Bhavana of December 1992

Pic Courtesy: Jude Beck on Upsplash

Bhavana of December 1992 was different. She was more interested in Love than Politics. And love was specifically romantic love.

Those were the days of Basic Instinct, friends, good food, challenging teachers, wondering about the planetary influence on love lives, looking pretty and ghazals. I cared about the country but not like – I know and understand the challenges of my country and I would like to improve it. Rather, I believed the country’s destiny was intertwined with my destiny. My awesome future would help my country shine. You know that kind of self-absorption.

I had a boyfriend, much older to me, who lived in another city—Mumbai or Bombay as it was called. I met him once a year and rest of the year was spent in writing long love letters. I wrote anywhere from 20-100 pages in a letter. Obviously, you can’t fill 20 pages with only sweet-nothings and I wanted to share snippets of my life in Kolkata. Further he was an excellent writer and a well-read guy. I was driven to write in ways that would match his reading standards. And for this, I was often on the lookout for interesting moments to compile in my love letter.

Dec 6, 1992 happened without much of a blip on my life. Dec 7 was different. The newspapers had anxious headlines and the radios in my lane were blaring from early morning. Some of my neighbours were on their balconies talking to each other. Dad was tense.

A curfew had been declared in Kolkata.

I had only heard of curfew in books and reports of far-away places. And suddenly those far-away events had come to my city. I was excited. There was no way I was going to sit at home on this historic day.

Please understand—I was naïve, deeply in love with my boy and my possible future, to comprehend what those events meant. For me, it was just something different from my mundane very boring existence.

I looked at my dad and insisted that my college professors were very serious about teaching. And even in curfew they would hold classes. I couldn’t afford to miss any class. Dad was suitably convinced since it was a new experience for him too.

And I walked out. Across the lanes where shops were shuttered and one sweet shop, half shuttered. Across lane corners where groups of people, men and women stood together and talked. Across the lake and the deserted bridge, past the Government Postal Office, where again people stood on roads, men and women together, talking. It was an eerie feeling.

I observed and noted. I had to write a love letter. I was learning ethnography before I actually learnt how to.

There were no buses, no cars, no taxis, no rickshaws. Just silence on the road and clumps of people talking agitatedly. I walked to college. The college was closed. I turned around to one of my friend’s home. That was another long walk, across Lake Market and the tram tracks, still, quiet, shuttered. Across Deshapriyo Park and Triangular Park.

My friend’s home was buzzing. Many young folks from the neighbourhood had gathered in her living room and were debating politics.

Now, I didn’t exactly have an ideological position. You see, friends and love were more important. My boyfriend tended towards right and his best friend was extreme right. In a Left-Front Government that I had grown up around, Right was equivalent to Anarchy. I am not sure if my friends had clear ideological positions either. We spent most of our time talking about forbidden movies and forbidden topics and challenging the status quo of our lives. Marx and Ram were on a distant horizon, to be mentioned only when flirting required.

I remember some of the boys in my friend’s living room that day were slanting right and talking passionately as men wound up on issues tend to do. I observed and noted. I had a love letter to write.

At some point, we heard that a riot had broken out in Park Circus. I was, as usual, very excited. Riots were something I had read only in newspapers and history books. And now it was happening in my city. I had to witness it.

It never occurred to me that I could get hurt or witnessing violence can be traumatic. For me, nothing could be as awful as home. Home was where war was, home was where violence existed. And my sense of the far-away was this exciting unknown where there were possibilities of new experiences.

I walked towards Park Circus. No, I couldn’t get to it. I wasn’t sure which roads to take to reach Park Circus. You see, I had no map and there were no buses or passersby to give me directions. 

I sadly walked back home, taking a long route, ambling down southern avenue, staring at empty grounds and quiet Kalibari temple.

And that was when I was picked up by a police jeep. The man with a nice hat scolded me and I told him a wonderful white lie—I had no clue about curfew and had tried going to college or some such thing. They dropped me across the railway station with a strict warning.

That night I wrote a hundred-page letter. My boyfriend later told me that it was one of best documents of the day he had read and that he wished I had sent it to a newspaper. Well, my boyfriend was newspaper enough for me.

In the weeks to follow, I learnt about riots in a different way. Bombay riots had broken out. And my boyfriend lived in one of those affected areas. There was no direct landline to his home and office was closed. And we had no phone at home either. Only newspapers with screaming headlines, some reports on TV news, and my dad’s grapevine.

And for the first time, I felt fear. Fear of losing someone I loved. Now I read beyond headlines, listened anxiously to any news, and searched phone booths to call Bombay desperately.

Bhavana of 1993 had changed.