Of unrequited bonds across border

Ranjit Powar

Anirudh Kala’s first book, The Unsafe Asylum, is not dedicated to any of his family members, but a soul mate across the border, Dr Haroon Rashid Choudhry. He lives on the other side of a 71-year-old scar called the Radcliffe Line. The dedication itself sets the tone and tenor to the 13 stories, each of them a dirge to the anguish of “unrequited relationships”, victims to mass madness. The author, who is a psychiatrist, gives additional depth and angle to these stories by delving into the bizarre phenomenon of mass madness and the resultant, long-lasting psychological aberrations and trauma to the victims. He brings out the highly complex nature of the perpetuation of violence, processes and consequences of migration and a strange continuity of relationships which would not be severed by borders. The narrative is so fluid and natural and the details so eidetic that each story seems to be narrating a true episode, eliciting a feeling of déjà vu.

Dr Prakash Kohli, an Indian psychiatrist, is the common protagonist in most stories, giving these tales a continuity and common context. He hears the touching story of Rulda’s transfer from Lahore Mental Hospital to a mental facility in India, and his separation from his close friend Fattu who is left behind in Lahore. The narration brings out the paradox of a touching relationship between the two ‘mad’ inmates, opposed to the violent madness raging in the normal people.

In Belly Button, Kohli has lost his father Ved to terrorism in Punjab and immersed his remains in River Ravi that flows into Pakistan, possibly as per his wishes. He travels back to Gujranwala to re-discover a strange, poignant relationship with Roshaan daayi, a midwife, who provided shelter to his parents during the riots and aided his birth. On a wall of her room he finds a charcoal sketch of his father made by Roshaan. The author delicately leaves the elusive bond between Ved and Roshaan unexplained.

Harpreet Cheema, the abducted heroine in Sita’s Bus, is left behind in Sialkot by her husband. She comes to terms with her destiny by marrying the abductor’s brother, who shows her tenderness and care. She loves her job and is pregnant by her second husband Aslam when she is forcibly “recovered “and taken to India by the police and undergoes a forced abortion.” “Nobody gave a damn about my honour. Why should I give a damn about any country’s honour? Don’t I have any opinion about whether I want to go back or not?” She could well be the face of countless abducted women, abandoned to flounder in no-man’s land after being marauded in body and spirit. 

This book is a must read for those who should know what happened and those still feel the phantom limb pain of Partition and has inherited the loss of unrequited relationships through a collective subconscious.