Home at last: Bengal teacher recounts final few days of horror

KOLKATA/KALIMPONG: Around 11pm on Sunday, almost two days since he reached the Kabul airport, 34-year-old Tamal Bhattacharya finally afforded himself a smile. The anxiety of the past several days was finally over. He had managed to escape the horror unfolding back in Afghanistan.
The resident of Nimta North Dum Dum, a mechanical engineer by training, had left home in March to take up a job teaching physics and chemistry at Kardan International School, an army school in Kabul. He was one of 10 Bengal residents who were flown back on Sunday. He hadn’t reached home yet when TOI caught up with him, likely to reach around midnight.
For the past few months, ‘home’ was the school’s staff quarters. Since the Taliban takeover, he had locked himself inside his principal’s house, near the airport, not daring to go out. “I had contacted the Indian embassy in Kabul and tried several times to reach the airport, but I couldn’t,” he said before taking off for Kolkata. “The airport was surrounded by armed Taliban men. Around 11pm on Friday, we managed to reach the airport gate along with other Indians. But the American forces initially refused to allow us inside because no government officials were accompanying us with government documents.”
Bhattacharya said: “We had to wait outside the airport for several hours on Friday night. Later, we were accommodated in a wedding hall near the airport. It was then that officers of the Indian Air Force arrived. They helped us board the flight late on Saturday.”
It was only after getting news of Tamal’s arrival in Delhi early on Sunday morning that his parents — Shyamal and Minati — breathed easy, after days of tension. “I managed to get in touch with him on chat minutes before he boarded the Ghaziabad-bound flight late on Saturday. Now we are feeling relieved as our only son has managed to return from Afghanistan,” Shyamal, 66, said. Minati said: “From what we saw on TV, I was very scared, especially because he taught in an army school. We had lost contact with him for several days. I just kept on praying.”
Over 600km away in Kalimpong, images of the IAF plane landing in India playing out on TV finally brought a smile on Sudeshna Subba. Her husband, S Subba reached India on the same flight after spending three nights at Kabul airport. “I used to wait for his calls, and each time he called, I would hear firing sounds and other scary noises. I could not keep calm,” Sudeshna said. Subba, an ex-Armyman and a Kargil war veteran, had gone to Afghanistan only on August 3, little expecting to have to return so soon. His elderly mother said Subba had fought for his country, but this experience of Afghanistan was more scary as this time, “he was fighting for his life”.