The mighty Ganga meets the Brahmaputra as the Padma in Bangladesh. It is the delta of this river that forms most of Bangladesh’s fertile plains and travels slowly down to the Bay of Bengal as a collection of islands and rivers crisscrossing them. Famous among these are the Sundarbans in Bengal, and as geography does not know borders, this riverine estuary continues across the international line undisturbed. The Agunmukha is one such river, shimmering in the sun, a lifeline to the islanders, and with a history unique to the local people. These are the roots traced and their inner life examined by the author Noorjehan Bose in her memoir Daughter of the Agunmukha: A Bangla Life.
Back then, there were a few Hindu families, the majority Muslim, and quite a number of Rakhines from Burma living in the smaller villages and hamlets on these islands. However, the partition brought news of horrific events disrupting the uneasy balance, and one night the Hindu families stole away under the cover of darkness. The Rakhine too migrated to areas where they were more populous. Soon, however, another misfortune befell them. This was a country of Bangla-speaking Muslim people but was ruled by Urdu speakers from West Pakistan, and the two communities were on a collision course. Most of the local leaders, including the author’s husband, Imad, lived in hiding and feared for his life.
However, women faced quite a different form of violence. It came from within the community and also from one’s own. It was customary for girls as young as six to be married and no one remained unmarried in the teens. Her mother’s support ensured that Noorjehan had a chance at a different way of life. To her dismay, her grandfather chose to marry her playmate a year younger than her. But her worst experience came from an uncle who initially molested her and moved on to raping her under the guise of fetching her and dropping her off at school. Her resilience despite his actions and her habit of reading prolifically stood her in good stead. It ended years later when she threatened him with a kitchen knife. When she married a political leader and activist, Imad, it was a bond of great love and tenderness. But it was fated to be short-lived. Her husband died of smallpox.
Her second husband was a Hindu, a fact that caused stress in the political arena with public demonstrations against it. It was her secular mother who blessed the union, saying that she approves of the man he is. That made the author think of the impossible, yet the fallout of this was going to be more difficult than she knew. Swadesh Bose had to undertake a fast unto death to get her to say yes. Eventually they knew they could not live in the charged political atmosphere of Bangladesh and chose to move abroad.
The author mentions in great detail the location, her schooling and her childhood companions, the various villages her family is part of, her relatives, her schools, and the many politicians she meets both before and after the death of Imad and throughout her life. However, she is a better chronicler than a writer, and the extreme detail does detract from the integrity of the narrative. And that is the biggest drawback to a work like this. The memories overwhelm the storyline. There is no mechanism employed to sift through the details and prioritise the crucial details. It makes this a text for sociological interests, nothing more.