Amitav Ghosh - The Shadow Lines

I could not have perceived that there was something more than an incidental connection between those events of which I had a brief glimpse from the windows of that bus, in Calcutta, and those other events in Dhaka, simply because Dhaka was in another country.

One afternoon in 1979, soon after I began work on my PhD, I went to attend a lecture in the Teen Murti House Library in New Delhi. The speaker was an Australian specialist on Asian affairs, and he spoke on India’s war with China in 1962. He was not a particularly good speaker, and he had nothing new to say, but still, he jogged our memories, and when my friends and I went down to the canteen after the lecture, we found ourselves talking about our recollections of that time.

We were all surprised by how much we could remember of that month — October 1962. I, for one, remembered that we had only recently moved to our new house on Southern Avenue when the war began. It was soon after the Pujas. My mother and I had dressed up in our new Puja clothes one evening, and we were waiting for my father to come home so that we could go out visiting relatives. But he was very late, and when at last we heard the squeak of the front gate, my mother led me out into the garden at once so that we could glare at him. But when he stepped out he was not at all abashed by our frowns. His eyes were bleary and there was a huge smile on his face. He swung me up over his head, grinning (I could smell the whisky on his breath), and he said: Do you know what’s happened? Nehru’s told the army to drive those Chinkies back from our border. There’s going to be a war.

I leapt out of his arms and went running up to my grandmother’s room, cheering all the way. Tha’mma, I shouted. There’s a war, a war with China.

She laughed, I remember — it was a long time since she had laughed — and gave me a hug, and said: Let’s hope we teach them a lesson.

Over our half-pots of tea in the canteen, we recalled how quickly we had taught ourselves to distinguish the shapes of their aircraft from ours, how our mothers had donated bangles and earrings for the cause, how we’d stood at street-corners, taking collections and selling little paper flags. We could all remember how the euphoria had faded into confusion as we slowly realised that the Chinese had driven the Indian army back; how we had wondered whether they were going to occupy Assam and Calcutta.

One of us, a tall, bearded Marxist called Malik, told us how his father, who had been a Member of Parliament at that time, had opened the paper one morning, and shot straight out of the house, dressed in a lungi, and gone running down to the Foreign Secretary’s bungalow down the road.

Isn’t it odd, someone said, that we can remember it so well?

Why, no, said Malik. It’s not odd at all. It was the most important thing that happened in the country when we were children.

The others nodded in agreement, but I had my reputation for contrariness to preserve, so I shook my head and said: Oh, come on, it was just a stupid little skirmish somewhere in the hills. It wasn’t important at all. We wouldn’t even remember if it the Indian army hadn’t taken such a beating. It didn’t mean a thing to most people.

All right, said Malik, smiling. You tell us, then — what was more important than the ’62 war?

I was at a loss now that he had called my bluff. They watched me as I scratched my head, thinking hard.

Suddenly, for no reason that I can remember, I said: What about the riots …?

Which riots? said Malik. There are so many.

Those riots, I said. I had to count the years out on my fingers.

The riots of 1964, I said.

Their faces went slowly blank, and they turned to look at each other.

What were the riots of 1964? Malik said with a puzzled frown. I could tell that he really had no idea what I was talking about.

I turned to the others and cried: Don’t you remember?

They looked away in embarrassment, shaking their heads. It struck me then that they were all Delhi people; that I was the only person there who had grown up in Calcutta.

Surely you remember, I said. There were terrible riots in Calcutta in 1964.

I see, said Malik. What happened?

I opened my mouth to answer and found I had nothing to say. All I could have told them about was of the sound of voices running past the walls of my school, and of a glimpse of a mob in Park Circus. The silent terror that surrounded my memory of those events, and my belief in their importance, seemed laughably out of proportion to those trivial recollections.

There was a riot, I said helplessly.

There are riots all the time, Malik said.

This was a terrible riot, I said.

All riots are terrible, Malik said. But it must have been a local thing. Terrible or not, it’s hardly comparable to a war.

But don’t you remember ? I said. Didn’t you read about it or hear about it? After all, the war with China didn’t happen on your doorstep, but you remember that . Surely you remember — you must remember?

Regretfully, they shook their heads and blew out clouds of cigarette smoke.

I stood up and tapped Malik on the shoulder. I was determined now that I would not let my past vanish without trace; I was determined to persuade them of its importance.

Come with me, I said. Let’s go into the library and look up the newspaper files for 1964. I’ll show you.

He grinned at the others and gulped down the rest of his tea. All right, he said. Let’s go.

We went into the quiet, air-conditioned gloom of the library and made our way to the shelves at the back where the bound volumes of old newspapers were kept. The volumes of the newspaper I wanted — a well-known Calcutta daily — were stacked along the third row of shelves. There were four massive volumes for 1964.

Do you remember the date? Malik said. Or even the month?

I shook my head. No, I said. I don’t remember.

Well, we can’t look through all of these at random, he said, nodding at the four volumes. It would take us days.

Then what shall we do? I said.

Maybe there’ll be a reference to it in a book or something, he suggested.

And what if we can’t find the right book? I said.

Then, Malik said patiently, we’ll have to assume that you imagined the whole thing.

He turned and walked off towards a row of shelves.

Malik knew that library fairly well; he’d been researching one thing or another there for several years. He stopped at a shelf and pointed. It was the section on the war of 1962. There were whole shelves of books on the war — histories, political analyses, memoirs, tracts — weighty testimony to the eloquence of war. He pointed out another set of shelves, smiling broadly: it was the section on the 1965 war with Pakistan.

At least we won that one, he said.

But after half an hour we still hadn’t found anything on my remembered riots.

Malik was bored now. He stole a look at his watch and gave me a friendly pat on my shoulder. I’ve got to get back home now, he said. Maybe some other day …

I nodded silently, unnerved by the possibility that I had lived for all those years with a memory of an imagined event. And then, as Malik turned to go, an odd little detail stirred in my mind, a faint recollection of the excitement I had felt while I was standing on the pavement that morning, waiting for my school bus to appear.

No, don’t go, I said, clutching Malik’s arm. I remember something now. It happened during a Test match — with England, I think. Do you remember that series? When that wicketkeeper who was dropped later scored a maiden century?

Yes, of course, he said laughing. Yes I remember that. It was Budhi Kunderan, wasn’t it?

Yes! I cried. Yes, that’s it — Budhi Kunderan. So it must have happened during the cricket season — perhaps January or February.