GUWAHATI, May 7 – It was way back in 1965 that he left Guwahati, seeking greener pastures. At that time, he left behind his wife Putul Boro and an eight-month old son. Almost 40 years later, Dhurba Newar aka Dhyan Singh returned to Guwahati yesterday. With him he brought a story that could be stuff for a potboiler film. Newar’s life story spans the entire Indian sub-continent and beyond. When Newar suddenly arrived at his sister’s home yesterday, hundreds of people in the Rupnagar locality crowded the house to have a glimpse of the man many had given up for dead. His reunion with his sister, wife and son was stiff, to say the least.
Newar (83) is hard of hearing, and seems mentally senile. But physically, he is quite fit for his age. His only problem is a niggling pain in his knee joints. It is hard to make him open up. Speaking to him is a tough proposition. One has to shout near his ears. Decades ago, he was rendered almost deaf by the blast of an artillery shell. Newar’s eventful story began in the days of the Raj when he joined the British Indian Army. His father, Kailash Singh was also a soldier in the same army and Newar was born in Dhaka. Attached to the Gorkha Regiment, Newar saw action in the eastern front during the Second World War. He fought pitched battles with the imperial Japanese Army in the then Malaya and Burma. It was sometime then that an artillery shell exploded right near him.
For three months, Newar was completely deaf. His hearing was eventually restored, but only partially. He was discharged from the British Army in 1950 at Singapore. His family had, in the meantime, settled down in Guwahati after Partition. Newar arrived here and married Putul Boro. In 1965, he decided to leave the city and look for opportunities elsewhere. At that time, the couple had an eight-month old son. Fate took him back to his birthplace, Dhaka, where Newar found employment with the Australian High Commission in 1969. Till today, he carries with him testimonials certifying his “loyal service to the government and people of Australia” through his work of 24 years.
Though there is nothing in these testimonials that refer to anything unusual in his life, Newar claims that in 1971 he was taken prisoner by the Pakistan Army during the Bangladesh liberation war. Newar, like several others, was taken to be an Indian soldier and flown to Pakistan with 12 other men. For more than two decades, he says, he was a prisoner in Pakistani jails at Karachi and Rawalpindi. Though initially he was sent to hard labour, he was later assigned duties in the jail kitchen. Recalling those days, Newar says that the Pakistanis tortured his group of 13 men. All of them were shot dead except him. He was spared after he claimed to be a Gorkha.
Ten years ago, Newar was set free and sent to Nepal. He set up home in Kathmandu, running a small hotel business. A sudden urge to meet his mother led him to make the trip to Guwahati. Of course, Newar’s mother Sumitra Singh died thirty years ago. Newar’s son, Santosh Boro (39) drives an auto rickshaw for a living and stays with his mother at Lokhra. When news came yesterday that Newar had arrived at his sister’s house, the mother and son were stunned. Their relatives had been pressing them for a long time to perform Newar’s last rites assuming him to be dead. Santosh himself has certificates where his father’s name starts with a ‘late’.
“People have been crowding this place to have a glimpse of him as if he is an alien,” says Santosh who is somewhat restrained in expressing his emotions. “I have never seen him before though he resembles the man whose photograph we have at home,” he says. His mother Putul Boro (55) is also quite calm about the fact that her husband has returned after so many years. “He had promised while leaving that he would come back once to see her,” says Santosh.
Newar himself is happy that he is seeing his son and wife, besides his sister after all these years. But his heart is back in Kathmandu and he plans to go back to his friends there. Living in Nepal is cheaper, he says. “Moreover, who will feed me here?” he asks. Santosh himself is undecided about what he should do with his father. On the one hand he says that he has some doubts about the man’s identity. On the other hand he says: “I can say now that I have seen my father.”