The famous poet Lalon once said: Porshi jodi amay chhuto, jom jatona sokol jeto dure/ Se ar lalon ekkhane roy tobu lokho jojon fank re (If my neighbour had touched me, all the pain of death would go away. My neighbours and Lalon live in the same place, yet there are a hundred thousand leagues between them.)
I grew up in a village named Bakali by the Teesta River. Before the devastating flood (1968) in the Jalpaiguri district, the Teesta used to flow through my village. Like every rural society in India, my village also embodies the multilayered, multicultural ethos. Every layer has its own touch, smell and flavour.
Before Partition, Bakali was a very prosperous village. But post-Partition, most of the Muslims living there migrated to the then East Pakistan, and Hindus started filling the vacuum, carrying the uncertainty and pain of losing roots. Whereas our home — we stayed back — had an air of security and a lethargy for anything new, our new neighbours lived in fear, both in 1947 and 1971. They used to live in what we call tin-houses. These are often seen in the lowland/charareas, where people often have to change places due to water surges. The fear of losing the house anytime is palpable in these structures.
The people who migrated from Bangladesh were not homogeneous and had a distinct hierarchy. Those who exchanged properties to come to India were mostly upper-class and upper-caste people. We used to call them Bhatiya. They were landowners. But during the Bangladesh liberation war, those who came to India were economically backward, mostly Namashudras. They are my neighbours now. We call them Dhakaiya and Chorua, depending on the place they have settled in.
When they first came, most of them settled in the lowlands/chars of the Teesta, and were called Chorua. Once they move from chars and settle in villages, they become Dhakaiya. The lives of Choruas are similar to those of the river lowlands. Their existence depends on the will of the river. They are forever refugees, forever migrants. However, Dhakaiyas are relatively in a better situation.
I was in Class VI when I became a regular visitor to my neighbours’ houses to buy the seasonal fruits: Guava, jujube, and olive. However, such visits didn’t survive for long.
The distance between Dhakaiya para and Muslim para, as my locality is called, is barely 500 meters. But we live many light-years away. When we talk, we talk in translation — we both change our tongues to converse in Bangla. My mother tongue is Kamtapuri, and they speak in a dialect we call Bhatiya Bhasha.
Still, I carry the memories of the 1990s. I am paddling through the kachcha road on my way to school through the Dhakaiya para, and the sweet smell of nolen gur lures me towards their kitchen. But my neighbours hardly touch our home-cooked food. Nor do we invite them. But how can one prevent the smell?
I dream of becoming a wood mouse someday. They don’t know religion, caste or creed. They steal paddy sheaves from our fields and feast with them in my neighbours’. Perhaps, then, I would be able to find my neighbour.
The writer is a poet, based in North Bengal
