By Asha Vombatkere
Why Dhaka?” was the common question whenever I mentioned that I had visited Dhaka in January. I was born in Dacca, now Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh. My parents had left Dhaka for Dehra Dun just before partition as refugees, with me a toddler. So my visit to Dhaka was a long journey back in time. It was special because, to slightly misquote T.S.Eliot, “In the end was my beginning.” How far can I go back in my memories? Obviously only as far as I can remember! I was helped by my parents who had kept their own, and my memories alive with photographs and spoken references to people, places and events. I found an old photograph of the house in which my parents had lived in the Dhaka University campus of the 1940s. I had always wanted to visit Dhaka but never got an opportunity until recently, when I accompanied my husband who went there to present a paper at a conference.
