Transcript in English

Part 1

Rekha Das: I was in that camp…  In the camp we were…

Question: [unclear] Which camp, what is the name?

Answer: Srinagar [unclear] we were in the camp.

Question: Srinagar, where is that?

Answer: You have to go to the Agartala side with [unclear]

Question: Tripura?

Answer: Tripura.

Question: So you are from Tripura. Now if you could tell us…

Answer: We were far away from Tripura, I mean, we were…in a camp, that is. Staying in the camp, we probably spent… ten years or how-many years… After our stay there, we had a sister-in-law [unclear]. My own sister-in-law. She gave us some land there. We made a house…We suffered a lot.

Question: The day you arrived, when exactly was the decision taken to leave everything and go?

Answer: We never understood that we will come away from Bangladesh.

Question: What happened that day?

Answer: You know, after night-fall, there will be sounds, sounds, sounds, and more sounds would be heard all through the night.

Question: What was the fuss about?

Answer: They would enter our houses, and torture, and take away our dignity.

Question: That’s the noise?

Answer: They will kill us, the news was in the air. Then what should we do? I heard my brother-in-law say that we can’t stay anymore.

Question: Are you married then?

Answer: Yes, I got married

Question: If you could talk about that, please. When were you married?

Rekha Das: I got married at the age of nine.

Question: How was your relationship with your family, when you ran away?

Answer: No, we did not have any contact with our parents when we came out of our father’s house during the war. We couldn’t go anywhere, you see, we were encircled…

Question: So, you got married at the age of nine and then did you go to your father’s house?

Answer: Yes, like going to my house… 

Question: After running away then?

Answer: Das: Our father, so to speak, [unclear] left us.

Question: When?

Answer: [Pause] After marriage, he moved to Kolkata.

Part 2 (1.20-4.25)

Rekha Das: Slowly, as we moved through the mountains, we came to Srinagar. We stayed in …camp. In the camp, we stayed for ten to fifteen years. After staying there, my sister-in-law gave us some land. We built a house. I have gone to the field, to cultivate rice, I’ve used the plough, I’ve reared cows…a lot of trouble. Then, I used to go to the top of the hill, to acquire fire-wood. I’ve done it all.

Question: What were you paid for these?

Answer: Yes, we got our rations (rice-and-dal).

Question: No, not rations. I am asking, money?

Answer: Yes, the government used to give us  money. They used to give us money, aata, and stuff.

Question: What kind of payments?

Answer: They used to give us one rupee and four annas every week and… ten kilograms of flour and ten kilograms of rice…

Question: It was enough then?

Answer: I used to eat alone at that time, I was separated from my father-in-law and mother-in-law by then.

Question: After going to the camp you are completely alone then?

Answer: Yes, I am alone. Alone, I do my own work, eat, till the land of the government, then go to the mountains to cut wood, plough the field.

Question: They told you beforehand what work had to be done…?

Answer: No. We got to know each other by ourselves. Cultivating Nisi rice…putting them on the field…

Question: What kind of work did they ask you to do against the money that was given from the camp?

Answer: When we are in the camp, the camp people don’t say anything. When my sister-in-law gave me money and we went to our house, then I saw that everyone worked and thought, ‘why should I suffer? Let’s do these things, let’s see them and do them.’ I saw them and learnt everything. And I used to do it all by myself.

Question: Who gave the money? Whose salary was this?

Answer: Other people used to do the work for the government, I used to till the soil and I used to do the rice harvesting for my sister-in-law.

Question: And were the boys given the same money? Because, there are many reasons for girls…

Answer: No, no. My sister-in-law took care of me. I used to plough the fields for the government, the government gave me only that money.

Question: [interrupting] And the parents…?

Answer: [continuing] So I tilled the soil.

Question: Your relationship with your parents…that was severed when you arrived here…did you find any trace of them again?

Answer: Oh no, I found out after my parents… Mother had arrived, father had also arrived. Where we were from, Tripura.

Question: They are also there?

Answer: They went to Bangladesh to visit there.

Question: And your brothers and sisters?

Answer: Didi is at Didi’s father-in-law’s house

Part 3

Question: Where is that?

Answer: My sister’s in-laws’ place.

Question: Yes you were saying, directly where did you go?

Answer: From there, they sent us to the camp. In the camp, they used to give us rice-and-dal.

Question: So you went to that camp and said that you have come across the border? You did not say this anywhere before?

Answer: Yes

Question: So did you get a slip at the border-crossing?

Answer: No no. They didn’t give us anything

Question: Did not give anything? This is 1971?

Answer: Hm.

Question: So you went to the camp. What did they give you from the camp?

Answer: In the camp, we were given rice and daal.

Question: The first time you arrived there, what did you eat? What did they give you at first?

Answer: The first day we got there, they immediately gave us a place to pitch our tent. The tent was pitched, and then, we got rice and daal.

Question: You went and said, we will stay here?

Answer: Hm

Question: Then they gave you a tent?

Answer: Yes. And they gave rice, and daal. Oil they gave, they gave…everything.

Question: Did it have to be cooked? Or?

Answer: Yes. We had to cook it.

Fuel-wood had to be picked, and cooked… I used to collect wood.

Question: So, there was no ready-made food?

Answer: No

Question: And who was with you then?

Answer: At that time, my mother-in-law, brothers-in-law, father-in-law, sisters-in-law … we were all there.

Question: So, what happened after that, I mean, how was it after you got separated?

Answer: Yes. Separate…as in,my in-laws were all in one place, I was living separately, with my nanad [sister in law], and I worked there.

Question: Where did your Nanad live?

Answer: Nanda also lived close by..

Question: That means another camp close by? Or on the other side of the camp?

Answer: No no, we had left the camp then.

Question: When did you leave the camp?

Answer: In the camp…we stayed for 15 years, then we left the camp.

Question: So you stayed in the camp for 15 years, then. Did you move out alone…?

Answer: No, we all left. After everyone arrived, we were given cards and all. My father-in-law knows. I also had my birth certificate. Everything was kept in a box, and was stolen one night… I told you the other did…they were burned by the thieves. My birth certificate was this big! During our Pakistan era, we didn’t have polio-cards and all. Our birth certificates were these big ones. We had all such papers…they were burnt.

Question: So didn’t your in-laws try to locate your husband?

Answer: No

Question: But, did they misbehave with you, or anything like that?

Answer: Oh yes! My mother-in-law was very abusive. She used to beat me…

Question: Did you protest?

Answer: No. To whom should I?

Question: You lived with them?

Answer: Yes.

Question: There was no such option for you to enrol separately in the camp as a single woman?

Answer: No. I mean, I was with them.

Question: So you were with them. For 15 years, you were in the camp. Was the food given in the camp regular? The rice-and-dal?

Answer: Yes. They used to give rice and daal, daily.

Question: And did they give any money?

Answer: No! No money or anything.

Question: So no money? Dole? Monthly dole? And did you have to do any work?

Answer: Some worked. Some went to harvest paddy, some went to process paddy. Such odd jobs… we had become acquaintances you see, so small odd jobs were common. If not, where will you get the money?

Question: But they did not do anything officially from the camp? And how was the situation of women in that camp?

Answer: Oh! There were plenty.

Question: What was the situation? Were there separate bathrooms? What was the safety like?

Answer: No, no bathrooms. In the camp, there were no bathrooms. Some used to go to the garden and use the bathroom.

Question: And how was the safety… How was the environment?

Answer: The environment was not so good either.

Question: And what was the condition of Tripura at that time? Because you went out of the camp to Tripura…

Answer: The condition was good.

Question: What about the fact that you were a Bengali…that you are from outside…did the locals ever say anything?

Answer: No no no.

Part 4

Question: Then when you came to Bengal from Tripura, did you bring any card that would be useful for coming here, a card from the government?

Answer: You mean paper? They didn’t give it to me, maybe they gave it to my in-laws, God knows what they did with them.

Question: You didn’t have anything? Now that they’re saying, after the NRC, there wiill be CAA, what is your opinion on that matter? What does that mean to you if someone asks to see the paper? How do you think it can affect you?

Answer: [unclear] Modi said NRC…NRC, I have done it.

Question: How did you do it?

Answer: … from online

Question: That was probably the Aadhaar card.

Answer: No, NRC. I asked people and did it. Online.

Question: When did you do it?

Answer: This is what I did when Modi came for votes. After NRC [unclear] came.

Question: How many years ago?

Answer: What year…one? I probably [pause] three times [unclear]

Question: No, no, no, no, the bill had not been passed then, what you are saying is something different. There will be a CAA. The Citizens Amendment Act says that the documents have to be shown. What do you think about that?

Answer: They told me to do the NRC …

Question: You mentioned that NRC certificate…

Answer: I did this from there.

Question: Who told you to do that?

Answer: When I was working in the house of Ram Police, they told everyone to do it, so I did it.

Question: Well, well. So you have made that card?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Well, besides, have you ever wanted to go to Bangladesh or Tripura, and see how things are?

Answer: No

Question: Ever? The house he was born in?

Answer: Those things are now in the hands of the Muslims, all in the hands of Muslims…

Question: You never wanted to look back?

Answer: (Long Pause) No.