Name: Dwip Sengupta
Summer Intern, Asian Paints Limited
Location: Dhaka, Chittagong, Khulna (Bangladesh)
Life is a book. You wish to read it as slowly as possible, musing after every paragraph or pausing at insignificant punctuations. But the pages are caught in a gust of wind and they flutter through your fingers. Eventually, you are left with memories: stained in golden hues. I am writing from Dhaka, which is my base location. I have visited places, not shopping malls or cinema halls. That is precisely the subject of this memoir.
The beauty of Dhaka/Chittagong isn’t the subject of my story. Their reputation does not need the backing of my feeble voice. Hence, let me focus on my journey. In fact, pilgrimage is more apt. It was an odyssey in search of my ancestral place; a journey in search of lost memories, nostalgia. My summer internship allowed me to have a read into my ancestor’s life as new chapters got written into my own. I searched for and thankfully rediscovered the past.
Around three and a half score years ago an affluent group of people migrated to Kolkata from Chittagong. They left behind their lands, their Gods and temples. They gave up all that they loved, cherished and possessed. As Bengal was mired in hopeless despair of communal violence, survival was more important than wealth. They have never gone back to their homeland ever since. While the yearning for their birth soil remains in their subconscious, they are reduced to being mere story tellers of the past. They would dote on their grandchild hungry for bedtime stories and what tales they would tell!!! They would proudly recount the heroics of Master da and Preetilata, their eyes moist from remembrance. It would have me captivated, longing for more. Whether it is the strength of those emotions, I cannot say. It is but an unforeseen will of destiny, that the grandchild grew up and got his first job at the same place where his roots has been…Chittagong!
Bangladesh is a place of stark contrasts. One finds happiness and despair, mingled in an inexplicable cocktail of ubiquity. The sense of fatalism creeps insidiously into your system, as you slowly get used to the conflicting emotions. Yet, the warmth that you receive from people around you whets your appetite. It helps you smile through rough times, a phenomenon quite ominous in its abundance. It is probably this warmth and accommodating spirit of my colleagues that allowed me to narrate my heart’s desire; my hidden agenda of being in Bangladesh: to relive those enthralling stories that would put me to sleep as a child. I wished to visit my ancestral place. I imagined it to be forlorn and desolate now.
The search was difficult. It led me through unknown roads into blind alleys. Yet, fate had spoken and I had arrived. I visited the place where my grandfather grew up; I witnessed the school patronized by my family, still bearing testimony to the distant past. The temple, land, the annual fair have all stood the test of time. Some things change, but some remain as familiar as the full moon or the northern star. Maybe the snaps that I have taken will remind my grandparents of their past life. Maybe it will make them happy.
I shall travel to Khulna as soon as I complete this write up. Time indeed is travelling as swiftly as the sweet evening breeze that soothes me on my way back from office. Bangladesh has embraced me with open arms and I shall be sad to leave it behind. Yet, the pages keep fluttering through my fingers. I cannot read it slowly enough.