1945, My Love Story (Unedited & Raw Version)

Phase I: A Telegram From India

My name is Edwin Brown, I am twenty-seven years old now, living in London with my family since last four years.

When I was twenty-one, I was just a young British man who was living in Britain for the past fourteen years. I was born in India in a British family, but my father sent me here when I was eight. I completed my studies here & started my training as a soldier when I became sixteen. My father had always wanted me to be a British lieutenant as he himself was a great lieutenant for twenty years. He then became Major Edward Brown in British army, Calcutta, India.

My parents, they lived in Calcutta, which was the capital of India from the year 1772 to 1911. In the year 1922, my father got a transfer letter to shift to India when he got married at the age of twenty. When I was just a toddler, Calcutta was the capital of only Bengal state. Earlier, East India Company was already dissolved by the year 1874. And, thus began the era of direct British rule over the Indian subcontinent. Since then, my family was staying in India. So for me, my home was India though my father never accepted this fact. He had always this idea that India was a just place where we did business, it was like a trading spot, it strengthened us economically, that is all. And, I never agreed to that. Our way of thinking never matched.

While we young generation of soldiers were being trained here in Great Britain for the ongoing world war-II, I was also getting the news that Indians were protesting against British rulers; they wanted us out of India. So, I wasn't oblivious of the vulnerable situation of fellow British people in India. Before that, they were also having some elections for Indian Congress party. Our stability in India was at risk, father didn't want to take it seriously for obvious reasons and I didn't really wish for that because I wanted to stay in India, in my hometown forever since it was the land where I was born and you & I belonged.

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You don't know why I came back to India, do you?

Actually one day, I got a telegram from Calcutta, India.

'Mother's ill. Come back.'

I read those words again & again; my heart quivered a lot that day.

I had not seen my mother, Delwyn Brown since last fourteen years. I was terribly missing her. I had no idea how she looked after so many years and she also didn't know how I looked at that time.

For that, I used to blame father but still I loved them, missed them both. I had always wanted to go back to my home where my mother & my father lived but not like this. I hoped and prayed, she was fine.

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I started my journey from Manchester railway station to Brindisi in Italy.

I knew, it would take more than three days to reach India, I just wished mother would be patient enough to wait for me to arrive.

Thinking something like that was stupid, wasn't it?

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"Hello, gentleman. May I see your ticket?" The ticket collector asked me.

"Yes surely, sir." Saying that, I took out the ticket from my suit pocket to show it to him.

"To Brindisi, Italy?" He asked to confirm looking at the ticket and I nodded. "Yes, sir."

"Have a safe journey, gentleman." He said in an enthusiastic tone and moved forward. "Thank you, sir." I mumbled.

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As soon as I reached Brindisi, I took a boat from there to Bombay's Ballard Pier. And then, in Bombay, I sat in the Imperial Indian Mail train which headed straight towards Calcutta. After almost half a week of journey, I finally reached Calcutta's Howrah station.