The House We Left Behind and the People Who Live There Now

Many years after Partition, when I had grown up and had my own family, I went back to visit our old village in Bangladesh. I wanted to see our old house one last time. The village had changed a lot. New houses had come up. The old paths were different. But I still remembered the way to our home. When I reached there, I stood in front of our old house for a long time. It was still standing, but it looked different. The walls were painted in new colours. The old neem tree in the courtyard was gone. New people were living inside. A kind man came out. He was the grandson of the family who had taken our house after we left. He invited me inside. I sat in the courtyard where I had played as a child. Everything felt strange and familiar at the same time. I asked him about the old well. He showed me. It was still there. I asked about the mango tree my father had planted. It was cut down many years ago. I asked if they had found anything belonging to us when they came to the house. He showed me an old brass pot that my mother used to cook in. They had kept it carefully all these years. The man told me his family had also suffered during Partition. Some of their relatives had to leave their homes in West Bengal and come to East Bengal. So they understood our pain. He said they had always taken care of our old house with respect. Before leaving, I stood under the place where our neem tree used to be. I closed my eyes and remembered my childhood — my mother cooking, my father working in the field, Rahim coming to play, the sound of the river nearby. When I opened my eyes, tears were flowing down my face. Partition gave us a new country, but it took away our home forever. That house now belongs to another family. But in my heart, it will always be my father’s house, my mother’s kitchen, and my childhood playground. No line drawn on a map can take that away from me. The house is empty of our bodies, but it is still full of our memories.