This chapter explores Sushmita Banerjee's memoir titled Kabuliwalar Bangali Bou (1997) that portrays the horrors of displacement and city life in the South Asian context. The memoir poignantly chronicles the experiences of an urban Bengali woman who marries an Afghan businessman for love and migrates to Afghanistan during the rule of the Taliban. The objectives of the study are four-fold: 1) to establish the relationship between the vitality of urban space and the nature of social conventions that migrants are expected to follow; 2) to observe how such social and urban conventions and geopolitics affect migration, migrants, and diasporic communities; 3) to examine the reconstruction of urban spaces by women within the Taliban-governed nation of Afghanistan; and 4) to examine their narratives of urban space in the light of Foucault's dichotomy between private and public space as well as Heterotopia, Soja's notion of the third space, and Lefebvre's maxim about social space.
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The diasporas of India often feel the urge to reconstruct or experience urban spaces and this is detrimental in stimulating the international relations as well as the intellectual and societal capital of India. However, the grief and distress of losing the security of family and motherland, the trials of isolation, adaptation, acculturation, and reconciliation are faced by migrants to negotiate urban spaces in varying capacities. The anthropological, historical, political, religious, economic, and sociological aspects of urban spaces and migration are captured within a substantial bulk of literature that now exists as fiction, biographies, autobiographies, memoirs, diaries, poetry, content on the social media, films as well as academic works.
This research aims to: a) establish the relationship between the vitality of urban space and the nature of social conventions that migrants are expected to follow, b) observe how such social and urban conventions and geopolitics affect migration, migrants and diasporic communities, c) examine the reconstruction of urban spaces by women within the Taliban-governed nation of Afghanistan, and d) examine their narratives of urban space in the light of Foucault’s dichotomy between private and public space as well as Heterotopia, Soja’s notion of the third space and Lefebvre's maxim about ‘social space’ among others. This paper attempts to bring new perspectives about migration from urban space and emotional reorientation, particularly in Afghanistan and the relevance of its context in the present day.
For the last few decades, it has been recorded that:
Afghanistan faces a huge humanitarian challenge due to war and drought related displacements. Thousands of families have abandoned their homes. The situation is critical for refugee returnees and displaced persons, many of whom are living in open spaces and in urban informal settlements facing eviction and violence (Boulaich, 2019).
Though this research centres on a singular case of a migrating bride in the form of a memoir, the nuances of its depiction and description may be relatable across the borders of culture, space and time. In this memoir called Kabuliwalar Bangali Bou (A Kabuliwala’s Bengali Wife; 1997), Sushmita Bandyopadhyay, also known as Sayeda Kamala (1964-2013), recounts some of the crucial occurrences that took place as a part of her experience as an immigrant in Afghanistan in vivid detail. The text documents the incidences of this a woman from India who marries an Afghan businessman, Janbaaz Khan, for love and migrates to Afghanistan during the rule of the Taliban. The protagonist, Sushmita Bandyopadhyay (or Banerjee) from Kolkata, India, is a thirty-two-year-old Indian woman who had only travelled to Afghanistan with her husband “to visit” her in-laws but became almost “socially imprisoned” in Sarana, Afghanistan for eight long years.
Migration entails the dyads of both movement and settlement to a different place, change and permanence and establishment and displacement. In this light, it would be interesting to focus on some of the apprehensions and ambiguities of urban diaspora spaces and cultural customs. The poignant memoir examines the encounters between a 'migrant bride' and religious practices 'misrepresented' as authentic cultural customs as well as the debatable issues concerning the generation gap, family, gender, and religion imposed as accepted norms in society. In terms of its social-political and historical context, the memoir is a pivotal text that audaciously records untold miseries and atrocities within the framework of urban space. Banerjee's memoir captured immense attention from the media. The memoir brings fresh insights about migration and emotional reorientation and the relevance of its context in the present day. This memoir was later made into a film Escape from Taliban in 2003 starring Manisha Koirala and Nawab Shah directed by Ujjal Chatterjee (livemint, 2013). Yet, its implications are to be researched through various lenses.