Walk toward Calcutta from East Pakistan

JI leader Motiur Rahman was recently executed for crimes against humanity. Here is a poem Bal found to remember him


Saad Saud May 18, 2016
Pakistani soldiers rounding up a Bangladeshi liberation fighter in 1971. PHOTO: Mujibnagar website

Dear diary,

One Million aunts are dying for bread
One Million uncles lamenting the dead
Grandfather millions homeless and sad
Grandmother millions silently mad
Millions of daughters walk in the mud

Millions of children wash in the flood
A Million girls vomit and groan
Millions of families hopeless alone
Millions of souls nineteen seventy one

homeless on Jessore road under grey sun
A million are dead, the million who can
Walk toward Calcutta from East Pakistan
How many fathers in woe

How many sons nowhere to go?
How many daughters nothing to eat?
How many uncles with swollen sick feet?
Millions of babies in pain

Millions of mothers in rain
Millions of brothers in woe
Millions of children nowhere to go*


*The preceding extract, taken from Allen Ginsberg’s September on Jessore Road, is dedicated to the "memory" of Bangladesh JI leader Motiur Rahman Nizami who was recently executed for crimes against humanity.

Yours truly,
Bal

COMMENTS (8)

SM | 8 years ago | Reply @Balbinder Singh: Pakistani soldiers wear Khaki uniform - this picture is of outside Dacca stadium after the surrender ceremony and these troops belong to Tiger Siddiqui's Mukhti Bahini.
Balbinder Singh | 8 years ago | Reply @Zeref: The badge the soldier kicking has on his shoulder is that of Pakistan Army. I know this, cause my uncle who was in Bangladesh war has an uniform of one of the Pakistani soldier as a trophy collection.
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