A River Runs Back

‘Everything seems like it was yesterday, Nachhatar,’ Bibiji said, ‘the rubber plantation, the train to school in Rangoon, Gurmukh, Father, Mother, Hardev…It’s a large canvas, but I am the only person moving around on it.’ Avtar Kaur—Bibiji—is travelling to Ludhiana from her ancestral home some twenty kilometres away in Raigarh. Baljit Singh, the youngest of the family, is no more. As she sits looking out the window of her Ambassador, she reminisces about her childhood, a world that no one except her seems to recognize. Independence had created an India that had lost its footing, a farce in the name of freedom and democracy. All have passed on—Grandfather, Grandmother, her parents. Gurmukh, the eldest, left to fight the British, and Hardev, her sister, was lost to the new world even before her death. All that remains is her trusted Nachhatar, driving her to her brother’s funeral. Poetic and spare, A River Runs Back flows through memory and loss, tracing the fragile threads that bind life to its vanishing roots.