Have heard countless tales of partition from grandparents, stories of how they owned vast lands and how they had to leave all that and come and settle in Shillong. My grandma often told us how her father was a zaminder and that they had to leave all those, she always had an air about herself, a dignity that never died and the pride of being member of a zamindar family even when everything else was lost.
People from Sylhet fled to Shillong and people from Dhaka and neighbouring areas fled to Kolkata. There they were given rehab lands and some money to start everything a fresh but most importantly the pain of leaving everything lived with them for ever.
They told us of incidents where burning hot water was poured over people who were migrating, of people massacred in moving trains and buses and other such horror tales. They lived the political blunder of those days, the government gave away the land to the other country but the people could not live there due to the atrocities committed on them and they returned to India and settled here and there. This is the story of the Sylhetis and we live in pride till this day because we have been displaced, we have started from scrath, built new homes, built new dreams and again only to suffer on similar grounds whether in Assam, Meghalaya or so called West Bengal. It is the irony of all times that we feel ourselves at home in any other part of the world but not in West Bengal and East Bengal is lost for ever. We are proud because inspite of all these, we have a bond, because we succeed wherever our feet and destiny takes us to and we still remember who we were!
People from Sylhet fled to Shillong and people from Dhaka and neighbouring areas fled to Kolkata. There they were given rehab lands and some money to start everything a fresh but most importantly the pain of leaving everything lived with them for ever.
They told us of incidents where burning hot water was poured over people who were migrating, of people massacred in moving trains and buses and other such horror tales. They lived the political blunder of those days, the government gave away the land to the other country but the people could not live there due to the atrocities committed on them and they returned to India and settled here and there. This is the story of the Sylhetis and we live in pride till this day because we have been displaced, we have started from scrath, built new homes, built new dreams and again only to suffer on similar grounds whether in Assam, Meghalaya or so called West Bengal. It is the irony of all times that we feel ourselves at home in any other part of the world but not in West Bengal and East Bengal is lost for ever. We are proud because inspite of all these, we have a bond, because we succeed wherever our feet and destiny takes us to and we still remember who we were!
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