14 June 1999
Maa–Baba, who had stopped talking to me for keeping Dada’s secret, thought it was best I started going to school again to divert my attention. I know they sent me so they could mourn in peace. The thin walls of our house can barely contain Maa’s wails.
Back in school, Brahmi and Sahil enthusiastically welcomed me. No one mentioned how Brahmi walked out on both of us a few days ago. Sahil must have told her about the situation at my home. She was being extra sweet, which was highly uncharacteristic and slightly irritating.
Sahil and Brahmi were much better friends now, a fact that I would have been envious of earlier. Brahmi was supposed to dissect the rat because it was she who caught it in a trap outside her house but Sahil ironically named the gigantic rat Chhotu, the little one, as soon as he saw it. Brahmi couldn’t kill it after that since it had been baptized.
‘Why would you name it!’ she complained.
‘Why wouldn’t I?’ he argued. ‘If you’re killing something the least you can do is give it a name.’
‘Do you name the mosquitoes before you burn a coil?’
‘Apple, and oranges. Might I introduce you to malaria and dengue?’ said Sahil.
‘And might I introduce you to the plague?’
‘Fine, you win,’ said Sahil.
While I pinned the drugged rat on the dissection table, Brahmi and Sahil argued about India’s position on the Kargil matter.
‘Bombing Pakistan out of existence is not the solution to get the US and other Western powers on our side in the future. A lot of people will die unnecessarily,’ asserted Brahmi.
‘But soldiers are dying anyway, aren’t they? Who cares if a few Pakistani civilians die? It’s the public who elected a fascist, authoritarian government. It’s not a great loss if they die instead of Indian soldiers.’
‘It’s not the same!’ said Brahmi. ‘Every person in the armed forces must know that this day could come. That he or she could possibly die, no? But civilians dying is just . . . collateral damage.’
‘So you would have more of our soldiers dying than a few civilians of theirs.’
‘Of course.’
‘You’re a traitor. I hope you know that,’ said Sahil.
The scalpel in my hand slipped and cut through the heart of the poor, furry bastard, Chhotu.
‘No!’ echoed Brahmi, seeing the blood spurt out as if from a little water gun.
‘I think Chhotu is dead,’ said Sahil, chuckling.
The collateral damage of the three of us trying to make the best of our summer vacations was lying dead on the table. Ironic, considering Maa–Baba and I, we were all . . . collateral damage of Dada’s love story.
Coming back to the rat, Brahmi insisted we bury it instead of throwing it away like the unnamed frogs. Sahil played no part in it. We dug a ditch near Shahrazad’s grave.
‘How are you doing?’ asked Brahmi.
‘I have counted seventeen buildings in a three-kilometre radius which are perfect.’
‘So not so good?’
‘Then again Maa–Baba need me right now,’ I said. ‘Also I’m a coward.’
‘I would disagree.’
‘Hmm.’
‘You never told me why your Baba is so against, you know . . . ’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘We have time,’ she said.
‘It’s depressing.’
‘We are no strangers to that.’
‘Okay, so where should we start. Umm . . . would it surprise you if I tell you that Baba was not really born an Indian, he’s a Pakistani by birth?’
‘What?’
‘Well, Bangladesh, but it was Pakistan or East Pakistan to be specific in ’54, so yeah,’ I said. ‘I have heard the story in snippets over the years from everyone else but Baba. The adoption of his national identity is a story no one tells in the family. I’m not sure even the little stories I have heard are true or not—’
‘Tell them anyway.’
‘Okay but what’s true is that Baba was the second youngest of three siblings and that he came to India a couple of years before the East Pakistan genocide of 1971.’
‘Was he there?’
‘No but his entire family was. Technically my family too but you get it. So—’
‘So what happened? Did they all die?’
‘You’re a bad listener, aren’t you?’
‘Okay, sorry, go on.’
‘He was sent to study at the Bishop Cotton School in Shimla, away from the madness and the uncertainty in Dhaka. And in the middle of the madness of my grandfather, Shukumar Ganguly. I will show you a picture some day. He’s more handsome than any of the Ganguly men. He was a double doctorate in Bengali and Urdu, and it was for his love for Bengali that he died. East Pakistan was almost all Bengalis so my grandfather, along with others, fought for Bengali to be recognized as an official language.’
‘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.