Meghna Guhathakurta

The film Shilalipi, directed by Shameem Akhtar, is a fictionalised version of the life story of Shahid Selina Parveen, a writer, poet, and magazine editor who was picked up, tortured, and killed by collaborators of the occupying Pakistani army during the war of 1971.

In the month of January 1971, I was a student of Class X of Holy Cross School. My par-ents and I were then living in the Dhaka University campus. My father, who taught Eng-lish literature at the university, took up the administrative post of Provost of Jagannath Hall.

I was born in 1899 in the Raychaudhuri family in the village of Gabtali, Sonargaon, East Bengal. My father worked in the Treasury in Mymensingh.

Mothers became concerned that their children were learning only Bengali alphabets, but what use would this be if at some point in their lives they returned to Myanmar as it was hoped that they would. We responded by adapting our system to the official Burmese alphabets as taught in schools in Myanmar.

One after another, our citizens are being killed, but we are yet to see a proactive approach from the government.

I first heard about the alleged abduction of Kalpana Chakma just after the incident occurred in June 1996. I was teaching at Dhaka University at that time.