“Ke koese amar lekha shundor?” asked Hinapa, all pleased. Who said my handwriting was good?

The answer to her question, I don’t remember. I only remember how she carried herself, what she looked like. There was to be a gathering for a dance at Hina Aapa’s house. It was for this that she was out and about, delivering handwritten invitations to some of her girl pals. Then, a brother of one of these girls saw the handwriting and praised it.

In the Bengali language, there is no distinction made between the soft ‘h’ and the hard ‘ḥ’. Nor is there any between ‘jeem’ and ‘zaal’. Hina Aapa had thus become Hinapa. I didn’t even understand what her name was in the beginning. Hinapa…what kind of name was that?

I really liked Hina Aapa. She was indeed beautiful. Though the enchantments of Bengali beauty are well-known, unlike most Bengali women with their tanned, dark complexions, her skin was luminous. Like the champak flower – within a whiteness, a hint of yolk-yellow. Bluegreen eyes like the waters of the Bay of Bengal. Really, she was very beautiful. And though I admired her for this too, I did not look upon her shyly or in secret. There wasn’t such a need. I wasn’t of an age for there to be any stealing of glances. An eleven or twelve year old boy – he is not old enough for there to be a concern of stolen glances from him. Back then, two of Hinapa’s brothers were also my school fellows. One Robi and the other Kobi. As has been said above, some sounds are just not present in Bengali. Like the sound ‘vāw’. Robi meaning ravi meaning sun, Kobi meaning kavi meaning poet. Robi was a class ahead of me, Kobi one class behind. I was a student in class seven. Both of them had inherited the coloured, cat-like eyes of their mother. In fact, in our house, we called her Kitty Khaala. Although how would we say ‘khaala’? They don’t even have the Arabic ‘kh’ sound in Bengali. That’s why it was just with an aspirated ‘k’ that she was a Khaala Amma. People called older women Khlmaa.

Along with being so beautiful, Hinapa was very smart too. She also knew how to dance. Singing and dancing are etched in the Bengali soul. Their folksongs are not like the folksongs of Punjab, sure, but they are certainly as sweet as the Bengali rasgulla. Yet a person from the culture that had produced the novel Umrao Jan-e-Ada and its infamous courtesans had long since styled Bengali ‘the culture of kafirs and Hindus’.

The film Dilaan De Sode had a Noor Jehan-sung dhamaal, “Laal meri pat, rakhiyon, rakhiyon jhule laalan” that launched in those days. It became an immediate sensation; it was everywhere. Karachi Radio – which had a faint reach in Dhaka as well – broadcast that song daily, once or twice. Punjabi music has a magic that works on every person in the world. Hina Aapa too liked this song; she made a request that I write it out and give it to her. The very next day when the song played, I quickly did so. Then, in very neatly written Bengali characters, I presented my work to Hina Aapa. In return, a few days later, I saw a girls’ dance at Hinapa’s house. Maaya and two or three saari-draped girls began dancing while Hina Aapa sang.

Dolona dolaai, dolona dolaai
Maati ro khlaai
Ailorey raakhol Raaja…
Tora baaja re maadol baaja, to deyr ailorey raakhol Raaja

The girls danced wonderfully. Midway through the song, though, Hina Aapa suddenly stopped and said, all vexed, “Ghungroo taa koi?” Where are the jingling anklets? Guffaws immediately broke out – the girls had forgotten to wear their anklets. Then, after tying them up, they began anew. That’s how I ended up watching that dance one and a half times.

That same Maaya I saw again days later out in the open fields between our houses, pulling off a one-legged dance as she was singing a folksong of my mother tongue:

Lathe di chaadar, ute saleyti rong maahiya

For a whole year we lived in that Tejgaon colony. Then we moved to Kurmitola. I didn’t meet Hina Aapa after that. I didn’t hear anything about her. She was just a mere neighbour, after all. We didn’t have the kind of relationship to especially visit them.

*

We had a three-bedroom house in Kurmitola. One whole room was for us three older siblings. I was now in class eight. Near Tejgaon, Hina Aapa’s neighbourhood, there was a bazaar called the Kochu Kheit. It’s possible that at some point in time there was a taro field there, but now it was a bazaar. Here in Kurmitola, the bazaar nearby was Bhaaloo Ghaat. Just like at Kochu Kheit, here too, starved and naked Bengali children put a few eggplants in a thaali for dooi poesha that they’d sell while sitting on the earth. Sometimes they’d sell just the saplings. A beggar would show up every two minutes. We, the shaala Painjabis, had already been treated with distrust and suspicion; here, we became even more of an oddity. We did have a working relationship with all the sellers, but we could feel that we were not very well-liked. We didn’t understand our sins. The sin – we learned about it much later. We who had forgotten our own language expected the same from the Bengalis, to abandon their language. Whenever the 21st of February arrived, all of Bengal remembered the martyrs of the land. In the streets and the bazaars on that day, it was forbidden to speak any language other than Bengali. Only if you spoke in Bengali did the seller give you your groceries. On that day, in the streets and bazaars, everyone went about barefoot.

In the new house, on a shady day, I once brought back potatoes with a lot of fruit and cauliflower saplings. Some months passed, March came and almost went through, but the cauliflower did not come to bloom. Saplings planted in shade grow neither flowers nor fruit.

*

Then a storm changed the air. The Bengalis were angry. And instead of distancing them from their anger, we threatened them more. The season had become cold, but the politics heated. Here and there, Bengalis in groups of twos and fours and sixes packed together and talked. Biharis too joined up, just like them. After buying some groceries, I came back home and overheard four or five of our neighbours talking. I wondered what they were saying. One phrase in English came to my ears. “Actually, we Bengawlis are very foolish people.” I was in class eight, so I understood the whole sentence. I came inside and told my mother with great pride what I had heard and what it had meant.

The storm gathered more, and my father cut a PIA ticket and dropped off all of us in the West. He himself went back. The military operation was ongoing then, with great intensity. His letters told us about the happenings. The little Bhaaloo Ghaat bazaar where we would go and buy groceries – bulldozers had levelled it into dust. Thousands of people had fled. Some had been shot. Then war began, and from war, loss. The Bengalis were severed. Their songs, their daals and rice, their poverty, their na’ats, their jackfruits, their pineapples and their everything else, they had been made completely severed from us. Hina Aapa too became a dweller of that severed land. Now if you wanted to go, always, you would need a passport and a visa.

I finished class eight in the city of my elders, and then I came to Lahore to live out the rest of my life.

*

I forgot everything. It was from that accursed ‘Jewish conspiracy’ that I recalled all. I was idle today, sitting around. Then casually, on the internet, I searched for a half-remembered, old Bengali na’at. I felt like listening to it. I wrote some Roman letters for its first words on the net. I made a click too. After a click, the same na’at read by many singers showed up in front of me. I listened to it, and it had the same vigour. That same bliss I felt in class seven, amazing. Then the Bengali teacher of seventh appeared right before me. Long-long braids and a glasses-wearer, with a graceful enunciation as he recited the na’at.

Taribhu boner priyo Muhammad (s) elo rey dunyaae
Aae re shaagor aakash bataash, vekhbe jodi cai

When the beloved of two realms, Muhammad, came into the earth, the sea, the sky, and the winds all looked upon him, stupefied.

But where is that teacher, where is Hina Aapa, where is that beautiful Bangla, where are those foolish Bengawli people…a whole fifty years have scattered them away.

Those dark-dark, skinny-skinny, daal bhaat and so much turmeric-doused, boned-fish eaters – who only ate after an afternoon gosol and who always relaxed after the afternoon meal. Those namaaz-observing Bengalis, the ones who read ‘zaal’ as ‘jeem’. Those whose women I called Khlmaa, those whom I asked what you would call that thing or this thing in Bengali. Were it with my own age-fellows or with older folks, if I spoke in Bengali to them, they would always say the same thing: “Tomi to shundor Bangla bolte paro.” You speak such beautiful Bangla. I used to blush a little and get so happy on the inside. To this day, I don’t really know if – when they said ‘shundor Bangla’ – was it the Bengali language itself that they found beautiful or was it my particular way of speaking Bengali that they praised?

Outside the house, under the verandah, a ten to twelve-year-old Bengali girl is seated at the table, eating bhaat. On the other side of the table, two men. They talk as they eat. Across the house fence, standing, a Punjabi boy watches them, wide-eyed. He is no creep nor is he greedy – it is just curiosity that keeps him gawking. The Bengali girl notices his incessant staring and, addressing him, says “Khaai bey?” The boy blushes. Frightened, he shakes his head and goes further ahead on his way.

In the bazaar, he sees the washerman who’s always ironing clothes. Every day when the Punjabi comes wandering there, the washerman grins and asks, “Ki khobor?” The boy blushes. ‘Ki’ has the same meaning in Punjabi that it does in the Bangla bhasha, ‘what’. ‘Khobor’ the Punjabi boy thinks has something to do with eating, with ‘khaana’. He feels a lightbulb turn on. One day, when the washerman asks “Ki khobor?” the boy musters up the courage to answer. “Bhaat.”

“Bhaat?” the washerman said, laughing.

Later the Punjabi boy learns ‘khobor’ is ‘khabar’, news. Ki khobor, meaning, What’s the news? What’s going on with you?

*

And my class fellow Ahsan, who wore glasses and was a Bengali but spoke Punjabi like a Punjabi. With all its seamless flowing. He was the son of a soldier, and owing to his father’s transfers in Punjab, had done some schooling in Gujrat. Back then, he used to speak with me in Punjabi. When afterwards would he have gotten a chance to do so? He too must only remember as much Punjabi as I do Bangla. If he lives yet, he perhaps freshens up his memories of Punjab with his grandsons and granddaughters. He must tell them that in Punjab live a people who don’t like to speak their own mother tongue. Then his grandsons and granddaughters might put a finger to their teeth, thinking their Daada or Naana must be lying. How can that even be?

The houses of Bengalis are filled with children, as are the ponds of Bengal with fish. Catching fish with nets was an interesting activity. And for the Punjabi boy, watching the fish get caught was interesting. The man with the net would spread it out before throwing it into the water. Then for one or two minutes, he’d wait. Little by little, he would start pulling the net up. The net would come out swollen with fish. A lovely variety of fish, flailing about and sometimes jumping out. Some big some small. One or two shrimps too. Sometimes there would be a frog that hopped and escaped. Sometimes a turtle. The fish would jump like one who lives far away from his land jumps into his memories of the land. Each fish would be inspected and put into a bamboo basket. Then a load of turmeric and spices would be put on it to make a saalan. Sometimes inside this fish were pushed in peas, green beans, cauliflower, and more vegetables. This saalan bhaat along with watery masr daal the Bengalis ate with such relish. In their fists they rubbed and rubbed until it churned out into little balls that they would eat. The thin daal spilled out from their fists all the way up to their elbows. They even licked clean their arms. The Punjabis would watch them eat and get very disgusted. They thought the Bengalis were filthy.

It was in that Bengal that my mother cleaned out a kilo’s worth of chickpeas and put them into a box just before the first days of fasting. “Go, get this ground.”

Ground chickpea flour was common but oh, the obsession with unprocessed things!

The boy went ahead, about two furloughs through an unpaved path to a village. Far across the canopies of coconut and betel palm trees, the sun preparing to set watched the boy go by sorrowfully. What is this boy of the Punjab doing, wandering about in Bengal?

Tuk-tuk went the dreamy sound of the hand mill. There was a whole line of things left outside the mill. Bags and buckets of wheat and rice, all waiting to be ground. The boy puts his box of daal at the very end of this line. The miller has his mind elsewhere. Then he spots the Punjabi boy.

He calls the boy over with a gesture. “Tomaar ta koi?”

“Oi dike,” says the boy, pointing to the box.

“Aano,” he says to the boy. (Aano? This word is used in Punjabi too.)

The boy carries the box to the miller, and the miller pours the ground lentils back into the box as soon as he is done. Within a minute or two, the whole box is full of warm chickpea flour. The boy takes out one aana in his hand – one puny note and one five-paisi, trying to pay the miller. “Naahein, jaao,” without taking the money from the boy’s hand, the miller says.

Half a century later, who can tell how many thousands amount to the profit I made that day at the miller’s? It isn’t something I understand – how can I begin to pay back that man? It’s not even about the money, but the selflessness that a Bengali miller showed to a Punjabi boy.

Those same starved and naked Bengalis, those hearty and jovial Bengalis – they eat roti now to their heart’s content. The sweetness and melody of their songs has only increased. And that same na’at, to this day induces as much bliss. The shaala Punjabis are now for them no more than a tragedy left behind in the past. And here, it is the fool Punjabis who have become a people who are finding it hard to feed themselves two rotis in the same day.

When I remember Hina Aapa, I remember the storms brought upon that land by the Punjabi people. Their leader says that hundreds of thousands of women were raped. Hundreds of thousands of women? Only twenty four years before, in the time of Partition, my Punjab was also ravaged by such a storm. Then it was themselves whom the Punjabis raped. For the one who rapes his own, it is very easy to rape another. Then too the count was in the hundreds of thousands. Yet even still, the Punjabis did not come into their senses? In that time, religion was the distinction, language was one; here it was a different language, the same religion. Have we Punjabis never been able to revere any kind of union? That Maaya who danced on one leg and sang Lathe Di Chaadar, the “ki khobor”-asking washerman, the Punjabi-speaking class fellow Ahsan, the girl who beckoned “khaai bey”, the net overflowing with fish, and most of all, Hina Aapa…actually we Punjabis are very foolish people.

Could it be that Hina Aapa too was among the raped women of Bengal? I don’t know. Her beauty was like that of angels. Might it be that an angel cannot be raped? Those who refused to take payment for their labour, those who wrote such exalted na’ats, who sang so beautifully – these are the people who were made the targets of a military operation? Those girls with such elegant handwriting, Hina Aapa…what did they do to deserve such cruelty to be exacted upon them?

Ardently, I prayed to God that Hina Aapa did not live to see such days. That she died before then in a traffic accident, that she was crushed under a toppled wall. That a roof suddenly collapsed on her and she died. That in some other way her life reached its completion. Only so that she was saved from being raped.

But I don’t know if prayers sent fifty years later can still reach across times that have already flowed past us.                                                                     

18/11/20 15:32