The Butchers of Bengal

Short Story of War – The Butchers of Bengal
(Note: Image does not illustrate or has any resemblance with characters depicted in the story)
Photo credit: keeshu from morguefile.com

The national highway is barely ten metres away. A truck full of West Pakistani soldiers just went by, leaving in its trail ,acrid smoke, as if in continuation of the  violation of Bangladesh. MY Bangladesh!  But little do those mother fu*kers know, that today is the day when the earth they walk on, will vanish from under their feet. For that to happen though, I have to stay focused and hide behind the bush, for just a few more minutes. Now that the dogs in the truck have sniffed around, the motorcade shouldn’t be far behind.  The second jeep in the motorcade will have the three men whose death is more important to my people than the Liberation of Bangladesh. It’s only a matter of time before Mukti Bahini and the Indians roll in and give the rest of the West Pakistanis a royal hiding. But Rao Farman Ali, A.K. Niazi and Tikka Khan, THEY deserve to die in the hands of a Bangladeshi!  THEY,are the Butchers of Bengal!

Ah! The cool breeze from the Podda river! I am feeling it for the last time in my life and it feels every bit as soothing as it always did. Even with 30 kgs of a potent nitroglycerine mixture wrapped around my torso. Even when I know, that in minutes, I will blow myself to pieces .The breeze still manages to weave its evocative magic on me. I am reminded  of the time I used to sit on my mom’s lap as she used to marinate the hilsa under the harsh afternoon sun all those years ago. We would be waiting for that sudden jet of refreshing river breeze to give us relief from the heat. The Hilsa , Bengal’s favourite fish, they seemed to be in endless supply in the Podda.  The Podda river, was the centre of our existence.It supported us in ways we couldn’t even begin to enumerate but it was also the sorrow of Bengal. During the monsoons of 1957 when the river broke its banks, it took with it everything we had including my father and two of my little sisters. My mother, me and my youngest sister were left with no choice but to leave for Dhaka. Little did I know then, that had we not moved to Dhaka all those years ago, I probably wouldn’t be here today, minutes away from ending my life, aged twenty two. I guess , its my destiny to take revenge on the behalf of Bangladesh.

Life in Dhaka was tough but we got by. My mother worked in a textile company sewing cloth for eighteen  hours a day. With the money she brought home, she somehow managed to make ends meet. It was only  a matter of time before I had to pitch in. I did so, when I was sixteen. I joined the East Pakistani Rifles. I took the help of some smart people in Dhaka and lied about my age. All the hard work in the village and hours of football in Dhaka meant that I was fit enough to pass the physical examination without much stress.  But my neighbours in the slum near Motijheel , didn’t approve of what I was doing. “ You are joining the enemy Siraj!” Rehman Chacha told me. “ If you need money, do something else. Clean the toilets. Why would you want to back stab your own people?”  said Moinul.

My mother though wanted me to have a government job. “They will take good care of you. You will never have to sleep hungry again”. Even , in those humiliating times, when we wouldn’t be sure where the next meal would come from, she had only my interests in her mind. She never spoke of what me being in the East Pakistan Rifles would possibly mean for her.  I kissed her on the forehead, and hugged Bulbul , my little sister. She was seven then.

Life began looking up for a brief while. Sure, we were put under some extreme physical torture as part of our endurance training. Sure there was the odd taunt. “ Speak in Urdu you bas*ard!”, my commanding officer from the West once reprimanded me.But , at the least  I was well fed. I could even send some money home to my mother. I was in a government job! Yes, I was in a government job! I had a job!

By the time it was 1969, the winds of the Bangladesh Movement were beginning to blow faster than ever. There was excitement in the street. Everybody wanted to contribute in their own little way to the cause of Bangladesh. Abdur Razzaq, a jawan two years my senior , spoke passionately about the idea to me. “ When we have Bangladesh, we will have a homeland for Bengalis all over the world. When we have Bangladesh, Bengalis will have self rule. We will not be humiliated by occupying forces like the British then and the Pakis now”. I was beginning to like the idea but what about the security of two meals a day? I wondered.

It took the arrival of the new major of our Regiment in 1969, Chaudhary Shujat Ali Khan  for my rose tinted glasses to be thrown off. He  was brought down to Dhaka with a simple yet spine chilling brief from his bosses in Islamabad. His job was to crush any and every sign of dissent at any and every level of East Pakistan Rifles. If he felt that there was even a semblance of sympathy in any one of us towards the Bangladesh movement , he would kill us. It was only a matter of time before Abdur Razzaq became his victim. He was murdered.His eyes gorged out .His genitals chopped off.  But if people like Chaudhary Shujat and his bosses, some of whom had now landed in Dhaka, thought that they could intimidate the Bengali populace into abandoning the idea of a separate homeland, they were horribly wrong. The idea of Bangladesh now had a momentum of its own and try as they did, they couldn’t stop the rising tide of nationalism from taking over the country.

When Sheikh Mujib was denied the reigns of Pakistan, even when he had won a sweeping majority in the elections, just because he was a Bengali, the split became wide open. There was no stopping the bifurcation of Pakistan.

I was worried for my mother and Bulbul. I went to meet them on 23^rd March 1971, just to make sure they were safe. They were doing quite well actually.  I was even worried about a backlash from my own people.  The temperatures were running so high that one couldn’t write off the possibility of a disgruntled Bengali mob attacking the kith and kin of serving jawans in the East Pakistan Rifles.

“ We are not made of that kind of stuff Siraj. Don’t worry. Your family is safe. Go and tell your bosses that they will have to leave our country. They will have to leave because its simply impossible for a hundred thousand  Pakistanis to control  seventy million Bengalis if we refused to co-operate.” I should have stayed back at my mother’s that day. I had a bad sense of foreboding . Things would have been different if I had stayed back. Why didn’t I stay back? It’s a question that rankles even as I stare death in the face.

I hear something! Could it be them? The motorcade seems to be here. I need to quickly put three layers of hay on the road.  The plan is simple. It is custom for villagers to dry hay on the road before they take it back to the villages to feed their cattle. But they would  keep one layer one the road, not three. Vehicles would just pass over the layer of hay and at the end of the day, after being beaten by the sun, the hay would be ready for consumption. But three layers of hay is a mini road block. It isn’t   road block enough to alarm people in the jeep heading the motorcade but it would slow them down for sure. And that , is exactly what I want. When the motorcade would slow down, I would sneak in from the side, jump on the second jeep. The impact of me hitting the jeep would set of an explosion so massive that it would leave a crater atleast six feet deep. The explosion will be heard miles away . More importantly, the explosion would take with it, the top brass of the West Pakistani Military Command in East Bengal. That would leave the Mukti Bahini and the Indians with precious little to do. The Paki Occupation of East Bengal would come to a swift and conclusive end. My death, would be a death , worth every inch of the body splitting pain it would bring with it. Ah! I am done with placing the hay on the road. As I look at it , it’s perfect. Not too high to invite suspicion from a distance, not too low to drive over without slowing down considerably. I am only one step away from martyrdom. A martyrdom that could have been avoided if only I had listened to my instinct on 23^rd March 1971. I overrode the sense of foreboding I had and left for the barracks.Little did I realize  that I was seeing my mother and sister for the last time  that night.

On the 24^th of March, they took away all our weapons. After dinner, we were asked to give an account of our rifles and every bullet we had with us. I guess it was obvious that something big was going to happen. Something not very good. But none of us were sure about what to expect. There were multiple theories going around about the disarmament of East Pakistan Rifles but the one that put maximum fear into the minds of the Bengali soldiers was that we were being sacked. Even in those days of fervent nationalism, most of us were more concerned about food. When we were told, we could continue to stay in the barracks, I breathed a sigh of relief. “Why would they ask us to stay in the barracks if they wanted to sack us? “ I thought to myself. My relief though was short lived.

On the night of the 25^th , we started hearing firing and explosions from the city. The distant firing would be followed by loud explosions  at irregular intervals. Was it the West Pakistani Regiments that had recently arrived in Dhaka? Who were they fighting? Surely, the Mukti Bahini couldn’t have entered the city in such large numbers? There was just too much firing and too many explosions for it to suggest that all that artillery was being used against a guerilla army. Was it the Indians?  But Dhaka is a good 150 kms from the Indian Border. The Indians couldn’t have made it Dhaka without encountering resistance along the way. And we would have known. What could possibly be going on out there? Even as I was contemplating all the possibilities in my mind, I got used to the now regular firing and the intermittent loud explosions. Before I knew , I was asleep.

I may have fallen asleep, but I had a disturbed sleep that night. When I woke up, it was 5 am and the sun was on the horizon. The firing was still being heard but the explosions seemed to have died down. I decided to drink a glass of milk , so I walked up to the canteen.

“ There is no milk” the boy in the canteen said.

“ No milk? Why?” I asked.

“ Havent you heard about it? They are killing people randomly in the city. It’s a bloodbath out there. They killed thousands of people last night. The milk van wont come today.”

I froze. It suddenly dawned on me. They had taken our weapons back. Not a single Bengali soldier had a single weapon. The grand Pakistani design became clear. I had a nauseating feeling about mother and Bulbul. Something told me to expect the worst. “ No! It cant be!”  I told myself. I instantly started running towards the boundary walls of the cantonment. I jumped the boundary wall and ran into the city. The city was deserted.

Nobody , not even those motherfu*king murderers deserve to see their loved ones in the state that I saw them. About a kilometer from Motijheel, I saw Bulbul among a heap of dead bodies on a footpath. She was naked, shot through her breasts. She had bled from her vagina. The bas*ards had raped her! They had raped a fifteen year old! They shot a fifteen year old.I felt a deep, indescribable sense of pain and grief when  I thought about her final moments. She must have been looking for me! But alas, I wasn’t there. I was sleeping in the barracks as they raped and shot my sister. I walked gingerly towards a body that lay a few feet away from Bulbul’s. Could it get worse? In the East Pakistan of six months back, it could.

Mother’s body was mutilated with bullets. She was lying face down on the footpath, blood oozing from her mouth.  The woman who had spent her entire life fighting against all odds for a better life for her me and Bulbul, lay dead in front of me. I was reminded of how she had insisted on me joining the East Pakistan Rifles. “They will take good care of you. You will never have to sleep hungry again”. Those words rung in my ears. Just then a jeep with some West Pakistani soldiers drove past. They were armed but they didn’t seem to even consider shooting at me or harming me in anyway. It then struck me that I was uniformed.  They would have thought I was one of their own. The double standards of my being hit me like ton of bricks. I was safe, even as my family lay dead on the road and the whole of Dhaka was under siege. The bas*ards had made a traitor out of me. I fell to the ground , crying.

There was no going back to the barracks. My world had been destroyed and somebody had to pay for it. I had to act. Before I knew, days turned to into weeks turned into months. I used to spend the mornings trying to help my community in Motijheel rebuild their lives. In the evenings, I used to spend time with Moinul, my friend from childhood. He worked in a chemical factory. It was only a matter of time before revenge crossed my mind. What began as a shred of an emotion became a fully blown idea. Moinul’s expertise with chemicals only helped. Very soon, I had my weapon. Nitroglycerine.  Moinul told me, it was explosive to the extent that the slightest of bumps or even exposure to sunlight in temperatures over 35 degrees would mean instant catastrophe. It was exactly the kind of catastrophe I was hoping to unleash on the perpetrators of the events of that terrible night in Dhaka.

Tikka Khan, A.K.Niazi  and Rao Farman Ali were the conceivers and executors of Operation Searchlight. The idea was to pummel us Bengalis into submission. Make us abandon the idea of separate statehood. The modus operandi was to unleash a streak of wanton killing, rape and destruction on the important cities. Nobody knows how many died. People cant seem to agree on a number. Mother and Bulbul, are now part of a disputed statistic. Independence seemed pointless without revenge. Somebody had to pay for the brutality unleashed on us. Who better than the chief conspirators themselves?

The only problem was that nitroglycerine is so unstable that there was no way we could dig a hole in the road and plant it there or find a way to keep it in a car or a jeep. The slightest of bumps, and it would explode. And then, there was the risk of exposure to sunlight. We had to choose a vehicle.What could be used to carry nitroglycerine to its target, The Butchers of Bengal? In a flash, I got my idea. The vehicle wouldn’t be inanimate. The vehicle , would be human. The vehicle, would be me.

Ah!, I hear the motorcade! The moment is here. It would be the second jeep. I will sneak in as the motorcade slows down because of the hay stack. All I need to do, is to jump on the jeep. And that would bring to an end, a bloody chapter in the history of the yet to be born Bangladesh. All those months of planning has now to come to this. I need to be super focused. Oh fuck! I nearly tripped over .I didn’t see the log of wood lying on the ground. I felt the nitroglycerine container move around my torso.  F*ck!!!! Will it explode?!