Bangladesh .....East Pakistan....... East Bengal.... Bangla.....
Fondly recalling her childhood my mom was telling me about how they would come to Kolkata from Barisal. They took the steamer to Khulna and a train to Howrah and finally on a horse cart to their home in kolkata. She added ‘we did not say we are going to India ‘. At that time it was one big state Bengal which was a semi independent state under the Nawabs of Bengal. Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists lives together. I have heard my Amma telling me about how the Muslims and Hindus in a village lives in harmony. 
The partition in 1947 turned it into a Muslim dominated country and it was renamed East Pakistan. And then in 1971 , with the Bangladesh war of independence it was renamed as Bangladesh. 
But for me it is where my roots are ....

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