Sudipto
Das, the author of the best-selling 'The Ekkos Clan', talks about the sufferings of people on the
Bangladesh side during the 1947 Partition of India.
By
Shevlin Sebastian
Bhrigu
fell at her feet. “Ma, don’t go,” he pleaded, crying softly.
“Let us all die together. I don’t want to survive like this. Let
them kill all of us. Don’t go.” Khubha raised Bhrigu and held him
to her. “Remember the river? He never stops, he never gets lost. He
has to flow, and he should flow. If there are mountains in the way,
he goes around them. He jumps and leaps and makes waterfalls. Do
whatever you like, but never die. Anything is better than death. Let
me go now.” Kubha closed the door. Bhrigu heard the door of the
other room slam shut. Soon, he heard hushed cries of pain.”
This
is an extract from Sudipto Das’s remarkable novel, ‘The Ekkos
Clan’, where, for the first time, the experience of Hindus in East
Bengal (now Bangladesh) is meticulously described. These includes
riots, rapes, stabbings, and communal carnage.
“There was an
equally horrific experience on the Bangladesh side, just as it was on
the Punjab-Pakistan side,” says Sudipto, while on a brief reading
visit to Kochi. “But not many people know
about it. Even in Bengali literature, there is hardly any exploration
of what had happened.”
And
in his research Sudipto came across an interesting phenomenon. “The
atrocities were not done by the local Muslims, but by the Bihari
Muslims who came across the border and did mayhem,” he says. “In
fact, the Bangla Muslims saved many Hindu families.”
Sudipto,
himself, is of East Bengal origin. Like the two youngsters in the
novel, his uncle, then 14, and father, only seven, made a daring
escape, at the insistence of their mother, and made their way to
Kolkata.
Many
relatives followed suit. But despite living in Kolkata for fifty-odd
years, home still meant Bangladesh. “They talked about Bangladesh
all the time,” says Sudipto. “They always remembered their
village and the people who lived there. The language we speak at home
– Bangaal – is that which is spoken in Bangladesh. Their exile is
a wound which has never healed. And it had impacted me even though I
had a comfortable upbringing in Kolkata. That was one of the reasons
I wrote on this subject.”
Not
surprisingly, Khubha, the mother, is the most powerful character in
the novel. A widow, she is strong, as well as practical. Khubha has
an affair with her brother-in-law. “She is not a goddess, nor is
she a vamp,” says Sudipto. “She is just a normal human being who
succumbed to her desires.” And even as riots raged in East Bengal,
and Hindus are being killed by Muslims, Khubha falls in love with a
Muslim man.
But
‘The Ekkos Clan’ is not only about the 1947 Partition. The scene
moves to present-day Stanford, in the USA, and to a place called
Arkaim in Russia. It is a novel steeped in intellectual subjects: so
there is linguistic paleontology, astrology, archaeology, music,
maths, ancient history…the list goes on. And yet, all these
subjects are dealt with, in an easy and simple style, so that the
reader is never put off. And all these topics are pursued to
understand the meaning of the stories that Khubha told her children
when they were growing up.
Interestingly,
Sudipto’s motivation to write his first book was unusual. “I am
doing well in my profession,” says this Vice President of an
electronic design services company in Bangalore. Sudipto is also an
engineering graduate from the Indian Institute of Technology,
Kharagpur. “But I also felt that I was not doing anything unique.
Whatever I was doing, anybody else could do.”
So
he decided to write a novel. “This book is mine alone,” he says.
“And nobody else can lay claim to it.”
But
it was not an easy task. He began work every day after 10 p.m., and
wrote till 2 a.m. But he would have to get up at 7 a.m., to get ready
to go to work. On weekends, he carried on working on the book. “For
the past five-and-a-half years, I have screwed up my personal life,”
says Sudipto, who is married, and has a 10-year-old son. “Every six
months I would fall sick because of lack of sleep, stress, and office
pressures.”
And
then when the book was complete, it was not easy to find a publisher.
“The literary world is a closed group and does not entertain
outsiders,” says Sudipto. “They have their own shell. They don't
like engineers or IT guys writing books. They look down on Chetan
Bhagat, even though he has superb sales.”
But
Sudipto had a stroke of luck when the Delhi-based Niyogi Books
accepted his manuscript. And ever since the book was published in
July, it has steadily climbed up the literature and fiction
best-seller list on Flipkart and is perched at No. 19 now.
“I
want more and more people to read it,” he says. “So I am going
around the country holding book readings.”
(The New Indian Express, Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram)
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