Militants and Mgirants: Fun and Urban Violence in Pakistan - pg. 45

The main character of the novel is a young professor of history, born in a town called Rupnagar in Uttar Pardesh. The novel "Basti" describes his doubts and memories during the last months of 1971, just before the parting of Bangladesh:

When Pakistan was still all new, when the sky of Pakistan was fresh like the sky of Rupnagar, and the earth was not yet soiled. In those days how the carvans arrived from their long, long journeys! Every day caravans entered the city and dispersed among the streets and neighborhoods ... The refugees told whole long epics about how much suffering they had endured on the journey, and how many difficulties they had overcome in order to reach the city. They told about those whom they left behind. Then the refuge-givers and the refugees together remembered those who had clung to the earth, refusing to leave their homes and their ancestor's graves.