Alam’s Own House by Dibyendu Palit - A memoir of nostalgia.

Alam's Own House by Dibyendu Palit- A memoir of nostalgia

Q. How does the story, Alam’s Own House by Dibyendu Palit deal with the uncertain composition of Alam’s nostalgia?

Answer: Going through a few short stories about the partition of Bengal, nostalgia finds its way in a prolonged vista. Later, nostalgia achieves complex overtones in stories like Amar Mitra's "Wild Duck Country", Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay's "Acharya Kripalani Colony" and Divyendu Palit's "Alam's Own Home" which lead to understanding new concepts in nostalgia. Involved in identity crises, emergence problems, and rehabilitation problems, nostalgia finds a tribal treatment in these stories. In Divyendu Palit's "Alam's Own House" the protagonist cannot replace his rootless cosmopolitanism, his isolated consciousness in his previous home. Like everything there, there is a deadline to return. And once the word is over, there is a feeling that it will not happen. "

Alam's father left his family Anantashekhar's house and moved to Dhaka after a personal exchange of property during the partition. Alam returned with Anantashekhar's family to finish his studies and at that time became especially attached to his daughter Rakar. Although Alam eventually moved to Dhaka after his father's death, he regularly exchanged letters with Rakar. Raka gradually became the root of his desire for home, the nest of his nostalgia. Alam felt that "if his physique could be analyzed, instead of his body, arms, legs and head, he could see the door windows, stairs and attics!"

Three years ago leaving Dhaka, Alam traveled to Calcutta to attend a conference on friendship between divided nations. So, it seemed incomplete without meeting his birthplace. The journey back home is filled with memories and nostalgia. The absence of Park Circus in Calcutta, Maniktala, Narkeldanga, the familiar area of the woodpecker (plumria) tree at the gate of Alam's old house, Gandhiji's portrait in the old living room and the oil painting of the Battle of Plassey have all been manifested by the absence. Endure the impressions of Alam’s nostalgia, only the spiritual foundation of his home has traveled.

As soon as Alam enters his old house and realizes the absence of the rack, he realizes that his house has become an alternative place where he lives in the bedroom of an impersonal guest. Alam never met Rakar during his visit. A letter from him told him of the “resistance” that prevented him from following his heart and that he fled to Delhi during Alam’s visit. The letter became a reminder of Alam and Rakar's fragmented love life. She longs to be an uncertain pet in Rock's home, reminiscent of the past of her pre-immigrant pedestrians, and seeks obscurity instead. "Some lands are meant for certain roots only". Alam realized that he was ruined.

At the end of the story, Alam realizes that despite having a shared culture and memories of a shared home, he and Raka have become citizens of different nation-states, whose differences, rather than their unity, are revived in organized seminars on reconciliation between divided nations. The meeting between Raka and Alam is a symbol of the closeness of the two countries. Polit's story deals with the inevitable syntax of Alam's nostalgia. By the end, however, Alam has gone beyond the imaginary home of his home and realizes that his own home has now become a forgotten cultural place that prevents it from becoming an unbroken past when Alam assumes that there is no barrier between him and Raka because a home. In Alam’s case, the border crossing has clearly become a “transformed experience” that envisioned his status as an expatriate.

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