My childhood days were spent in Karachi, and the city had a school named Government Secondary School for Bengali Boys, acronym -ed GSSBB, meant to be only for Bengalis amidst West Pakistanis, and we prided ourselves in being culturally a distinct social group for taking our education in Bengali medium. Cultural and social festivals embodied in Bengali ideas and passions were the soul of our activities. We were a class by ourselves under our conscious Bengali identity. I realized the metaphysical truth of this collective Bengali instinct as the conclusive proof of our otherness in Pakistan on a day whose sketches and details are as strongly fixed in my memory as the immortal alphabets of a mother tongue that a child first learns as a signifier for their access to freedom.

Commemorating Ekushey February was a most sacred and inviolable duty of our school. The loves that one shares with his city are composed of both the sad and happy stories that it spontaneously forces upon its inhabitants. But for us —- the Bengalis —- living in the city, Karachi of 1971, was culturally different and socially enigmatic. We were awash with joys, emboldened by the spirit of Bengali nationalism through the victory of Awami League in national elections. 

However, what struck us as strange and contrary was the subdued reaction that we often received from our Pakistani acquaintances in the neighbourhood of our school. The recent incidents in which some neighbours complained to the police of students’ jubilation in school premises over the political triumph of the Bengalis to be able to govern Pakistan for the first time led to a bitter and acrimonious trial for teachers. The school authority, for reasons of avoiding conflict and embarrassment, dropped the idea of customary rituals of Probhat Ferry in the school playground, and decided to hold Ekushey’s literary oeuvres with exceptions.

The 21st February in 1971 fell on a Sunday, and holding of Ekushey within the premises of the school on a holiday might intensify the neighbours’ anti-Bengali hatred seemed an obvious reflection. The communal milieu of the city was also suffering from a contagion of instability with the rising tensions in East Pakistan where people were demanding for political emancipation from exploitation. Karachi, in those days, was sulking in dark agony of subdued edginess. So, the school authority subtly agreed to hold the day’s proceedings in isolated groups at few select homes. Even in those perilous times, we the Bengalis in Karachi were single-minded in expressing our solidarity with the historical truth of our distinct Bengali nationalism that had its origin in the blood-soaked ardour of linguistic movement.

My classmate Liton and I lived in the same area, and we were to go to one of our teacher’s residence which was far away from our location. The only option for transportation was by bus. In the morning, when we met together, I proposed wearing black badges and travelling barefoot to the destination. Liton initially disapproved the plan fearing that the sighting of black badges would incite wrath of the locals, and walking barefoot might incur severe bodily penalties in the growth of blisters. My mother was aghast at my outrageous possessive disposition. But at last, my gritty and plucky audacity prevailed over their diatribes. My point was that fear should not outlast our national puritanism, and so far blisters were concerned, we were reprieved by my insistence that February winter morning with its cold air settling on the soil of Karachi was a gentle mild swath that kept one’s feet protected from contracting blisters.

There was a mild breeze with a clear sky basking in yellowish blue tint above a languid city. At the bus station, being Sunday, there were just a few passengers in waiting. They belonged to the common herd, ordinary poor people who worked as day labourers, and Sunday meant extra money for them. Most of them commuted to distant places in search of jobs which more often than not was not available. Bus ride could be free if the conductor was kind enough to let their plight find a place of commiseration in his peevishly profit motive. In order to express their oneness with folks of their wretched class, some of these conductors displayed commendable panache.

When we got on the bus, I found that all the seats were filled up from the previous stops. Liton and I hung onto the overhead grab handles with few others. I sensed that some of the passengers had now started paying attention to our marked signatures. The black badges were worn on the left breasts cut in the shape of a clover leaf with its one end open, and the other half closed. In unusual times, symbols take on extraordinary meaning with the vestige of pain for their bearers. There was a middle-aged man, shabbily dressed, wearing a tattered black coatie sitting two or three rows behind from where we were standing. He wore a pensive look, and looking beyond the window he seemed to have lost the sense of the present. When the conductor asked him for the fare, he simply shrugged his shoulders. “I have no money. Let off me,” he said with a gruff. Making some obscene remarks, the conductor made a move towards us.

It was then the man turned his head in our direction. “Is it some kind of mourning you are doing,” he said in Urdu pointing at my breast. “Yes,” I replied. 

“What is that for?” he eagerly demanded of an explanation. Liton seemed cowed by the pitch of his voice. But I stuck to my courage and thought it proper to give an answer by way of displaying our pride as a nation in the language movement. It took me fairly ten minutes to narrate the story of Amar Ekushey to him. In the meantime, the attention of other passengers was also drawn at me. Despite the occasional jolt and screeching of the bus, they were enjoying my narrative while I spoke in loud voice. Some of the front row passengers had turned their heads back towards me to listen. By now, having paid the fares for both of us, Liton had slyly moved to the rear of the bus, and found a vacant place to sit on the iron bench adjoining the rear door. 

Once I had finished, then came the thunder of a roaring voice. The middle aged man cried out, “Stop the bus. This rascal of a Bangali Saala is telling us a story of infidels who have betrayed us. He does not deserve a place in our bus. They want to desecrate our Pakistan.” He got off his seat and sprinting through the aisle, sprang at me. Before I realized, he had slapped across my face feverishly that spun my head reeling. The gentleman sitting nearest to me stood up and said, “He is just a kid. Let him go.” Few others joined him in my support. In a brief moment, I found that the entire bus had split into two visceral camps struggling to decipher logical balance between my childhood innocence and linguistic heights of Bengali.

The driver pulled up the bus before the next stop. The gentleman got off his seat, and said,” Son, please get down here; otherwise, some of these passengers’ conscience will not even bite to brutalize a small boy like you. These people are beasts in the form of human beings.” He brought out some money and said, “Go home.” I realized that he was giving me money to hire a taxi. I refused to take money. It was then he realized that I was barefoot. He wanted the driver to offer me a pair of slippers which drivers always carried as spare for long distance routes, but then realizing my deep sense of national pride in my language, he said something that gladdened me to the brim of happiness, “Son, you should be very proud of yourself. You Bangalis have a language of your own. We do not have that one even and want to make one our own that has no identity with Sindhis, Baluchis, Pashtoons and Panjabis.” He obviously was hinting at Urdu. “Go home barefoot, go. Bearing physical pain is nothing compared to fighting for one’s mother tongue.” I could see the pain in his eyes. By looks, he must have been a Sindhi whose rich language had found no place in the annals of Pakistan’s political history.

I had no choice but walked the rest of the journey barefoot. I walked on the footpaths of main roads whose warm skin felt like soothing balm on a winter morning. All the time, I was thinking about Liton why he had ignored me during the fracas in the bus so that he would go unnoticed at the back.

When I reached my teacher’s house, I found that Liton was waiting for me with others. There was no black badge on him which he had adroitly removed in the bus and safely reached before me. He had narrated the entire story to the group. My teacher, who was otherwise a strong and reserved man, with tears welling across his face, cried out,” Had something happened to you today, what would I have told your parents… how would I have consoled myself …” All my anger was directed at an invisible shade of cowardice. I simply replied, “Sir, if something tragic had happened to me, you would have called me a hero, and if I had reconciled with the middle-aged man in the bus, you would have labeled me a coward.” My words silenced them all. The rest of the day passed away in somber silence of eternal dignity.

Every year, when the month of February comes I remember the 21st February of 1971, and treasure the memory of heroism enshrined in the sacrifice of language martyrs.