Caught in the Crossfire by Lesley D. Biswas
My take on the book:
April 1971; Dhiman lives with his Baba and Ma and his Baba’s elder brother’s family that consists of his Jethi, Jethu and Didi. Dhiman’s family recently moved to the Salt Lake City township of Calcutta, to the house which his Jethu proudly flaunts. Dhiman’s father is a journalist with a local newspaper while his mother works as a school teacher. Dhiman feels lonely in this new house with zero friends in the vicinity, until one day he befriends Ruhul, a refugee from East Pakistan, who lost his parents in the brutal conflict between the Pakistani government and the local liberation army.
Dhiman’s baba travels to East Pakistan to report the on-ground reality of the conflict but when the last telegram from his baba is two weeks old, Dhiman and his ma are worried for his safety. When an unexpected tragedy hits home, Dhiman gathers the courage to go on the riskiest adventure; to take Ruhul’s help to travel along with rebels to Dacca to find his baba. Whether Dhiman will be able to escape the bullets in the war zone and locate his father forms the rest of the story.
This is a fictional story set against the backdrop of the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War and instead of giving a personal opinion of the politics that led to it, the author narrates the humane side of how war affects common people. Ruhul loses both his parents tragically in the war and his elder brother becomes a guerrilla fighter, while he spends a miserable life in refugee camps which did not have basic amenities. Even death becomes so common in these refugee camps that it numbs everyone around.
Dhiman’s journey through East Pakistan towards the end of the story is the main highlight, as these sequences mirror the plight of common people in war zones. Along with the war, the story also discusses dowry and to what extreme extent one could go for that. Dhiman’s resolve at that young age against all odds is the biggest message for kids about resilience. Dhiman and Ruhul’s friendship through life’s ups and downs is very well narrated by the author. The strength of this book is its restraint, as it trusts a child’s view of war and it uses friendship as the emotional engine of the plot instead of treating Ruhul as a symbol of the refugee experience.
This is exactly the kind of story young readers need more of — history taught through friendship and fear, and courage defined not as heroics but as a boy choosing to go looking for what he’s lost.
My rating:
5/5.