Zeena Choudhury

I stepped inside the house through the drawing room doors. The smell of death assailed my senses. The smell was stale – all pervasive.

Faruq (Faruq Chowdhury, former ambassador and foreign secretary) and I were on holiday from his duties as Deputy High Commissioner in London.

Farah saw the tree as soon as she entered the new apartment. Her parents had come to Dhaka after the Partition of India in 1947.

Once in Darjeeling, when I was 12 years old, I remember standing in front of a smallish bank, staring at all the flowers neatly planted in rows.