Journal: Bibhutibhushan and Apu

Apu in Delhi:

“The next evening, he went to see Shah Jahan’s Red Fort, and spent a long time sitting on a stone bench on the open terrace next to the Diwan-e-Khas, in the pale shadows of the late afternoon. No one had ever been able to write a correct account of the lives that had been lived here, he thought. Everything he had read in novels and plays, and stories and poetry, had been a work of fiction, far removed from reality. The Zebunnissa, the Udipuri Begum, the Mumtaz and the Jahanara he had known all his life, were all figments of someone’s imagination. What had they to do with the real people? Who knew the mysterious history of this place, exactly as it happened? The silent Yamuna might be a witness, each and every foundation stone might be a witness, but when had stones ever spoken? When had a river told a story?”

From ‘Aparajito’, Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay, translated by Gopa Majumdar

(1st November, 1950: Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay dies)