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Reminiscing the day

MEGHNA GUHATHAKURTA
In the thirty-two years since the Independence of Bangladesh, there has been for me only one 14th December. I remember that cold wintry day in 1971, as if it was yesterday. My mother and I were seeking shelter with an American friend of ours who helped us at our time of need. Henry Selz was an American Quaker who became acquainted with my parents as a young volunteer in the early days of Pakistan when he came to do social work for the Red Cross at the time of post-partition communal riots. He had married an Indian Kashmiri girl and was working for CARE in Kenya when she died of cancer. At that time he was posted in Islamabad, but hearing of the 1971 war and the plight of people in East Bengal, he chose to be CARE representative in Dhaka. The minute he landed in Dhaka he started looking for us.
My mother and I were at that time having to take shelter with friends and well-wishers. Dhaka was then an occupied city. The military crackdown on the Dhaka University campus on the night of 25th March had targeted many intellectuals and my father Shahid Jyotirmay Guhathakurta was one of the first to be sacrificed. My mother refused to flee to India like so many others since she felt that that was the only way we could prove his death. So for months we stayed incognito taking shelter wherever we could. There were times I had to stay at a Christian orphanage under the name of Monica Rosario. With the help of the sisters of Holy Cross School, my mother took shelter at the Holy Family Nurses Quarters.
We finally landed up at Henry's place in Dhanmondi when India declared war with Pakistan since the place where we were staying was too near the airport and in clear line of Indian bombers to be considered safe. Henry then came to our rescue. He brought us to his house and offered us his home and warm hospitality. But as the war wore on, things started getting tense. The Pakistan Army was facing defeat after defeat, and muddied army jeeps were often seen plying through the streets of Dhaka carrying war weary soldiers to and fro from the frontline to the cantonment. A curfew was imposed, and people generally stayed indoors unless it was absolutely necessary to go out. Dhaka seemed to be a city of phantoms.
But tension was brewing in another sphere. By the 12th and 13th December, one was hearing of journalists, reporters, intellectuals being picked up from their homes by masked men wearing plain clothes. Where they took them no one knew. The families were equally kept in the dark. Henry was at that time appointed ' a general caretaker' for the expatriate community in Bangladesh. After the formal war started, many expatriates were waiting to be transported from Dhaka by British Airforce Hercules planes, which the Pakistan Government had
given permission to land. But the Indian bombers had strafed the runway (at that time it was the Tejgaon airport, which was in use) so much, that the planes could not land.
Each morning we would see them circling the clear blue winter skies like huge birds with floppy wings and then soar away into the distance. The Pakistan Government had also permitted three neutral zones within the city of Dhaka. These were the Hotel Intercontinental (the current Hotel Sheraton), Holy Family Hospital and Notre Dame College. Big signs of Red Cross were hung over each building declaring them protected against bombing or attack. Many of the diplomatic and expatriate community took refuge there, including fifty UN Volunteers who were assigned to this region at that time.
Since Henry went out regularly during the day on his duties, leaving my mother and myself alone in the house, we no longer felt safe with rumours about pick ups and raiding of houses by a notorious team of collaborators who called themselves Al Badr or Al Shams. Henry then suggested that we too take ourselves to Notre Dam College, under his protection. The neutral zone would protect us from outside attacks. So we packed some of our essentials and off we went. But no sooner had we arrived we realised it was a big mistake. We arrived around eleven in the morning. But by noon, the sky was thundering with the sound of Indian fighter planes, Russian MIG 21s. They swooped low over Notre Dame College and seemed to target the Governor's House (current Bangabhavan).
The whole afternoon was filled with the noise and clammer of strafing from the Indian side and answer of ineffective anti-aircraft guns from the
Pakistan side. Later we heard that pressure was being built up for the surrender of the Pakistan civilian government who was meeting at the Governor's house at that time. Later that day, the news came of their surrender. But my mother and I who during this whole period were huddled up in a room assigned to us decided that we have had enough of the Neutral Zone and informed Henry that we would return to his house and await our fate, whatever it may be.
As we returned that night and were sitting in Henry's drawing room with our lights blacked out, my mother thought she heard the howling of jackals nearby. They could have been stray dogs, but the call was ominous. Two days later, we witnessed the liberation of our beloved homeland, but at the same time the news started seeping in of all those loved and dear ones, our friends, my father's colleagues, and many unknown names of those who had met their fate at the hands of the Al Badr and Al Shams in the killing fields of Rayer Bazaar and Shialbari.
Thirty-two years after I read in the papers that the beautiful monument that was built at Rayer Bazaar, a monument that had to be literally fought for by organisations such as Projonmo 71, lie dilapidated and neglected. But history itself has shown that history can not be denied. A crime that is committed may go unpunished by the courts of law, voices of protest may be silenced, but no amount of wealth or power can assuage a guilt consciousness that lurks in the mind of an offender. The monument at Rayer bazaar stands as a testimony of history which constantly interrogates: Tomra ja bolechiley, bolchey ki ta Bangladesh?
The writer is the daughter of Jyotirmay Guhathakurta, a martyred intellectual.