Split

by Taslima Nasrin

  Taking a chance I approached him cautiously and told him about my predicament. I had to leave, I had to break the rules for one day. I told him Yasmin was in the hospital about to have a baby. Not that it was sufficient reason for leaving! Kids were conceived and delivered without incident with alarming regularity and it was not sufficient reason to be allowed to leave one’s post at the OT. Driven by anxiety I could not help exaggerate a few of the details, my voice trembling as I did. Dr Rashid asked me where Yasmin was and afraid that he was not going to agree to let me go if he knew she was at Mymensingh I told him she was at PG. Gulping to get rid of the tremor in my voice I added, ‘I’ll go and come back in a blink. It won’t even be an hour.’ Seeing that Dr Rashid was still not convinced I piled it on thicker. ‘It’s a caesarean and apparently she isn’t doing too well.’ The tremor was back in my voice.

  My eyes were pleading with him to take over my duties only for a while. I knew if Dr Rashid was to refuse there would be no way left for me to leave. Just then a tiny half-sentence emanated from under the bushy moustache. ‘Fine, you can go.’ No sooner did the words spring forth than I was away, running down the corridor, out of the main gate of Dhaka Medical, on to a rickshaw bound for Shantibag. K was not there yet; I had asked him to come to my house in the morning but he must have waited for me and left. I began to contemplate how to go to Mymensingh in such a situation. I could not wait for him, I had to leave immediately and take a bus or a train. Thankfully, on my way downstairs I ran into K. I grabbed him by the arm, literally dragged him to the car and we set off for Mymensingh, heading straight for the hospital and the paediatric ward.

  Reaching the ward I found out that Yasmin was no longer there, she had been shifted to the post-operative room. A shiver ran down my spine at the news. I had thought she was going to have her baby in the labour room and I was going to be right by her side, holding her hand if she wished me to and giving her strength and comfort. But the baby had been delivered nearly an hour before my arrival, that too by caesarean section. Yasmin was actually not doing well. The doctors had tried their best for a normal delivery but failed, and the forceps had been tried too till it had become clear that the baby was in critical condition. After that an operation had been the only recourse.

  The caesarean had taken a long time and the fifteen-pound infant was placed in an incubator after it was over. Yasmin was still unconscious; she lay there with a channel of blood running through one arm and saline in another. I spoke to Milan who was standing miserably outside the post-operative room and got all the updates. I went inside and stood by Yasmin’s side, the room heavy with the gloom that had also settled within me. How did it matter in the end when I had not been there by her side? It would have been better perhaps had I not come. I was not a distant relative of Yasmin’s. I had given her my word that I was going to be by her throughout the entire thing and Yasmin too had been keen on it. But I had failed to keep my promise.

  I could have dared to take the day off if not for the strict rules and regulations of Dhaka Medical. I also could not help but get angry with myself for not having taken that leave regardless. I was angry that I had put on such a performance in front of Dr Rashid, something I could never admit to, when it had all been in vain. It had all been so unnecessary. I should have been with Yasmin. Instead I had arrived there as a relative visiting her newborn and not as her sister. What a sister indeed!

  I returned to Dhaka. The city appeared disconsolate at night, the melancholy punctured by sudden groups of people huddled together at various places on the road. We were stopped at Magbazar by a group of radicals who were marching in protest for some unknown reason and the traffic sergeant told us to take a detour. Cars were forbidden on the main roads. Sticking my head out of the window I asked the sergeant what had happened and why the men were marching but was met with silence. I asked K too but he was as confused as I. It wasn’t until the second procession that we finally understood what exactly the matter was. Out of the earth-shattering cries of the protesters I could manage to single out two words: Babri Masjid. What was wrong?

  Back in 1990 a rumour about the destruction of the Babri Masjid had resulted in attacks and destruction of Hindu property. Were they trying to do the same again? K dropped me off at home and left. As soon as I switched on CNN the devastating image appeared in front of me: a group of saffron-clad Hindu extremists lunging at the Babri Masjid and tearing it down. The newsreader was saying that the Babri Masjid had been completely razed to the ground. It was as if someone had taken a hammer to my heart and ruptured the walls and like a raging flood my blood was threatening to rush out of me in waves. What was going to happen now? There was no way I could have known.

  7 December. 8 December. Then 9 and 10. What were those days like? Had I been a good storyteller I would perhaps have been able to write a perfect description of the days after the demolition of Babri Masjid. But I am not one, I can only feel and more often than not I fail to translate my feelings into words. The morning of 7 December arrived with confirmation of the tragic news in headlines emblazoned across all the major newspapers of the country—Babri Masjid. Back in October 1990 when there had been another attempt on the contentious mosque a single wrong article in Inquilab had sparked a violent attack on the Hindu inhabitants of old Dhaka in which their temples had been destroyed and their homes and businesses robbed and burnt down.

  That day too I had returned to Dhaka from Mymensingh late in the night. I was at Armanitola then, and the entire night I had stood on my balcony listening to the noise of the rioters and the screams and cries of the victims. I had witnessed the fire slowly engulfing people’s homes, temples and shops and finally reach the sky. I had seen all of it and suffered in silence with my anger, pain, despair and outrage. There was nothing I could have done; it was not a tragedy I could have averted on my own.

  The day after, on my way to Mitford I had to pass by the burnt remnants of the violence from the night before. Later in the day I had gone to Shankhari Bazar, Sutrapur, Nababpur, Nayabazar, Babu Bazar, Islampur, Thathari Bazar, Sadarghat and had been left stunned by the devastation and debris everywhere. I could barely stand to glance at the burnt remains of the Dhakeshwari temple and I did not know by which name to call such barbarism. How could people set fire to the houses of the very same neighbours they had lived beside since birth? How could they take part in such carnage, how could they loot, plunder and burn shops that they knew sustained multiple lives? There was a limit to brutality and people in my country were beginning to forget that. Something had gotten into them! Hindus in Bangladesh did not know where the Babri Masjid was, let alone what it looked like, but they were being accused of being complicit in conspiring to destroy it. That day I had only seen the tears of the broken people sitting amidst the ash and debris of their homes but I had been unable to do anything about it. What could I have done? What resources or influence did I have? I had only shed my tears in secret.

  If a piece of fake news could spark something of that nature, what was going to happen when Hindu fundamentalists had actually demolished the Babri Masjid? This anxiety would not let me be. On my way to work in the morning I got the first inkling of things to come at Malibazar. Jalkhabar was burning and tables and chairs from the restaurant lay littered on the road. I had eaten at Jalkhabar on many occasions. On days when there was no food at home or I was in a happy mood and wanted to eat something nice, I would often come to Jalkhabar for puris and halvas. Many other shops on the road had been set on fire too and it was not difficult to guess that the looted and burnt shops belonged to Hindus. Although I had never bothered to note which shops were Muslim owned and which were Hindu owned, someone clearly had. Reaching the hospital I silently went up to the OT and began my work but the apprehension would not go away. Who knew what was going to happen. Was the government taking any steps to ensure the safety of Hindu citizens? What if they were not? Standing in the air-conditioned OT I broke into a sweat at these thoughts.

  While having
tea at the doctors’ canteen in the afternoon I overheard a few doctors discussing how difficult it was getting to manage the influx of so many casualty patients in the Emergency ward. In a flash, a stab of worry like a fierce gust of wind shook my hand holding the cup, scalding my tongue with hot tea. Throwing the cup I ran to the Emergency and was greeted by the sight of numerous patients with shattered hands, injured legs and broken backs, and more being brought in every minute on stretchers. There was not enough space in the ward and some were being laid out in the corridor. I went up to some of them and asked their names—Vishwanath, Sudhir, Gopal, Karuna, Parvati.

  Finding three attending doctors in the Emergency I caught hold of one and said, ‘You will need more hands. How will you manage so many patients?’

  ‘What can we do?’ he replied in desperation. ‘There are no extra doctors here today. Everyone is on duty elsewhere.’

  ‘I have two patients left in the OT. I’ll be here as soon as I’m done with them.’

  I ran upstairs to finish work with the two patients I had at the OT. By the time I woke the last patient up new patients had begun to arrive at the OT via the Emergency and the surgery wards. The anaesthetist of the evening shift was there too and it was time for my shift to end. I informed my replacement that I was going to be in the Emergency and told him to call me if he could not handle things alone. The Emergency was even more crowded and I joined in as an additional doctor to help the patients, running around handing out saline or bottles of blood. Someone had been hacked with an axe, someone had a bleeding head wound, some were unconscious after being hit by a stick or a similar blunt object, some had been shot or beaten so mercilessly that it had broken their spine. Evening stretched to night but the wave of patients showed no signs of abating and the doctors barely had time to breathe let alone glance at the clock. I had not eaten the entire day but even a small break to go down to the canteen for tea and samosas seemed like a distant dream. Since patients were simultaneously being sent up to surgery I went back to the OT to join as an additional anaesthetist. ‘This will go on the whole night. More riot victims will be coming in,’ the surgeon suddenly said.

  ‘Riot? There has been a riot?’ I croaked.

  ‘Don’t you see them? These are all riot victims.’

  ‘But they are all Hindu! During a riot shouldn’t there be victims from both sides? The Hindus aren’t fighting amongst each other. It’s the Muslims beating the Hindus.’

  The surgeon did not reply.

  By the time I left the hospital it was almost ten. Reaching home, completely exhausted, all I could manage was to barely glance at the headlines of the newspaper.

  Babri Masjid demolished by fanatic Hindu fundamentalists; The Uttar Pradesh government and State Assembly dissolved; Tide of protests across India; Security measures hiked up across the country; Extra security deployed in front of mosques; Twenty-four-hour bandh called across West Bengal by CPI(M); Bangladesh expresses concern over Babri Masjid; The Prime Minister deeply concerned; Sheikh Hasina expresses her outrage and condemnation; Five political parties issue joint statement of protest; CPB condemns the incident; Hindu sadhus attempt to build temple at contentious spot, lands the Narasimha Rao government in a fresh political row.

  8 December. Early in the morning while sipping tea I again glanced at the newspaper.

  Bloody riots reported in India after the demolition of the Babri Masjid; More than two hundred feared dead, thousands injured; Fundamentalist organisations RSS and Shivsena and the like banned; Advani resigns as Leader of Opposition; Mosque to be rebuilt on the exact spot; Twenty-four-hour strike in the country called by the coordination committee to protest the Babri Masjid incident and four stages of demands; Attempts to disrupt peace will not be tolerated; Protests, clashes, and violence in Dhaka and other places in the aftermath of Babri Masjid; More than three hundred reportedly injured; Twenty-five people shot; Sheikh Hasina calls for peace and communal harmony at any cost; Special cabinet meeting; call to the citizens to remain calm; Jamaat supporters destroy, pillage and set fire to various temples in Chattagram in reaction to Babri Masjid, situation grave; Left parties implore citizens to maintain communal harmony.

  There was no time to read the news in detail as I had to rush to the hospital as soon as possible. There was a strike across the country in protest of the Babri Masjid incident and there were very few rickshaws. I walked till Malibag for a rickshaw and since it was too early for the picketers it did not take me long to reach Dhaka Medical. There was an even bigger crowd than the day before at the hospital—people who had been beaten, shot, hacked, stabbed or burnt. The strike had no effect on the influx of patients, some of whom were strong enough to walk while others had to be carried in. Just like the day before I finished my immediate duties at the OT and joined the Emergency.

  Each person, each life, was a story unto itself. I asked the ones who could talk how they had been attacked, how the terrorists had lunged at innocent people out of nowhere, armed with sticks, axes and knives. One man, Subodh Mandal, was barely conscious and was moaning occasionally. Blood was coming out in spurts from a wound on his head where the axe had cleaved his skull. I wiped his wound with antiseptic and wrapped a bandage around it. Giving him an emergency shot of anti-tetanus I started the blood and saline channels on either arm; while putting the oxygen mask on his face as he was being transferred to a stretcher, I asked him, ‘Who? Who did this to you?’ Subodh’s wife Gayatri was standing beside us. ‘Who were they? Do you know them?’ I could feel the beads of sweat on my forehead.

  ‘Of course I know them! They were boys from our locality, Abul, Rafiq, Halim, Sahidul.’

  ‘Why did they attack you? What did they say?’

  ‘They said we had broken a mosque,’ Gayatri replied in a hushed whisper and burst into tears. Grabbing my hand pleadingly she continued, ‘Didi, trust me, we haven’t done it. Didi, I swear by Ma Kali, we didn’t destroy that mosque.’

  ‘Do you know which mosque they were talking about?’

  ‘Who knows which mosque! I don’t! While I was coming here by rickshaw with Sita’s father we passed by so many mosques. None of them were broken.’

  ‘Haven’t you heard of the Babri Masjid?’

  Gayatri did not know where the Babri Masjid was. She had only one concern, that I save her husband. Subodh was a vegetable vendor in Babubazar. If he were to die she would have to starve to death with her two daughters. Despite their best efforts the doctors were unable to save her husband. In front of my eyes I saw her sitting like a stone in the corridor with his lifeless body. Not that she could sit for long. There were so many other patients coming in that she had to vacate her spot eventually.

  I let some patients go for basic first-aid while transferring others to medicine or surgery. I also had to run to the blood bank to get fresh blood supplies. Not all the medicines were available at the hospital and neither did the relatives of the poor victims have enough money to buy them from elsewhere. Whatever money I had on me I gave to some of the patients to buy medicines. I also went to Sandhani to buy medicines in bulk for some of the others. I had no time to listen to the patients talk about how they had been attacked, though, I knew whatever I had to know. I did not need to know what wonderful things the ministers had said at the cabinet meeting, or what Khaleda Zia or Sheikh Hasina and their parties had said. All I wanted to do was smear some of the blood around me on their politics.

  My night duty started at eight. On the days I had night duty I usually went home in the afternoon to freshen up before returning to the hospital but on this day that was impossible. I started work at eight in the morning and for the rest of the day there was hardly a moment to take stock of the hours I had worked. The entire night the injured kept arriving in waves and the doctors in the Emergency ward could barely manage to keep afloat in the tide. Towards dawn one of the unknown doctors asked me, ‘Are you a Hindu?’ I did not have duty in Emergency but I was still working extra hours and trying to save patients, so the doc
tor had assumed that I was a Hindu, working extra because I was devastated by the plight of my own community. I did not reply but when it became apparent that he would not leave without an answer I gritted my teeth and replied, ‘I’m a human being.’

  Usually after a night duty I had a day off. I returned home early in the morning, exhausted physically as well as mentally. There were protest events being organized throughout the country, alongside repeated calls for maintaining communal accord. The left-wing parties were issuing statements for people to come together to maintain peace. Even the Awami League had issued a statement saying there was no place for fanatic communal politics in Bangladesh and that the country should run on the principles set by the Liberation War. The pro-freedom parties were being asked to band together and student federations were organizing a peace rally to call for communal harmony. Despite that the persecution of Hindus showed no signs of ceasing.

  After some food and a shut-eye, I decided to go out to assess the situation. The rickshaw wound its way past Shantinagar towards Paltan and from there to Motijheel. On the way I came across the office of the Communist Party burnt to the ground and, a little ahead near Sapla, the Indian Airlines office too in a similar state. The streets were littered with bricks, stones, burnt bits of wood and broken and charred remnants of what used to be shops. I was certain that if I made my way to old Dhaka I would be greeted by many more such sights and I was not sure if I wanted to see them. What would have been the point. I knew what was happening across the country and I did not wish to go and gawk at injured and dead people or their broken and burnt houses and temples.

  A huge procession of fez caps marched past shouting: ‘Why the Babri Masjid! India must answer!’ I was certain these were the same people who were destroying property, setting things on fire and attacking Hindus on the roads. To me these people were not human beings but feral animals in human skin. I asked the rickshaw-puller to take me towards Palasi. Reaching the slum I let the rickshaw go and walked up to the shanty in which Nirmalendu Goon used to live. The rickety door of his shed looked so worn out that anyone could kick it in without much effort. The shanty was also right on the road and I was terrified that someone was going to set it on fire and one of the most renowned poets of the country would burn to death in his own home.