ABSTRACT
A slow recovery from the shocked stupor that lasted several decades has led to the emergence of narratives that recall the experience of that terrible chapter of the past. When they develop new loyalties in the cities, there is a touch of desperation in these loyalties and a different kind of ardour associated with them. The terrible incidents are recalled in a poignant but simply told story, through four letters, in a flash-back mode. Continuing the tradition of politically-aware, exhortatory songs of Mukundodas, D. L. Roy, Rabindranath and Kazi Nazrul Islam, Choudhury has composed songs that urge a spirit of solidarity and strengthen the will to resist. Through the decades of rehabilitation, according to Ray, the upper class and better placed bhadralok refugees ‘journey[ed] towards Calcutta’s protean civil society’ and the poorer sections ‘found’ in the electoral democracy a degree of socio-political and cultural leverage.
