Inquilab
Tushar Chakrabarti
Translated By
Amritorupa Kanjilal
First Published : July 2019
© Tushar Chakrabarti
All rights reserved
Publisher
Doshor Publication
C/2, Ramkrishna Upanibesh
P.O. Regent Estate, Kolkata-700 092
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, circulated, and no reproduction in any form, in whole or in part (except for the brief quotations in critical articles or reviews) may be made without written permission of the publishers.
ISBN-978-81-941867-0-0
Typeset by : Arindam Das
Printed by : S.P. Communication Pvt. Ltd. 31B, Raja Dinendra Street, Raja Rammohan Roy Sarani, Kolkata 700 009
Rs. 200/-
Ebook Price: Rs.99/-
There is a man standing at the tea stall this morning, glancing through a newspaper. He looks harmless enough, but like everybody else, he carries on his shoulders the burden of history.
His name is Swadhin, after the inconsequential fact that he was born on the 15th day of August in the year 1947. It is his birthday today.
At the moment of his birth, sadly, no one was in any state of mind to think of grandiose names for him, his entire family being in a nervous frenzy to get out of Comilla town and get to Kolkata, with the exception of his grandparents who had insisted on staying behind.
He had heard from his mother the story of how she had tied him, just a few hours old, to her bosom with an old saree, how she, his father, brother, uncle, aunt, and two cousins had walked for eight days till they finally reached Kolkata, how they had hidden in bushes along the side of the road and in ponds, holding their heads above the water. Those eight days, she could barely nurse him, till they finally reached the Dandakaranya refugee camp, which was to be their home for the coming years. His younger brother was born in the camp as well.
He had remained unnamed for the first few years of his life, known simply as ‘Babu’. It was only when his father took him to be admitted to school that the headmaster, insisting on the child having a proper name, looked at his date of birth and bestowed on him the name Swadhin. Of course, by then, they had shifted home from the Dandakaranya camp to Digantapur village.
Swadhin has very faint memories of the refugee camp. His brightest memory is his older brother studying by the light of a lantern. Afterwards, the whole family would gather around the lantern for dinner. The camp was a rehabilitation centre only in name—there were no houses, no drinking water. His father and uncle had built tiny shacks for them from wood they gathered from the forest, and had separated a small space to be used as a lavatory, using jute bags. The air was full of mosquitos and the ground crawled with venomous snakes and scorpions. Swadhin’s cousin, barely four years old then, succumbed to a snakebite one day. They had to walk to the camp even for a drink of water. At long as the camp was there, they had regular meals. But once the camp folded, feeding the family became a challenge. The vegetables from the meagre kitchen garden in front of their hut never sufficed, and the water in their hand-dug wells was simply not drinkable. After months of starvation and illness, they finally managed to move from Dandakaranya to Digantapur with Dulal-kaku’s help. Not that the village was a much safer place. Swadhin’s baby brother Biplab, like his cousin, died of a snakebite soon after they moved. Loss seemed to be following them wherever they went.
At the tea stall, Swadhin has finished two cups of tea already while reading the newspaper. On his way to the tea stall, he’d noticed the neighbourhood boys at a flag hoisting ceremony. Once upon a time, Swadhin would have been right there with them. Once, he was the president of their club. After all, it was his father and uncle who had founded the club so long ago, when Swadhin was just a boy of eight. Now, he just prefers to stay away.
His mother’s stories keep coming back to him today. Stories of Dulal-kaku. Dulal-kaku from Barishal, who had been his father’s roommate during their college years in Dhaka. The same Dulal-kaku who had brought their family to Digantapur.
The village had a marshland on which a farmhouse was situated. Legend has it that the zamindar’s wife and daughter hanged themselves in the very same farmhouse. Dulal-kaku bought the marshland cheap from the zamindar and started building a housing society there. With his encouragement, Swadhin’s father and uncle bought land there and built a house. Dulal-kaku himself stayed in the farmhouse, along with his wife, two children, and five bachelor friends, all of them his colleagues at an insurance company.
Dulal-kaku named the marsh area Purba Palli. On Sundays and holidays, he and his five friends would gather up local workers to work on making the land habitable. They dug three large ponds and used the earth to fill up and raise the marshland. They made earthen roads connecting the area to the rest of the village.
A lot of people bought land at Purba Palli, but no one came to live there. Not one to lose his enthusiasm easily, Dulal-kaku built his own house there, followed by his five friends. Three of them got married eventually, but Amar-jethu and Jogesh-kaku remained lifelong bachelors. Amar-jethu was a failed lover—the girl he loved married someone else and moved away. Amar-jethu lost his mental balance later in life; he would roam the streets with his pockets full of flowers and hand them out to children. Jogesh-kaku also had to be hospitalised with mental illness. They’ve both been dead many decades now, but Swadhin remembers them clearly.
There are many things he doesn’t remember, though, like the actual day he arrived at Purba Palli with his family. But he does remember his schooldays here, right from the first day. Purba Palli did not have many houses in those days, let alone the towering apartment complexes of today. There were no more than 30 to 35 students in his tiny school, with its tin roof, earthen floor, and bamboo fence. There was just one large hall in the schoolhouse, each corner functioning as a separate classroom, and three teachers in all. The miracle is that so many of those students who started their studies in that dilapidated hall turned out to be doctors, engineers, and chartered accountants. Swadhin himself was not bad at studies; he had ranked first-class second in his MSc degree at Calcutta University. He could easily have been a professor somewhere, at the very least, had he not gotten involved in the Naxal movement and ended up in jail. Even after his release from jail, he had a chance to make a life for himself, but he frittered away that chance, mainly because of Shefali.
After his release, he had searched high and low for Shefali, but she was nowhere to be found. Her family told him she had been missing for months. Party members, most of whom had started returning to normal life, had no idea about her whereabouts. He heard rumours about her being killed in encounter, but he could not make himself believe it, primarily because he had certain news that she had been seen in a secret meeting in Jhargram, about 10 days after the encounter was supposed to have taken place.
By the time Swadhin got out of jail, the movement was over. The left party was in power, and had magnanimously released hundreds of young Naxalites like Swadhin from incarceration. Dulal-kaku forced him out of his despondency and introduced him back into the flow of normal life. He dedicated himself to social work, starting out as the secretary of his neighbourhood club and eventually ending up as president. With Dulal-kaku’s help, he found employment in a jute mill and took up some tuitions in the evening as well. Life fell into a pattern, and perhaps would have continued thus, had he not committed the grave misjudgement of starting a relationship with Arati.
Inquilab
Tushar Chakrabarti
Translated By
Amritorupa Kanjilal
First Published : July 2019
©
Tushar Chakrabarti All rights reserved
Publisher
Doshor Publication
C/2, Ramkrishna Upanibesh
P.O. Regent Estate, Kolkata-700 092
Cover Designer
Sarfuddin Ahmed
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, circulated, and no reproduction in any form, in whole or in part (except for the brief quotations in critical articles or reviews) may be made without written permission of the publishers.
ISBN-978-81-941867-0-0
Typeset by : Arindam Das
Printed by : S.P. Communication Pvt. Ltd. 31B, Raja Dinendra Street, Raja Rammohan Roy Sarani, Kolkata 700 009
Rs. 200/-
There is a man standing at the tea stall this morning, glancing through a newspaper. He looks harmless enough, but like everybody else, he carries on his shoulders the burden of history.
His name is Swadhin, after the inconsequential fact that he was born on the 15th day of August in the year 1947. It is his birthday today.
At the moment of his birth, sadly, no one was in any state of mind to think of grandiose names for him, his entire family being in a nervous frenzy to get out of Comilla town and get to Kolkata, with the exception of his grandparents who had insisted on staying behind.
He had heard from his mother the story of how she had tied him, just a few hours old, to her bosom with an old saree, how she, his father, brother, uncle, aunt, and two cousins had walked for eight days till they finally reached Kolkata, how they had hidden in bushes along the side of the road and in ponds, holding their heads above the water. Those eight days, she could barely nurse him, till they finally reached the Dandakaranya refugee camp, which was to be their home for the coming years. His younger brother was born in the camp as well.
He had remained unnamed for the first few years of his life, known simply as ‘Babu’. It was only when his father took him to be admitted to school that the headmaster, insisting on the child having a proper name, looked at his date of birth and bestowed on him the name Swadhin. Of course, by then, they had shifted home from the Dandakaranya camp to Digantapur village.
Swadhin has very faint memories of the refugee camp. His brightest memory is his older brother studying by the light of a lantern. Afterwards, the whole family would gather around the lantern for dinner. The camp was a rehabilitation centre only in name—there were no houses, no drinking water. His father and uncle had built tiny shacks for them from wood they gathered from the forest, and had separated a small space to be used as a lavatory, using jute bags. The air was full of mosquitos and the ground crawled with venomous snakes and scorpions. Swadhin’s cousin, barely four years old then, succumbed to a snakebite one day. They had to walk to the camp even for a drink of water. At long as the camp was there, they had regular meals. But once the camp folded, feeding the family became a challenge. The vegetables from the meagre kitchen garden in front of their hut never sufficed, and the water in their hand-dug wells was simply not drinkable. After months of starvation and illness, they finally managed to move from Dandakaranya to Digantapur with Dulal-kaku’s help. Not that the village was a much safer place. Swadhin’s baby brother Biplab, like his cousin, died of a snakebite soon after they moved. Loss seemed to be following them wherever they went.
At the tea stall, Swadhin has finished two cups of tea already while reading the newspaper. On his way to the tea stall, he’d noticed the neighbourhood boys at a flag hoisting ceremony. Once upon a time, Swadhin would have been right there with them. Once, he was the president of their club. After all, it was his father and uncle who had founded the club so long ago, when Swadhin was just a boy of eight. Now, he just prefers to stay away.
His mother’s stories keep coming back to him today. Stories of Dulal-kaku. Dulal-kaku from Barishal, who had been his father’s roommate during their college years in Dhaka. The same Dulal-kaku who had brought their family to Digantapur.
The village had a marshland on which a farmhouse was situated. Legend has it that the zamindar’s wife and daughter hanged themselves in the very same farmhouse. Dulal-kaku bought the marshland cheap from the zamindar and started building a housing society there. With his encouragement, Swadhin’s father and uncle bought land there and built a house. Dulal-kaku himself stayed in the farmhouse, along with his wife, two children, and five bachelor friends, all of them his colleagues at an insurance company.
Dulal-kaku named the marsh area Purba Palli. On Sundays and holidays, he and his five friends would gather up local workers to work on making the land habitable. They dug three large ponds and used the earth to fill up and raise the marshland. They made earthen roads connecting the area to the rest of the village.
A lot of people bought land at Purba Palli, but no one came to live there. Not one to lose his enthusiasm easily, Dulal-kaku built his own house there, followed by his five friends. Three of them got married eventually, but Amar-jethu and Jogesh-kaku remained lifelong bachelors. Amar-jethu was a failed lover—the girl he loved married someone else and moved away. Amar-jethu lost his mental balance later in life; he would roam the streets with his pockets full of flowers and hand them out to children. Jogesh-kaku also had to be hospitalised with mental illness. They’ve both been dead many decades now, but Swadhin remembers them clearly.
There are many things he doesn’t remember, though, like the actual day he arrived at Purba Palli with his family. But he does remember his schooldays here, right from the first day. Purba Palli did not have many houses in those days, let alone the towering apartment complexes of today. There were no more than 30 to 35 students in his tiny school, with its tin roof, earthen floor, and bamboo fence. There was just one large hall in the schoolhouse, each corner functioning as a separate classroom, and three teachers in all. The miracle is that so many of those students who started their studies in that dilapidated hall turned out to be doctors, engineers, and chartered accountants. Swadhin himself was not bad at studies; he had ranked first-class second in his MSc degree at Calcutta University. He could easily have been a professor somewhere, at the very least, had he not gotten involved in the Naxal movement and ended up in jail. Even after his release from jail, he had a chance to make a life for himself, but he frittered away that chance, mainly because of Shefali.
After his release, he had searched high and low for Shefali, but she was nowhere to be found. Her family told him she had been missing for months. Party members, most of whom had started returning to normal life, had no idea about her whereabouts. He heard rumours about her being killed in encounter, but he could not make himself believe it, primarily because he had certain news that she had been seen in a secret meeting in Jhargram, about 10 days after the encounter was supposed to have taken place.
By the time Swadhin got out of jail, the movement was over. The left party was in power, and had magnanimously released hundreds of young Naxalites like Swadhin from incarceration. Dulal-kaku forced him out of his despondency and introduced him back into the flow of normal life. He dedicated himself to social work, starting out as the secretary of his neighbourhood club and eventually ending up as president. With Dulal-kaku’s help, he found employment in a jute mill and took up some tuitions in the evening as well. Life fell into a pattern, and perhaps would have continued thus, had he not committed the grave misjudgement of starting a relationship with Arati.
Yesterday, a letter arrived for him by post. It was not signed, nor did it mention her name anywhere, nor did he have any handwriting to compare it with, but he had known at once that it was from Shefali. The missive mentioned an address, and he plans to visit the place the next day. Shefali has finally reached out to him, and he has trouble suppressing the joy and excitement in his heart.
End of this Sample Book.
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