Finchu Mama

Then rumours started flowing in. Any and everyone coming from any direction was telling one story or another and some of which was that the muslims were mustering all around the town and the outskirts for attacking the Hindus in the town. In Jalpaiguri town the Hindus were a vast majority. There were hardly more than ten percent muslims after independence and partition of the country. Some ares in the outskirts and adjoining villages there were a number of muslims who were mostly poor farmers with one or two landholders among them. The elders congregated in a meeting on the varanda of Ghatak Bari and after much deliberation it was decided that all women and children would be sent inside the jail compound for their safety and all youngmen would stand on guard at all the places of entrance to our locality with whatever weapons they could gather. Though we were college students but we and all our friends were given the duty of guarding the streets, lanes and by-lanes within the Para mostly guarding our own houses. Jiban Gati Ray, with his double-barrelled gun stood on the ist floow varanda of his huge mansion. My father with his single barrel gun was posted on the crossing in front of Umagati Vidya Mandir. A group under the leadership of Sambhu Mukherjee took position near Raikut Bari More (Street crossing). A group took position near Dinbazar Post Office just near the Bazar er pool. Two other groups assembled at Dhardhara bridge near sub-area school and on the road from Walkergunge. It was a scene when the ladies of our locality with their gold and jewellery bound in a corner of their sarees and small children in hand started walking towards the jail compound water pouring profusely from their eyes and lamenting loudly at the loss of everything in their lives and at the same time giving solace to each other.

Finchu Mama

It was end 1949 or early 1950. I was in Ist year. Gora was my class mate but in science stream. Finchu Mama was in class IX. He was two years my junior. He left Zilla School and was admitted in Fanindra Dev Institution. The political tension was mounting between India and Pakistan. A riot started in East Pakistan. Actually it was not a riot. The muslims in East Pakistan was literally slaughtering Hindus, torturing Hindu women, driving them out by force. Almost lacs of Hindu people were flooding West Bengal every day. They were coming by train, by road, on carts and even on foot. Then a few trains arrived the border and also Sealdah station with a number of wounded and slaughtered dead bodies consecutively for a few days. Obviously the tensions were mounting in West Bengal also. We were getting the news thorough newspapers. There were stories and photographs every day in all the papers. Then suddenly a few dead bodies arrived at our town by train from east Pakistan consecutively for two days. Darjeeling Mail in those days was still following its old route from Sealdah to Darjeeling via Barrackpore, Naihati, Ranaghat and then through Darshana, Poradaha, Iswardi, Santahar, Parbatipur in the then East Pakistan (and now Bangladesh) and then entering India again at Haldibari and reached Siliguri (Siliguri Town Station at present) passing Jalpaiguri on its way. These dead bodies arrived in Darjeeling Mail. The situation in our otherwise very calm and sober town was very tense. Classes in college remained suspended. Then one morning news reached us that looting has started in the Dinbazar area. There were some shops belonging to some muslim people on the main road just in front of Nawab Palace. Some miscreants, taking advantage of the political and communal tension, started looting those shops. One of friends, Laxmi, who went for daily shopping, instead of vegetables and fish etc. was coming back with shoes loaded in his shopping bag. We stopped him in front of our house. When his bag was unpacked we found a number of shoes and sleepers but could not find even a single pair which could fit both feet of a person. Luxmi told us that when he reached the place, looting was in full spree and he just collected and bagged whatever he could lay his hands on. Luxmi felt very ashamed in front of all the people many of whom were the elders.