Register Me As Kulbhushan by Alka Saraogi; John Vater (Tr.) [Paperback]

What’s in a name?
Traversing the streets of Calcutta in his one-and-a-half slippers, our dark lanky hero, variously known as Bhushan Chacha, Kulbhushan Jain and Gopal Chandra Das, wanders a maze of memories, searching for himself. Like many East Bengalis scarred by the trauma of Partition, he has trained himself to dive into forgetfulness. By punching the ‘button of forgetting’―a mantra taught to him by his childhood friend Shyama Dhobi―he can induce instant amnesia and survive the suffocating, alien streets and the belittlements of his Marwari relatives, whose household drudgery he shoulders. But forgetfulness has a cost.

Shyama, too, is more than he seems. Delivered into his parents’ lap by an itinerant fakir and blessed with admirable resourcefulness, he rises through the ranks. He transforms from washerman to rickshaw-puller to trusted confidante of cotton mill-owning Bengali aristocrats―all amid the mounting communal violence and brutality of the West Pakistani army that sets the stage for the Bangladesh Liberation War. When injustice becomes unbearable, Shyama is compelled to join the freedom fighters in search of redress and meaning.

At once humorous, sincere and philosophical, Register Me as Kulbhushan is a modern epic of exile and the fundamental human need to belong.