And all of a sudden, I begin to feel..
…like an anxious school girl; my heart ceases to be calm, my knees tremble but my feet are frozen stiff; I try to wriggle my toes inside my black Naughty Boy shoes but my toes aren’t there! The knot in my stomach is tighter than the one in the school-tie around my sweating neck; it’s that feeling of waiting in the assembly, class wise, as Mother Superior arrives with the stack of report cards tucked under her robed arm. The moment for hearing the results!
I begin to feel…like a hopeful farmer.I look at the grapes in my vineyard, dangling like dark pearls from a maiden’s ears, my throat parched with anxiety; my face freckled from farming in the sun and the wind; my brows furrowed with apprehension; my hands quiver as I pick the nipping scissors. The moment of harvest!
I begin to feel…like an expectant mother. I am in the labour room of a hospital; pain, joy and anxiety vie to outdo one another within my panicking being; I am oblivious to all whirring, beeping and wheeling noise around me; my heart collapses into itself and then rapidly begins to expand and expand and expand, till I can breathe no more. My ears strain only for that one noise, one voice. The moment of birth!
Yes, this is what the story of life is made up of… of moments of result, of harvest, of birth; and this is what perhaps overwhelms an author at the eve of the birth of her book, every book, each time. Because every book, every story, is eventually the story of life, looked at and seen from various perspectives. Sometimes the story is plain narration, sometimes it is an explanation of why that which already exists does so, and at other times, the story is a search for the yet unfound and unknown. A quest. Now of course, it is this moment of result, of harvest, of birth, which is overwhelming me. And I cease to be the composed grown-up that I usually am. For, like the school girl’s exam result, the farmer’s harvest and the mother’s birth, I am anxious as the hour of the birth of my next book nears!
I can’t wait to hold the book and smell the pages! I have, like the schoolgirl, put in much study and work into it. I have also, like the farmer, put in much labor and sweated through the scripting of this book. And finally, like the mother, I have nurtured every idea that I conceived, I have grown with anxious passion every chapter,like the growth of a fetus every hour, and I have thought of a name too for this child of mine… An Unfinished Search.
And just between you and me, here’s a little personal narration of how the concept for An Unfinished Search germinated.
Travelling along an interminable and arduous road, lending my company to my husband, at that time a senior bureaucrat in the Home & Political Department of the Assam Government, in India, we arrive, unplanned, at the graves of Malegarh, in the district of Karimganj. The dusty drive along the Indo-Bangladesh International border, the barbed fences punctuated by massive border-gates which facilitate visa-less movement for villagers who had homes in Bangladesh and fields in India, the little-known story behind the graves, and the unsung heroes lying therein, the historic Sutarkandi Outpost, and moving anecdotes from locals, all of these unwittingly gave birth to An Unfinished Search.
Born out of wedlock, in the village of Hazratkandi, Anjaan’s tale traces the desperate search of three generations of Hazratkandis for their identity, which they believe lies buried in the martyr’s graves at Malegarh. The story meanders through the trauma of India’s freedom struggle, partition, World War I, West Pakistan’s ‘Operation Searchlight’ (the military operation carried out by the Pakistani Army in March 1971 to attempt the destruction of the Bengali nationalist movement in what was then called East Pakistan) and, finally, the creation of Bangladesh, focusing not so much on the events themselves as on how the events affected the lives of the Hazratkandis. Asman Hazratkandi, the last in the line, remains in the same village where he was born, while the village itself has been shoved from India to Pakistan, and then to Bangladesh. In life, Asman Hazratkandi belonged nowhere. In death, he lay at the Indo-Bangladesh International Border. During both, no land accepted him. Asman Hazratkandi died a no land’s man, leaving behind An Unfinished Search.
So in less than a month of submitting the manuscript, I and Prabhu Guptara, now less my publisher and more a friend and advisor, were excitedly putting notes to and fro. We were looking up pictures of the Malegarh War Memorial site, verifying information, consulting records both military and historical, and checking facts with stories the locals told. Phew!
Since then, I have been waiting the birth of the book, twiddling my thumbs into a frenzy and biting my nails down to the cuticles. I wish for the book to embark on its own, beautiful journey, reaching out to readers who will appreciate, analyze, criticize and most of all, relate to the tale. For, An Unfinished Search is, somewhere along the many times and events that it flows through, a tale that embraces you, me and all of us. Because life itself is a search.
Meanwhile, I go back to being the little school girl, the farmer and the mother in labor, waiting to hear the birthsong of An Unfinished Search!
