Almost until the end, normal everyday Bangladeshis had no idea as to how long our struggle would have to be or how long we would be able to continue resisting a fully armed professional army. Nevertheless, thousands of young people in their teens joined the Mukti Bahini. Many had no choice but to join either because their families were killed, or were driven out of their homes, or were being hunted by the enemy, but some joined even though they were in no apparent danger, perhaps because of their passion for independence, or perhaps they just could not sit back and watch the atrocities without doing anything - or some other reason. In all cases however, they all understood that it would be a long haul although no one had any idea as to exactly how long. A year, two, five, longer? No idea at all. No idea when they would see their families again, or IF they would see their families ever again.
I was in my late teens and was ready to join the resistance in April. There was no Mukti Bahini to speak of at that time, there were odd sporadic actions here and there, but nothing organized. Also, I had no idea as to how or where I’d join. I didn’t know anyone personally involved in fighting the enemy. I also didn’t know much about weapons. I knew how to fight, I could fire a gun, and that was all. I’d have no idea what to do with an automatic or semi-automatic weapon like the one’s I saw the Pakistani soldiers carrying. I needed training, desperately. But how? Where? I had no idea and felt totally at a loss. It was a bad feeling and it constantly gnawed me.
Our home was in Shamoly – a suburb of Dhaka, which was right in between Mohammadpur and Mirpur, both Bihari (pro Pakistani Urdu speaking people) infested areas. During 1971, these Biharis used to go on Bangali killing sprees. Shamoly was sandwiched between them. Right from the get go on the morning of March 27th we could see them from our rooftop stopping buses and dragging the fleeing people out on to Mirpur road, beating them and killing them.
My father decided to move us out of Shamoly and vacate the house. He sent the younger children (including me) off to our village home in the 1st week of April and my parents moved in with relatives. A few days after we arrived, we were told that Shamoly was attacked and everyone who had stayed behind had been killed. Among them were two of our tenants, who had nowhere to go. The night guards were killed even the dogs were killed. Our guard was the only survivor who I heard the story from. Soon, we had to move from our village home also because the Pakistani Army arrived there and burned it down.
By the end of April we found ourselves back in Dhaka in a rented house in Shedhdheshori. I was quick to make friends there and one night, one of my friends “Azad” asked me to come over to his place late at night. When I did, he introduced me to a serious looking young man in his 20s named “Kutu”. We were outside Azad’s home and it was quite dark where we stood. Kutu asked me to hold out my hand and as I did, he placed a heavy metal ball on my palm, it looked like a small pineapple. He said, this was a grenade. I had never seen one for real and it sent a chill down my back and I knew right away how badly I wanted to join the Mukti Bahini. I told Kutu that and he said he’d get back to me. Days turned to weeks but I never saw Kutu again. Perhaps he was captured and killed, or was moved to another location, I had no idea. I was beginning to get frustrated.
One day in late May, my father said that he needed to take a trip to check on our house in Shamoly. It was a very risky proposition because it was smack in the middle of Mirpur and Mohammadpur, both “Bihari” dominated areas. These Biharis had already carried out several raids to “cleanse” Shamoly and surrounding areas of Bangalis - but my father said he needed to do it – and I couldn’t let him go alone. So my older brother and I accompanied him. We returned to Shamoly after several months of Bangali killing by the Pakistani soldiers and the “biharis”. The house had been ransacked and looted.
As we stepped out to leave, we almost got run over by Mr Zubairi’s Mercedes. He was returning home, his wife sat beside him and his teenage daughter was in the back. Mr Zubeiri was a very respectable man in our neighborhood, we called him “uncle Zubeiri”. He was the Minister of Fisheries for the Pakistan Government and had the nicest house in the neighborhood just a couple of doors away from us. Although he was a Pakistani, my childhood memories came back and as I ran over to him I realized that he had become an entirely different person! He looked at me very coldly, there was no recognition in his eyes. He pointed at my father and quite rudely, asked him to come over to the car. My father was older than him.
As my father approached the Mercedes, the respectable “uncle” Zubeiri took out a loaded revolver from the glove compartment, cocked it, pointed it at my father and called my father a “bastard Bangali” and went on ranting about what losers Bangalis were. He used a lot of profanity in his speech. I thought he would pull the trigger any second and he probably would have if his wife and daughter were not in the car with him. I stood there in disbelief, feeling immensely insulted and humiliated because I couldn’t do anything. I was angry and - I’m ashamed to admit - scared! That was a decisive moment for me! I swore to myself that I would come back for him, prepared – and I did, but we’ll get into that some other time. As soon as we returned to Sidhdheshori, I started spreading the word that I wanted to join the mukti bahini. It was quite dangerous those days, to tell people about such intentions so openly, but I by then I had gone beyond caring.
For a change of scenery and to get my mind off of things, I moved to my older brothers 1st floor flat in the Old Town - Chalk Bazaar - for a few days. One morning, I was coming to the Shidhdheshori home to visit my parents and right in front of my alley, out of nowhere, a young man about my age jumped out in front of the rickshaw, pointed at me and in a very cocky confident way and asked, “Are you Belal?”.
I said, “Yes”.
He came over to me and said “My name is Hiru, I heard you want to join the Mukti bahini, is that true?”
I gasped, “Yes!”.
He said, “Come with me.”
He then turned around and started walking very fast. I quickly paid the rickshawala and followed him into a house right next door to the one we were living in! He introduced me to “Farouk Bhai” a young man about 24 years of age who took me to a room, asked me to step inside and then locked it from outside. I looked around and saw a barred window. There was no escape. I had never seen any of them and wondered if these were Pakistani agents, because if they were, that would have been my last day! Little did I know that the very serious and scholarly looking bespectacled Farouk bhai was a university student who was being hunted by the Pakistani Army. They had raided his house and killed his disabled younger brother!
After about ½ an hour, which seemed like eternity, Farouk bhai returned and started an interrogation process to establish my true motive and I realized that he couldn’t trust me either. After he was convinced of my genuineness, he asked me to meet him at a local bus stand in 30 minutes. I asked him if I’d need money and he said “just bring a couple of hundred takas”. It was a lot of money in those days, especially for an unemployed 18 year old. Where was I going to get that kind of money so quickly? I asked Farouk bhai to give me some time to get the money and to wait for me if I was late. He agreed to wait a little longer. I asked him if he could deliver a note to my parents telling them that I was going to join the Mukti Bahini. He asked me to write it, so I scribbled a line saying “Amma & Abba, I am going away to join Mukti Bahini to free our motherland, please pray for me and try not to worry about me” and as I gave it to him, he assured that it would be delivered – but that delivery to just next door took 3 days! Three long and agonizing days for my parents who already had one son, my older brother in the Muki Bahini. I can’t even begin to imagine what they had to go through not knowing the whereabouts of two sons, not knowing whether we were alive or dead, not knowing if they’d ever see us again, not knowing if they’d ever even find our bodies.
As I rushed out, I ran into my cousin and friend Barkat. He was coming over to see me. I quickly explained the situation and we concocted a plan. Since no one was working, we had started running a small store from the house. Selling sugar, spices, tea, etc. We also sold kites for flying. Sometimes I had to go to the Old Town to pick up kites. My older brother lived in Chalk Bazaar at that time. Barkat said, “Why don’t we go over to your sister in law in Chalk Bazaar and ask for the money?”
“But what was I going to say without spilling the beans? Money for what?”
Barkat said, “Ask for money for kites for the store.”
It was brilliant! So we took a rickshaw and rushed to an overcrowded Chalk Bazaar. As we approached the flat, I told Barkat to wait downstairs and I’d throw down my bag with clothes before asking my sister in law for the money. So I did exactly that, I went upstairs and threw down my bag, clothes spilling out. I gave the “kites” story to my sister in law and asked for some money. She took out 200 takas and gave it to me and I rushed down to the street only to be confronted by a about a 30 angry men who thought we were thieves trying to make a quick getaway. They had seen the bag thrown down and poor Barkat had his hands up and was trying to calm everyone down. I was really tense and agitated because I didn’t want farouk bhai to leave without me, so I just barked at the people and they made way for us.
We took a rickshaw to the bus stand and found Farouk bhai looking very tense, probably because he had started thinking that I might have gone to inform the Pakistani Army. I found him with a young man named “Gias” who was about my age. I said goodbye to Barkat and asked him not to say anything to anyone for everyone’s safety. He kept his word.
We took a bus towards Demra. The day was like every other day, except that my life had taken a sudden turn into the unknown. As we approached Demra, we neared a military check post. Farouk bhai asked us to stand separately and told me to say that I was going to visit my uncle in Demra, he gave me an address. When the evil looking Pakistani military men armed with Chinese sten gun approached me and asked where I was going, I said exactly what I was told and the military allowed the bus to proceed. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. It was a good day!
Shortly after we crossed the check post, Farouk bhai jumped off the bus and both Gias and I followed. We rolled down the steep bank close to the water and then walked a short distance to find a boat waiting for us. Everything from that point seemed well arranged. The boat took us across to a village called “Rupshi” where we saw signs of military atrocities everywhere. Most of the houses were burnt to the ground. We were asked to enter a small burnt out freestanding building which had no roof. The floor was covered with straw.
Farouk bhai said goodbye to us saying his job was done. It was around noon. Gias and I lay on the straw and started our anxious wait for the next thing to happen. Early afternoon, we heard a lot of commotion. As the noise came closer, it began to sound like several men singing. We looked out and saw two boats approaching with about eight young men in their early twenties. They were all Dhakaya boys from the Old Town and seemed to know each other- Shorfu bhai with very thick glasses, Mowla, Gaus and others. Their spirit took all our tension away and in minutes we became like brothers.
I hadn’t eaten since breakfast and by late afternoon I was becoming quite hungry. So Gias and I decided to go back across the small river by boat to the local bazaar. We sat at a small roadside restaurant for a meal and returned to the hideout early evening where we met our host. He was a tall well-built muscular chap with a close cropped beard. There was another man who was dark and short and was carrying a sten gun that hung carelessly from his shoulder. He was the first REAL liberation warrior I saw, except for Kutu in Shiddheshori. The best description I can give of this man is that he looked like Sylvester Stallone in “Rambo” – a decade before the first Rambo movie was released. He introduced himself to us as “Khosru” . He said he was bringing a gift for us on his boat but it had jumped off the boat, so he had no choice but to kill it with a “teta” and left it in the water for fish food. A teta is a three pronged spear like instrument for killing fish. He was referring to a Pakistani soldier (from the check post). He had killed one and captured another for us. He really seemed quite disappointed that “it” had jumped off his boat. That was my humbling introduction to Mukti Bahini. I worked with Khosru bhai until 3 days after independence. He kept me really busy doing “cleaning up operations” and allowed me to return home to my parents on December 19, long after most of the ‘living fighters’ had returned.
Khosru bhai told us that our “guide” was on his way and would take us to “Agartala” across the treacherous border into Indian territory and from there we would proceed to our training grounds. We had to wait a couple of days for our guide. By that time a few more people joined our group. One was a Bangali defector from the Pakistan Army. He seemed well experienced with arms. We used to rest during the day and travel at night. Sometimes by boat and sometimes on foot. The trail seemed never ending, but the Dhakya boys kept us all in good spirit.
One point of interest on that journey was a very narrow bridge we’d have to go under. It was only accessible by water and was under armed guard 24 hours a day. It was also frequented every 5-10 minutes by a military jeep mounted with a machine gun. To go under the bridge, we would have to cross about ½ a mile of clear water on boats, or swim.
We approached the bridge after midnight on two boats. None of us except the ex-army guy had any real training on arms, we didn’t have any arms either. We had to avoid detection at all costs. It was so dark that we couldn’t even see our palms in front of our faces. But it was possible to make out a boat against the clear background of the water, so we had to bide our time. There were a couple of paddles on the boat and the rest of us were armed with tin plates which we used as paddles to move the boat faster. We hid in some bushes with our boats. We could make out the silhouettes of the soldiers on the bridge. We saw cigarettes glowing. Then we saw headlights approaching the bridge. It was one of the machine gun fitted jeeps. The jeep stopped right in the center of the bridge for a few minutes, the soldiers exchanged some words and the jeep moved on.
We were supposed to watch the jeeps cross a few times before making a move. But as soon as the tail lights of the 1st jeep went out of sight, the other boat shot out into the open water and as soon as they did, we saw the headlights of a second jeep approaching the bridge. We wanted to shout at them to come back, but it was too late. They were already almost at the middle with the boats dark silhouette quite visible against the clear water. We all gasped and waited with our hearts in our throats.
The soldiers on the bridge were looking at the jeeps headlights and didn’t notice the boat. The boat pulled under the bridge almost at the same time as the jeep stopped over the bridge. We were sure they’d keep going and the machine gunners would shred them into pieces. But they had also seen the jeeps lights, and stopped very quietly under the bridge. The enemy soldiers chit chatted and exchanged cigarettes while our young unarmed “brothers”, sat on the boat with pounding hearts, directly under the enemy. I looked at the ex-military guy and asked him, “If you had a gun, wouldn’t you just shoot the bastards on the bridge?”
He said, he wouldn’t even think about it. I thought he was afraid. When I asked him why not, he said if he did that, the next morning a hundred armed soldiers would march into the surrounding villages, burning, looting, raping and killing – with no one to defend the helpless villagers. He told me to be patient. We were not ready yet, but we would be - soon. I anxiously waited for that day!
After a few minutes, the jeep moved on as the soldiers on the bridge watched. We thought the coast was clear and silently and quickly moved the boat towards the bridge. But as soon as we were on clear water, several shots rang out and we heard the hissing noise of bullets piercing and hitting the water around us, the noise was mind boggling! The military guy hissed at us to “duck” and boy did we “duck”!! In all reality, we were actually like sitting ducks! The boat under the bridge took that opportunity to shoot away from the bridge, making an opening for us to follow. In a few seconds, we realized that the soldiers were just firing shots at the water, they were still blinded from watching the jeeps lights and hadn’t seen us – and we managed to cross the bridge without detection.
The rest of the journey was uneventful except for the narrow spot where the Pakistani soldiers manned a bunker guarding the water. We were told that this was the place where most of the boys trying to cross over were getting blown to pieces. The soldiers were armed with machine guns and rocket launchers. We had to leave the boats and walk in pitch dark among the thick foliage along the opposite bank, well within their range. We saw the bunker, but no one saw us. It was a good night!
The next night, after walking in knee deep mud for about 2 hours, we crossed the border into Agartala, India. We expected to be well received and ushered into our training areas, but nothing like that happened. After giving us very brief instructions about how to get to the “student house”, a terminal for wannabe liberators like us, our guide vanished leaving us quite stranded. Eventually by the following morning, we managed to locate the “terminal”, it was a big house with large rooms with sheets spread out from wall to wall where we were all supposed to sleep, but there was no room for us wannabee liberators because it was filled with wannabee politicians with their big mouths and fat bellies hiding in Indian safety. It seemed like we were on our own, no one seemed to know where, when or how we would be trained. It was like being back in Dhaka, but safer and for days we just roamed the streets of Agartala. Some of us disappeared, but Gias, me and the Dhakaya brothers stuck together like glue. We had to buy our own food, and my money was fast running out and I didn’t want to ask anyone for money.
On the third day Gias, Gaus, Shorfu bhai and I decided to go to the nearest refugee camp called “Hapania” for some free food and a place to stay, until we received word about our training. But we weren’t prepared for what we saw at Hapania ! There were thousands and thousands of people, all in total desperation. They were completely destitute; most had endured unimaginable torture, hardship and loss until they had arrived. The food was just rice and daal. Both were rotten, we could see maggots crawling in the rice and the daal was completely off and sour. People were suffering and dying from dysentery and diarrhea. The tents were pitched on wet and soggy ground, sleeping there would mean death from fever and pneumonia, which were all rampant. So we decided to return to Agartala and by the fourth day I ran out of money and found myself raiding garbage cans for food. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds, or it didn’t seem that way to me, probably because I had no money to buy food. Actually, I always found bananas in the garbage, mostly rotten, but still quite edible. Bread only cost pennies and I still had a little money for bread. So, life was a peach and I lived on bread and rotten bananas for about 13 days, checking into the “terminal” every day for news about my training.
By the 15th day, when I was getting quite weak physically, I ran into Gias and he told me that we were to meet at the “terminal” the following morning at 7 am – to go for training! My dream was finally coming true! I met the others at the Terminal the next morning, we were loaded onto trucks and taken to a small military airport. The trucks stopped in front of a small air ambulance with 15 seats. There were more them 35 of us ! We were so overjoyed with the fact that we were going for training that we just didn’t care. With all 35 of us on the plane, there was standing room only. After a lot of noisy dilly dallying, the plane finally took off. That was the first time for all of us on a plane – and boy, was that an experience! We took turns sitting and standing. The plane rocked a lot and I felt nauseous. After a couple of hours of standing, I was offered a seat and as soon as I sat down, I dozed off. I don’t know how long I was out, but I woke up with a start among screams of “plane crash”, “plane crash” and as I opened my eyes, everything appeared very blurry. We were really crashing! I screamed and threw up – and everyone burst out laughing! Someone had placed Shorfu’s thick glasses over my eyes while I was asleep and decided to crash the plane. It was a prank. Those Dhakaya dingbats!
After about 7 hours of flying the plane landed somewhere for fuel and soon we were up again for about another 7 hours. At about 4 am the next morning, we finally landed in a small military airport in Shahranpur, on the other side of India. It was cold. We were extended a very hospitable welcome by Indian military personnel. Something we weren’t used to. Warm blankets and hot food was ready for us, dry and clean tents right beside the runway ready for us to catch up on lost sleep. It felt like a 5 star hotel, actually even better, after our experiences since leaving home. They said we were their brothers, ready to lay down our lives against a common enemy. After about 4 hours of sleep, we were woken up and loaded onto 3 covered military trucks. The trucks groaned and went uphill for hours. At times we got a peek outside when the covers flapped under strong winds, what we saw was just staggering! We were high up on the Himalayan mountains with sheer drop of thousands of feet on one side and the granite mountain wall on the other. At times the trucks had to stop for vehicles coming downhill. I don’t know how two vehicles crossed each other when the road was so narrow. After about 5 hours of climbing, the trucks pulled into a secured compound which seemed like a secluded military area. We received a warm welcome from about 200 young Bangalis who were undergoing training at that time.
The training camp which was mostly underground, not clearly visible from air was called the “Tandua camp”. There we were to receive 4 weeks of extensive training in “guerilla warfare” and then returned to Bangladesh to fight the enemy. We were informed that we had joined the “Mujib Bahini”, which was separate from the “Mukti Bahini”. We were told that we were more political than normal freedom fighters and would be better trained, especially in ambush and explosive techniques. We were also told that our war would probably not end with the liberation of Bangladesh, but would continue until “Mujib Baad” was established in the country. We were to be trained on various weapons like sten guns, self loading rifles, light machine guns, rocket launchers, anti tank mines, anti personnel mines and would receive very extensive training on various types of ambushing techniques using plastic explosives. I had no idea there was such detailed calculations involved in blowing things up. One needed to know the type of construction, the type of explosive, the quantity of explosives, the direction the explosion should go, etc. our explosives trainer was Major Malhotra of the Indian Army, other trainers were Sikhs and Gurkhas.
I had finally arrived! It was training time.