Chapter 3
Saifuddin, a robust middle‑aged mechanic, arrives with a brown‑paper packet containing a sari for his wife and explains to the narrator’s grandmother the plight of Ukil‑babu, an elderly Hindu who is now bedridden. He introduces Khalil, a cycle‑rickshaw driver who has cared for Ukil‑babu since Partition, and describes Khalil’s modest earnings. The grandmother, Mayadebi and Tridib discuss the impossibility of convincing Ukil‑babu to leave; Khalil insists the old man will not go. A rubber‑horn blast signals Khalil’s arrival on a rickshaw; he dismounts, greets Saifuddin, and is briefed to help persuade Ukil‑babu to depart. Khalil’s face, missing front teeth, and his earnest demeanor are noted. He declares the old man will not move, but after a tense argument he finally assists him: removes his coat, dresses him, gives him a walking‑stick, and helps him out of the cramped, grimy upstairs room filled with tyre tubes, cobwebs, and old books. The group, aided by Tridb, carries the old man to the yard, loads him into Khalil’s rickshaw, and follows him to the gate where a car waits. The grandmother, assisted by Mayadebi, walks slowly, tears in her eyes, and they pass the “upside‑down house,” noting its grime and crowdedness. They exit the yard, board the car with Khalil’s rickshaw trailing, and drive down an empty lane toward a road where a crowd has gathered around a fire. The narrator senses imminent trouble; the driver warns it is unsafe for the old man to stay.
The narrator then turns to a meditation on the silence surrounding the 1964 events. He observes that the silence is not imposed by the state but is a gap beyond words, a banality that defeats speech. He recounts how he, as a child, believed in borders and nations, but later realizes the “silence” that shrouds the riots is impenetrable. He describes his search in a Delhi library for newspaper accounts of the 1964 riots, finding references to the Khulna disturbances, the Hazratbal relic theft in Kashmir, and the ensuing curfew, as well as the Calcutta riots that erupted on 10 January, with curfews, police fire, and communal violence. He details the spread of the riots to Dhaka, the refugee flow, and the governmental reactions on both sides of the border, noting the symmetrical accusations and the eventual fading of the riots from collective memory.
Interwoven are personal family recollections: the narrator’s grandmother’s lifelong attachment to a thin gold chain with a ruby pendant, a relic from her husband’s early marriage, which she never removed. In 1965, after a period of intense listening to radio broadcasts about the war, she finally discards the chain, donating it to a war fund, an act that culminates in a dramatic scene where she slams a radio, injuring herself and later collapsing. The narrator remembers his father’s secret about Tridb’s death: a “car accident” in Dhaka that the father forces the narrator to keep silent about, linking it later to a riot death.
In a later episode set in London, the narrator and his friend Ila visit a Bengali restaurant run by Rehman‑shaheb. Over tea and dinner, Ila asks the narrator about his past; he mentions his mother’s birthplace in Dhaka (Jindabahar Lane). Rehman‑shaheb probes further, prompting the narrator to confess that his brother (Tridb) was killed in a 1964 riot, not in an accident. The conversation triggers a vivid, recurring nightmare in which the narrator envisions a car chase, a massive rickshaw growing into a colossal structure, and men scrambling up it while a fire burns, ending with an image of the old man (Ukil‑babu) on the rickshaw and the sense that Tridb is about to be rescued but is out of reach. The narrator awakens, unable to shake the dream, and shares it with Robi, who lights a cigarette and reflects on the meaning of freedom, the persistence of memories, and the futility of trying to map borders that divide people. The chapter ends with the narrator’s contemplation that the riots, the silence, and the endless search for meaning remain unresolved.