A riveting tale of refugees

Kunal Basu’s ‘Kalkatta’ portrays the life and state of mind of refugees

At that point, my almost seven-year-old brain recalled my parents discussing this business of being an ‘Illegal’ after the fiasco at the corporation school, and rejoiced. It’s all about that school, not my mamoo! Abbu had taken me over to get enrolled in Class l but returned without submitting the application after the dwarf, who was known to be an honest headmaster, had asked to see my birth certificate.

‘Did you find your son in the gutter? ’ Ammi was seething when she found out. ‘Do you want him to stay illiterate and do what poor Muslim boys do? Grill kebab, sing qawwalis, call azan, play football and become a cripple by the time he’s thirty? Or do you want him to become a criminal, carry a knife under his belly?’

Shaking his head, my father had tried to explain to her the dangers of making public my birth certificate, hidden away among their wedding photos and an X-ray of Miri’s polio-stricken foot. My birth certificate could very easily become my death certificate, if the dwarf demanded to know the full story after he’d paid attention to the column under Place of Birth. GENEVA, it read. Not that Geneva — don’t be silly! — but as in the biggest refugee camp in Dhaka for Bihari Muslims run by the Swiss Red Cross.

It was a story Miri and I had heard many times over — our very own family saga — packed with father, mother, grandfather, grandmother, enough to confuse our poor brains. Like a true author, Ammi never forgot to remind us why and when it had all started, with our grandparents fleeing India to East Pakistan during Partition because 30,000 fellow Muslims had been slaughtered in their native Bihar alone. Their children, my father Mirza Abu Alam and his wife Ruksana, both born and married in refugee camps, had produced Miri and me, a third generation of refugees, while still nurturing the hope that we’d all someday become legal citizens of some country, eligible for government jobs and passports. But which country would that be? Ancestral

India, Birthmother Bangladesh or Pure Muslim Pakistan? Only

Ammi, among all their relatives and friends, knew the simple truth: waiting for presidents, prime ministers and generals to make up their minds was just time-waste. Children and grandchildren of refugees had no choice but to become refugees again. She, more than Abbu, was desperate to leave Geneva and come to a city praised by one and all, and called by various names:

Kolkata, Calcutta, Kalkatta. Abbu had put up a feeble defence: what’s the difference living as refugees here or there? Grinding his tailoring scissors at night, he’d reminded Ammi of stories of

1947 heard from our grandparents. Hindus were too busy cutting each other’s throats to worry about us now, my mother had argued. Plus, there was no such trouble in Kalkatta, where everybody was a communist. She had silenced Abbu with her final argument: ‘Our Jami can become prime minister of Kalkatta, whereas here he’ll only be a bus driver if he’s lucky.’

Ammi had threatened to take Miri and me across the checkpost, bribing guards on both sides with her body, unless Abbu wrote to the son of his grand-uncle’s maternal cousin for help. Uncle Mushtak, Comrade Mushtak I should say, was a leader of the Communist Party in Bengal. Our parents had given up hope waiting for a reply from him to the postcard that Abbu had finally sent off from Dhaka, until months later, like an angel descended on our camp from heaven, a Bengali man from Kalkatta had brought back his reply along with 1,000 rupees of bribe money. The delay, Ammi was never late to point out, wasn’t our saviour’s fault but that of his Party’s that had him slaving away for his leaders hungry to win elections and become ministers.

And so we, the Bihari Alams from Bangladesh, became illegals in India — the land of our ancestors — which gave birth to my mother’s next big dream. Ammi had vowed that she’d raise her children so that they’d never have to become refugees again.

‘You must become Indians, become Bengalis, a true Kalkatta-wallah and Kalkatta-wali,’ she’d told Miri and me, like a true Bihari. She was tired of grazing from Held to field like lost cattle, packing and unpacking our meagre belongings; spending her entire life begging for a tiny spot she could call her own in Allah’s vast universe. She was ready to die in Kalkatta — her very last camp — before shelrode our shoulders out to her ultimate destination.

Listening to her must’ve infected my mind: growing up, I too had started to dream of Kalkatta as my final camp. ‘They won’t take him if they knew he was an “Illegal”, a foreigner born in Bangladesh.’ My father had tried to calm Ammi down after we returned from the corporation school. ‘Might even send us back to Dhaka Miri, of course, didn’t need proof that she was Indian when she was admitted to the girls—only English- medium school run privately by some NGO.

Then there was no other way left but for my mother to ask Uncle Mushtak for yet another favour.

“The proletariat don’t belong to any country.’ Uncle Mushtak had scoffed at Ammi. “Lenin belongs to all of us, not simply to Russia. Marx too, although he was born a jew.’

“But the proletariat need to go to school too!’ My mother had won that argument, and Uncle Mushtak had agreed to use his influence if only to restore confidence among the masses, and establish the Party’s goodwill.

Excerpted from Kalkatta by Kunal Basu

Picador India, `599