DAKGHAR: THE HOUSE THAT CALLS

A Novel in Four Voices

Ashis Gupta

Dakghar: The House That Calls

Copyright © Ashis Gupta, 2019

Publication: July 2019

Published in Canada by Bayeux Arts Digital - Traditional Publishing

2403, 510 6th Avenue, S.E. Calgary, Canada T2G 1L7 www.bayeux.com

Cover design by Alexiev Gandman

Book design by Lumina

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Dakghar: the house that calls: a novel in four voices / Ashis Gupta

Names: Gupta, Ashis, 1940- author.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190157720 | Canadiana (ebook)

20190157739 | ISBN 9781988440354 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781988440361 (HTML)

Classification: LCC PS8613.U68 D34 2019 | DDC C813/.6—dc23

The ongoing publishing activities of Bayeux Arts Digital - Traditional Publishing under its varied imprints are supported by the Government of Alberta, Alberta Multimedia Development Fund, and the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program.

Dedicated to victims of tyranny, oppression, and racism

Also By Ashis Gupta

Krishna, a love story

Rahul, a different love story

The Siberian Odyssey of Hans Schroeder

Requiem for the Last Indian Animal Farm, 2017

The Irrelevance of Space and Other Stories (with Swapna Gupta)

The Gospel according to Clarence Thomas (A Libretto)

The Acts of the Compassionates (A Satire)

Warsaw, Poland, is as much a city of beauty as it is one of memories, not unlike many other great cities of the world. But there is a difference – the Warsaw Ghetto, ravaged and made desolate by the Nazis in April 1943. The spirits of more than 50,000 murdered Jews still haunt parts of Warsaw, so it is said. On July 15, 1942, the Jewish population already under siege in Warsaw, residents of an orphanage on Sliska Street, run by Dr. Janusz Korczak, staged the play, “The Post Office,” (Bengali - Daak Ghawr) by the poet Rabindranath Tagore. It was as much an act of defiance as an assertion of the indomitable human spirit.

October 11, 1998

“Tetsuo is the midwife to our dreams,” said Martin Fisher. “But for him, we would all have faced terrible ends.”

What my father meant was that Tetsuo, who had a sleek office on the topmost floor of a Warsaw glass tower, was something of a god. The slightest touch of his hand unlocked vast stores of wealth and power beyond our imagination. Tetsuo touched our lives. Tetsuo gave us voices. Tetsuo shared our songs. Tetsuo set us free.

The first voice was spread out to dry on a chain of diamonds. People gathered around, in hushed silence, waiting for it to speak. The chain swayed in the wind, or so it seemed, sending flashes of lightning that jolted the crowd to shivers of ecstasy. Their polite murmurs and the sigh of the wind were all the sounds I could hear, for the voice remained silent. It remained locked in my memory.