A Life Long Ago

Barely twelve years old, Dayamoyee watches with bewilderment as her village, Dighpait, begins to change and people she knows and loves pack their belongings and leave. India has been partitioned, and Dighpait has now become part of a new country: (East) Pakistan. Forced to leave her beloved house and her friends, especially Majam, Dayamoyee resolves never to mention what they have left behind. And so, from childhood to adulthood, from adulthood to middle age, she never speaks of Dighpait. And then, in the early 1990s she hears of Majam’s death and the floodgates of memory open.