days collecting his clients, and then he set off on his trip one early morning.

Most of the time Sobha had a tough time living alone with a grown-up in-law called Mira. She had financial crunch when Dilip did not return home on schedule, which happened frequently.

The new friendship gave Sobha some vibes. She would visit her friend quite often. They were often seen together gossiping and giggling.
One afternoon they entered a room together in the Dhar household, and bolted the door from inside. Few noticed it because it was the time when the para was immersed in a kind of torpor since most people enjoyed a nap this time before going into another round of work. The pair closeted themselves for a long time until almost evening. When they emerged, they looked happy. Sobha ambled onto the road to reach her home.

From now on, they began to tryst quite frequently in the same place and time.

Soon a prurient widow found out closed-door activities through some crack on the wall. What she saw was somewhat incredible: two women hugging and kissing each other passionately, taking off their clothes and finally going on to pleasure of flesh, one on top over the other, frantically for a long, long time.

She invited others to witness the spectacle. This way the adult population, even some precocious children, got to know about it. And they were kind of shocked and befuddled.

It was a physicality that the locality had no experience of. But they were sure it was a kind of union, akin to physical liaison between two males which they knew about.

The incident had agitated the neighborhood in a pervasive way. The elders, outrageous at first, finally rose up to the occasion. They called the husbands of both women and took out their ire on them. Control your wife, or leave the locality, they declared their verdict.

The verdict had its impact. The two women stopped seeing each other. But the sad consequence was that each became a whore in the course of time. While Malati practiced adultery surreptitiously, Sobha openly bartered her body for money.)

How are the Ghoses?

Were they rich when you last saw them?

No. They had already lost their glory. But there were signs of their rich past. Theirs was the only household, which organized family Durga puja.

When I learnt to understand things, they were darned poor. Nobody talked about their one-time affluence any more, or dealt them with deference. They were objects of pity. Some even hated them.

I remember the old woman we called didima. She was my father’s patient. Very old then, frail, fair, had a sense of humor.

But she was an evil woman, I’ve heard.

How?

When all the family property was sold off one by one, and the family had nothing to feed off on, she pushed her in-laws into prostitution. Muslims savaged their women. Only one in-law, the youngest one, Rabi uncle’s wife, ran away to save her chastity.

How are they now?

The old woman is long dead. Her in-laws have grown old and unattractive. Now the business is being carried on by one of her grand-daughters, Parul, who is a divorcee.

What about the male members?

The old generation is all dead except Rabi uncle who has been the most wicked of them. He worked as a spy for the Muslims, and provoked them against his neighbours. During the liberation war, he was an accomplice of the Razakars and Albadars who looted our households...

He had a son.

It was his elder brother’s son, but they say he was his biological father. Chandi uncle was very sickly, but it was he who tried his best to do something for the joint family that it was then. But his wife hated him. She always cursed him for his physical condition. He was such a pitiable figure in his last days – without medicine, food and even clothes.

Sudhir uncle?

Oh, you remember him! He’s the eldest of them, and laziest. A big talker, I’ve heard. But when I saw him, he was afflicted with multiple diseases, an ugly skin disease being one of them, which disfigured him. He died just after the independence, of a massive heart attack.

He had no son. Right?

Yes. Their only male descendant is Amal. He’s married with children, and looks after his mother and Rabi uncle who are old now.

What is he now?

He’s a bus conductor.

It was during the liberation time when Mira, Dilip’s youngest sister, was abducted from her house. She was not particularly a beautiful girl, but at the time her body had blossomed in full in the middle of her youth, and she was bubbling and vivacious. There was a little ruckus one late morning when a group of ragtag forced their way into the house and a hunk, his body covered with bushy hair, dragged her out of the room. Dilip squeaked protest like a stray dog and looked desperately around for help to his neighbours who were watching it all from a distance.Without any resistance, the culprit marched off with dumb-founded Mira by his side while a vociferous and ecstatic crowd followed them. It was a simple, swift operation, of just a few minutes.

The incident shook and shocked the para as never before. What was, however, a relief to the elders was that they didn’t gang-rape her in the house. Which would become very ghastly and scared the hell out of them. They began to blame the family for the incident. Dilip had all along indulged the Muslims, they reasoned. And was not his wife Sobha involved with Ezhar Mollah, the ‘member’ of this village, who would sneak into the house every evening?

They converted Mira to Ayesha Sultana, and the leader of the gang married her with proper rites.

Did you know Mira?

Yes. She had a terrible life.. She was converted first, you know. The muscleman who married her divorced her after six months. She was then re-married to a friend of the leader who divorced her after some months. So, another man, this time of our neighbourhood village, married her, leaving her after some time. Thus she moved in a great line-up from one man to another always being re-married and divorced until her body got disfigured and ugly, and she came back her home. While at school, I saw her on my way. She wanted to talk to us, but our parents warned us sternly never to talk back.

When did you see her last time?

I didn’t see her long since. To tell you the truth, I hated her and I can’t tell you why.

Is she alive?

I think she is still dragging along. May be she’s now begging on the streets, or if she’s lucky, she may have been dead now.

Has she any child?

I don’t really know. But why are you so interested?

I’m filling out my boyhood characters. You’ve jogged my memories.

A cool breeze blew over them from the direction of the land now lush green with growing jute, sugarcane and bamboo trees. How comfortable!

So, why did you leave the country?

It was the decision of the male members of the family. They didn’t think it was safe to live in there any longer. But what triggered them was the ghastly murder of Pankaj Bhowmick. He was decapitated in broad daylight, and as if that was not enough, they wrapped up the body in plastic and carried it all the way up to the border, and threw it across. This incident made us very restive, and all of us were yearning for a land that would at least save us from such a thing to befall one of us again. So we moved quietly one night, an entire Hindu para, comprising young women, children, even breast-fed babies under the cover of darkness with as many bags and baggages as possible, our utensils, dry food, clothes, quilt all piled up in an accompanying ox-pulled cart driven and guarded by males who were carrying the all-important cash sold out of property. It was a caravan, you know..some of us sobbing .. some looking for the last time at the silhouettes of the houses where they were born into and grew up. But we had all fear in our mind – of a new land, of an unknown future.

We hired two Muslim musclemen to escort us up to the border. They shepherded us along the safest and shortest route, and we walked through the whole of the night without any halt. The young of us just went on with this long walk, but the problem was with the old among us. They were simply unfit for such an arduous journey. We had to put some of them on the bullock cart, and some people carried their parents on their shoulders. You have to see to believe the whole scenario.
Which border was it?
Sikarpur-Karimpur border. We had to cross a small river. Once on this side, we breathed an air of freedom as it was. What a relief! But we were disappointed when the people here were cold to us, not showing us any sympathy. Some of them were frankly hostile. After all, we were odd immigrants – a far cry from the refugees who crossed over here during the partition or say during the liberation period when the Indian government empathised their condition. Now we looked like illegal trespassers. Our new escorts told us we must hurry up to avoid the attention of the police and administration who would push us back if they could catch with us.

(It was late night when they reached Karimpur via the same border, but after several halts at different points in a three-day journey.

Those were the tumultuous bloody days of the liberation struggle. Yusuf Bhai, his father’s friend, who was entrusted with the job of taking him across the border, was extremely cautious and planned journey during the night only after being sure that the route had been free of any Razakar or other miscreants. Still they were intercepted near the border by some local thugs. But by then they had merged with a sea of crowd, all evacuees, waiting to cross the river over to the other side.

At Karimpur they sought a shelter for the night. They were very exhausted after the day’s journey. The first establishment they found was a big shop – a Marwari gadi where they queried about any hotel we could spend the night. The elderly man sat them cordially before him across a window and asked them about the recent developments inside new Bangladesh. He seemed to empathize us, and when we were thinking that he would let us sleep in a corner of his large shop, he drew the shutter on us, and curtly waved us away.)

And then?

Some lorries were quickly arranged with extra money; men, women and children were all huddled into them, and after about three hours’ journey we were transported here.

Who chose the place for you?

A relative who knew this place. Low land, sparse population but fertile tract. Each family had a bit of land for cultivation.

How are you here?

There is flood almost every year. The whole area gets submerged, and we have to move to a higher plane near the Highway. But it was the worst last year. Imagine living in a school by the side of a busy road without the basic things for living. We had to live in that condition for about a fortnight. It was hell, and nobody came for help. I’ve never suffered in such a ghastly way. Every one fell ill when the water receded. We restructure our huts ever year. It’s a damned life.

How long have you been here?

Ten years.

Not used to life here yet?

It’s a different life here – life without life. You eat, sleep, and bring up your children, but you do all these like a zombie. You do these because you should. I can never accept this as my own country. The other night I saw our small river in the dream. Do you remember it?

Nabaganga?

Right. That small river with bend and bend and bend. When we would go to school, we had it sometimes on the right, sometimes on the left, and sometimes in front of us. It seemed as if it was escorting us all along. When I got married, I thought I would miss it. Imagine my delight when on my first day in my husband’s place I got her even there. Nabaganga.

There’s a river here too. We crossed it on our way here.

It’s not like our river, you know. It repels me. Big river, but without any stream. How dirty!

Remember Nabaganga’s cool, transparent water? How many times we have drunk it when we took our first lessons in there? It was a real river.

(Post-March 71, when the Pakistani army was ravaging towns and populations, their members could not enter their village because of this river, or so we believed at the time. It was like a hedge and provided a kind of protection-security in those helpless days)

There must be chirping of birds in the morning.

Yes, they chirp but not as beautifully as in our land.

How could be the birds be so different?

The night is also different here. It comes on abruptly without any aura, and lacks the soothing quality of those nights in our homeland. You find it hard to sleep. Then I miss the moon-lit night here. Remember that marvelous and divine appearance the world would put on at night-time when the full moon would hang over it with all its glory?

Nostalgia!

No, these things actively haunt me day in and day out. Leave it, why didn’t you visit your homeland?

I visited once just after my graduation from medical college.

You stayed just for a night, and when we went to see you in your house in the morning,you were gone. We found your mother weeping.

I was to join my internship the next day. Besides, I went there without any passport.

And that was the last time you went back. some twenty five years ago.

You know they all came over here one by one – sisters, brothers and finally parents. There was practically no reason why I would visit the land once again.

But your cousins live there. They have transformed the house into a palace.

I’ve heard of it.

You would not recognize the house you were raised once. The mango and jackfruit groves that surrounded the house are no longer there. They have sold out all the old trees, and they have made beautiful orchards.

I’ve heard of it.

Don’t you feel any desire to see it all?

Not sure I do.

Why?

It’s difficult to explain. It’s personal.

Doctors are like that. They have no feelings, emotions.

Or so you think?

What else can one conclude? For the first time I see someone who has no emotional link to his motherland.

That’s a very simplistic and uncharitable remark. I’ve got an ambivalent feeling towards my motherland. Do you know I wanted to return after I had completed my house job?

Interesting!

I had an idea of setting up medical practice back there. Given our family’s medical background – ours is a doctors’ family, you know – it was easy to establish practice there. But all things considered, it was not practical per se. I didn’t get any nod from my instincts.

Your parents saw a beautiful bride for you in there. But you didn’t show any interest.

I was then struggling to build my practice.

So?

The thing is, if you’re away from the country for a very long time, you don’t connect with it that much. I left the country thirty years ago. Besides, I left with bitter memories. Our home was looted by people we knew as friends, we were terrorized and tortured by them. Then the decision to flee home was so sudden that it almost paralysed me – I was just eighteen at the time and never before had ventured out of home. I had no time even to get dressed properly. My younger siblings were weeping, my mother holding back her tears with efforts, and my father ordering me to get out without any further delay. It was a scene I would never ever forget in my life. It would nick the edges of my soul for many years to come. After I got out of home and walked a while on my way, I wanted to have a glimpse of my family and home for the last time, but I dared not. Soon I was running out of fear for life. I spent days at several houses, all good Muslims, on the way. And when I crossed the border, I was safe here physically, but I had to continuously hear about the harrowing experience my family was going through during that period. The Rajakars abducted my father to a camp where they beat him unconscious. These things still weigh on me.

Did you have to live in any camp here?

No. But I would often visit these camps to receive bad news of the family I left behind.
I was not even born at the time, but I can imagine it all. My parents had to live in the camp for a while before they could rent a suitable house at Ranaghat. Life in the camp was terrifying, I’ve heard. They didn’t wait a minute to return to the country after the liberation. It was the darkest period of their life. They didn’t leave the country a second time. But how ironic that I had to leave. I could never accept it.

I was a lot troubled about this dislocation at first, but soon I learnt it that I could not move backward. So I had to accept it willy-nilly.

But for my life, I can’t accept this fate. I always feel like we have been dumped here for no fault of our own. Imagine the minorities out there take brunt every time there’s eruption of any kind here. Some lunatic fringe demolish a mosque here, and they pay price there with their loss of dignities, property and lives. And there is none to protest or protect them. Don’t you feel outraged?

I would, but ..

And if you notice, in spite of the border getting stringent everyday, there is a continuous trickle of human traffic here from the other side of the border since eternity. These people form a special community. They’re uprooted from one land, and rootless in another. They straddle both lands without owning up one. One of history’s big ironies, isn’t it?

Got citizenship of this country?

Yes, for a fee. Thanks to Bengal Government, it has a tacit support and empathy for us, at least for now. Of course, the ruling party here see us as an add-up to its vote bank.

Have you got ration cards?

Yes.

Voter ID?

Yes. We voted this time.

Fine. So what’s the problem? Forget your homeland and take this land as your own. That’ll be the end of your misery.

Oh, how easily you say all these. I wish I could be you.