A Letter to Baba ...
2nd January 2026
Kolkata
Dear Baba,
Though you never spoke much of the land and the past you had left behind, they were written all over your face each time, I asked a probing question. Whatever Thamma narrated contained so much pain and with every repetition of the stories, she was reliving the experience! But it created in me a hunger to know more about the home left behind, the rivers changing colours with the passing day, the perfumed flowers in the garden! There were days when the deity would come to life, and her face would be revealed at the sacred hour. The sun’s last rays would mingle with the flickering light of the oil lamp; the chirping of the birds flying to their nests, orchestrate with the long blows from the conch shell – these all would lend to the magic hour of perfumed light and shade. She told me how the fishermen would cast their nets with their sonorous yells at the break of dawn and the colour of Padma River would change from blackish blue to a reddish hue like that of a dusk-skinned bride! Then her voice would crack, as she relived the horrors of violence and the nightmare of crossings over. A daughter lost in that communal violence, not in Dhaka, but right here, in the streets of Calcutta! Silence and a vacant look would replace the writhing pain carved into those deep lines on her face! I would gently place my palm and caress her face, run my fingers through her silvery hair, till silent tears would roll down her closed eyes and she would fall into a deep slumber.
In her last hours, she had uttered my name and searched for me everywhere, so you had told me. My school final examination was on! ... She was gone, and with her were gone the stories that connected me to that space in memory. Lost are the meaningful beats of the dhak echoing the puja sessions at various hours of the day, the dhrupadi kirtans, the alpona designs, the vision of the sacred full moon peeping through the clustered leaves of the courtyard trees on the Laxmi puja nights, the regional Bikrampuri dialect! A saga of life and time gone with Kalachakra!
Baba, the place where I am now was once a part of Gour Banga. Do you recall the tales from history you would tell me when we would visit the museums in Kolkata together? The sculptures of Vishnu and Saraswati are still to be found in the museum here. But Baba, the place has no sense of the past. The region is fond of crooning kirtans, which to my ears do not connect with devotion. Rather they echo the pain of the ruptured spine of Gour Banga! The bhawaiya songs strung to ukele and Spanish guitar are jarring! What is even more dreadful is to perceive how futile this Partition was!
When you left the bhita with Thamma and your brothers and sisters across the waterbodies, across the Kolkata streets through the violence that wrecked the city then, and used all your positivity and strength to rebuild a home, you had thought that you had created a peaceful haven for your family, didn’t you? Baba, you are blessed not to witness the futuristic horror which looms large before us. You have had your cup of horrors, yet you didn’t lose faith as Thamma did. Don’t know from where you found that source of strength, Baba? Years back you had taken me to your paternal cousin’s home in Chittaranjan Park at Delhi, to show me our ishta-devi. An astadhatu murti of Ma Kali, so alive that it seemed her eyes blinked with mine! Somehow, She too had survived the crossings over and found Her home in that home. With years gone by and your crossing over to that plane from where we converse now, that tie too is lost!
The totowala who takes me to the university told me that he has constructed a Kali temple in his home. I had gone over for a short visit. She stood there, of clay-make, housed in a clay hut, with a tin roof. A huge earthen lamp is lit all the time, and red jaba flowers from the totowala’s small garden placed at her feet. As I sat in that sanctorum, I could feel the peace vibrations! Faith and devotion can house the deity and transform Her into vibrations of light! Yet, the worst fear is, how long will this peace last? Just as you had to abandon your home in what became Bangladesh later and now culturally is a part of Pakistan, should we be able to retain our homes, - our cultures? Like nomads in search of a home, should the Bengali Hindus be always on the run? Stories of violence pour in, not only from Bangladesh, but here, in West Bengal. As I sit in that sacred corner of our home in Kolkata, you appear in my inner vision. I see those silent tears in your pained eyes. How long will it be till we reunite Baba across these shores of uncertainty and impending violence?
----- Your beloved daughter
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