‘So they killed him?’
‘Not exactly. Once that happened, the Urdu-speaking elite in West Pakistan already had a bone to pick with what to them were “backward Bengalis”. So when a Bengali-speaking man won Pakistan’s first general election, their President Yahya Khan ordered the wiping out of the Bengalis in East Pakistan, Musalman or not. Out of the hundreds of thousands who were exterminated was Baba’s family. My Dadu was one of the first ones to die. The Pakistani Army systematically hunted down the intellectuals. Phew. I am surprised I remember all this.’
‘And your Baba was in school during all this time?’
‘Yes. Probably taking his exams while my pishi, father’s sister, Rupi Ganguly, was picked up from the university and carried off to a military camp where she was repeatedly raped and killed when she got pregnant. His eldest brother, Hemendu Ganguly, was bayoneted through both eyes till his brain dribbled out of the sockets in the corridor of Dhaka University, where he was completing his master’s in mathematics. It wasn’t until the Indian Army was sent that the madness stopped.’
‘That’s horrible!’
‘From what I have heard, Baba had spent twelve months in post-war Bangladesh, looking for their graves. He must have been my age,’ I said.
Like I so often have, she must have spent the next five minutes adding visuals to the story.
We buried Chhotu and loitered around aimlessly in school.
I stayed out of the house for as long as possible.
Back home, Baba sat glued to the television. Pakistan returned the bodies of six soldiers of the Jat Regiment. The soldiers had been tortured—their genitals were cut off, their eyes punctured, teeth removed, and they had been burnt with cigarette butts. Maa asked Baba to switch the television off.
‘Let him see,’ said Baba, his eyes clouding over.
So I saw and let the violence wash over me. Just like he would have in 1971.
I looked at the names of the soldiers on the screen. I wondered what if they were my brothers. How long would I harbour the hatred against the perpetrators? Baba’s family was killed by the army of the country he thought was his own, the anthem of which he sang, the flag that he saluted. How deep would that hurt be? I wonder if Baba had been taught to hate India growing up, like I have been taught to hate Pakistan. And how would it have felt when it was the Indian Army that had helped put a stop to the atrocities? Was his love for India, his change of heart, instantaneous?
I blurred my eyes and imagined an alternate headline.
‘Captain Anirban Ganguly and five others tortured and killed.’
I can still feel anger course through my veins like molten lava. But I like Zubeida Quaze. She had no part in this.
Why can’t Baba see it like that?
Maybe because he was there.
12 July 1999
The summer vacations ended today and I was back in school, sitting next to Brahmi, taking mental images of her to make up for all the time I had not seen her.
‘Are my pimples bleeding?’ asked Brahmi, dabbing her face with a tissue.
‘Why would you say that?’
‘Because you’re staring,’ she said.
‘I . . .’
All I wanted to do was to shrink in size, crawl into her lap, and cry my heart out, and also slip in a little confession of my love while I was at it. Instead when she asked me what I had been doing in the last one month, I told her and Sahil that we had taken a little holiday.
‘Tell me later,’ she whispered, catching my lie.
I got out my newspaper and started reading it. INDIA WINS BACK TIGER HILL FROM PAKISTAN. Deaths avenged, enemies vanquished, a nation saved. What could this victory mean to anyone? It’s a piece of land, a pile of rocks, stained with the blood and guts of innocent soldiers, an obsession of politicians. What’s the meaning of such all-consuming love and hatred? Of land and of people? And what kind of people? What kind of society? One that turns Maa–Baba into people I can barely recognize?
Sahil has shifted from the last desk to the one behind Brahmi and mine. On his previous seat now sits a new boy whom Amarjeet ma’am introduced as Rishab Batra, a transfer from G.D. Parekar School, a school for children who can’t live without central air conditioning. The class was asked to introduce itself to him. We did so, like nursery students, standing up one by one and telling him our names.
When Sahil’s turn came, he stood up and acted like a class clown should, ‘Hi. I’m Sahil Ahuja. G.D. Parekar is a much better school, isn’t it?’
‘Of course it is,’ said Rishab.
