O Amar Desher Mati

Pratip and I were friends since 1940 when both were students of class three in the Ballyganj Government High School in Calcutta. I had to leave him in August 1947, when at the time of the partition we moved to Dhaka. The separation was painful. I met him and his wife next after nearly thirty years in 1975 when he came to meet me and my wife in our hotel in Calcutta along with three of our Ballyganj class mates and their wives. We reminisced about olden days and exchanged notes on subsequent developments till late night when the restaurant had to be closed. The only other contact I had with any of them was when in 1992 I needed a copy of my birth certificate from the Calcutta Medical College. Sadly, the one who sent it to me, Biswajit, is no more.

On arrival in Dhaka on December 1, I was informed of Pratip and Krishna's visit to Bangladesh. They were in Chittagong visiting Pratip's original home near Kotwali thana in Chittagong town. He called me from there on December 3 and we talked for a long time. It was agreed that we will meet with our other four classmates from the forties on December 6 for a reunion dinner in a restaurant in Gulshan. On return from Chittagong, Pratip and Krishna went to Bikrampur by car to visit Krishna's ancestral village home on December 5. It was a tiring journey and the house could not be easily located. She was not feeling well but persisted, and after a while was able to locate the right home. That was very satisfying as she had fulfilled her strong desire to touch and salute her desher mati and take back a bit of its sacred soil. She was warmly received by the current occupants who gave her a lau from the home, cut it into smaller pieces for her to carry to Calcutta. Indeed her dream had been fulfilled.

On December 6, as the five school friends of Pratip (Mustafa Kamal, Ataul Karim, Ehsanul Huq, Shafiqur Rahman and I) were getting ready for our reunion later in the evening, Krishna suffered a massive heart attack and died. I got the news at about 2 pm and rushed to see Pratip in Gulshan where he was staying. Pratip had spent the day running between the clinic, the police station and the Indian Embassy to complete the formalities to take the body back the same evening. Though sorrowful and tired, he seemed to cope with the sudden and dramatic turn of events. He told us what happened that morning and the fact that despite his injecting her with appropriate life saving drugs urgently he could not save her. In between he would tell us funny old stories of our childhood naughtiness and the mannerisms of some of our teachers /tormenters.

Dr. Pratip Sen went back that evening with his wife in a wooden case filled with tea leaves and their desher mati for which they had come. It was Krishna's destiny and perhaps her good fortune that she was able to touch her forehead on her desher mati and visit her homeland one last time.

M. Azizul Jalil is a former civil servant and a retired member of the World Bank Staff.