Guwahati: The New Year will see a nonagenarian couple in China’s Yunan province reunite with their daughter living in Assam after 53 years and receive gifts of bundiya-bhujia, neem leaves and brass ghoti, things they have missed all these years.
Pramila Das, named Lyong Linchi by her Chinese father Liong Kokhoi, will visit her parents, from whom she was separated during the 1962 India-China war, with her six-member family in January.
“When I spoke to them over the phone last week, baba asked me to carry bundia-bhujia and jelepi as they don’t get them there. Ma wants neem paat, kosu and a ghoti (water pot). I will carry many such things,” Pramila, now 59, told The Telegraph today from Keyhung tea estate in Upper Assam’s Tinsukia district. All Pramila remembers is that she was six years old when police detained her Chinese father, mother Chanu and two sisters, Lingpha and Anita, and took them from Tinsukia to a detention camp at Deoli in Rajasthan as soon as the war broke out.
While they were later repatriated to China, she was the only one left behind as she was at her grandmother’s house at Borjanbasti, about 2km away from their house, then.
“It was night when I was informed about their detention. The next morning, when I reached Bahadur Chariali railway station with my maternal uncle, their train had already left. I cried the entire day and returned to my grandmother’s house, hoping they would return soon. But I got no information about them till 15 years ago when I received a letter from my father saying they were taken to China in a ship along with many Chinese-origin people from India,” she said.
Pramila’s wish to meet her parents one day deepened after meeting Sahitya Akademi awardee writer Rita Choudhury a few years ago. Choudhury, who penned Makam, a novel highlighting the pangs of separation of such families, made a public appeal and launched a donation drive in May this year to unite Pramila with her parents in China.
“The passports of her six-member family are ready and they will soon apply for visas. They will be accompanied by Tung Chin from Assam, whose forefathers were from China. He keeps visiting his relatives in Hong Kong. The donation drive has not yielded much money but we will manage the money required to send them. Tears come to my eyes every time I speak to Pramila and the moment they meet again will be a big relief,” Choudhury, now the director of National Book Trust, said from New Delhi today.
Tung Chin, an English language and personality development skills trainer here, said the family would fly to Hong Kong and then take a train or a bus to the village where her parents live. “My relatives in Hong Kong told me that their village is situated on the border of Guanxi and Yunan provinces and is 10-12 hours’ journey from Hong Kong,” he said.
Pramila’s father was among the many Chinese who were brought to Assam by the East India Company in the early 19th century as indentured labourers for tea cultivation. Her mother belongs to the indigenous Lushai tribe, most of whom are settled in Mizoram. A sizeable number of them are found in Upper Assam too. Pramila has not even met her three siblings who were born after her parents were repatriated.
Pramila, who had to drop out of school after her parents’ detention, is married to Simon Das, a retired driver of Keyhung tea estate. Her son, John, is a driver in the same garden while her daughter Elina lives in Uttar Pradesh with her husband and two children. Her husband, son, daughter-in-law Sushila and grandsons, Pol and Nijel, will accompany her.