The story by a Birangona

The story by a Birangona

(Note: Birangona are the Women of War. They are the female survivors and sufferers of the Bangladesh Liberation War, during which over 200,000 women were raped and tortured.)

After a long day’s play Potka holds his mother tight to fall asleep.

The stories of prince and princess no longer charm him as he finds them too unreal.

He asks his mother who his father was and the stories of his courage.

She says he was the most valiant of all and came from the other side of a border.

He moved like the torrent and brought down all that came his way.

Hearing this, Potka got charged up and swirled his fingers cutting across the still air.

She kept on saying more stories of his prowess, unaware that Potka was now deep asleep.

Her emotions overpowered her and she now started to say about what had really happened.

Your father came from an enemy-land and he actually came with his men to wipe us all.

I was in my teens and on a given day I was made the Kanamachi in a game of blind fly.

I moved randomly till I pushed myself against someone standing stiff and tall.

Even before I could take off the cloth band covering my eyes,

In all force I was lifted and taken towards the bamboo forest.

There the gust of the wind easily overpowers the scream of a human cry.

Here was I raped even before I had found my first teenage love.

I was ripped off all my bodily coverings!

 While the cloth band from the last blind fly game still remain stuck round my eyes.

He left, know not where; with all his men leaving behind ruin and pain all around.

And months later I discovered he left you in me and so you were born.

This being the story of your valiant father and so were all his men who all barged along.

Saying so, she then gained some of her lost senses and frowns at herself.

“Why did I say all these to a child who knows no enemies and the borders men made?”.

Her own open eyes gets the sigh of relief to see Potka’s eyes shut in deep sleep.

She then cries out to her God surrendering herself to the divine play.

“The more we make rules and borders you do something downplaying all our efforts”.

Potka then opens his sparkling eyes and offloading all her worries and the overbearing pain,

And asks his mother to repeat the valiant stories of his father when he goes to sleep again.

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Info on the game Kanamachi (blind fly) as mentioned above:

A number of children stand in a circle. One of them becomes the kanamachchi. He/She is called so because a piece of cloth is tied over his eyes and he cannot see. The children then gradually increase the circle, and the kanamachi runs after the others trying to touch one of them, as if buzzing around haphazardly like a fly. The children shout out the rhyme ‘kana machi bho bho, jake pabi take chho’ (Buzzing fly, catch whoever you can). The person who is touched has to be identified by name. If correctly identified, he/she becomes the new kanamachchi, and it goes on.