CHAPTER 1: The Boy
Dear Diary,
Today, with all the courage I can gather, I am ready to pen down the very first memory of my first life. It was a life filled with struggle—far too much hardship, if I’m honest. But even within that life, I had managed to find happiness, however fleeting.
The days of my youth are long gone now, buried beneath the weight of time, like the bones of the forgotten who once walked this land before me. But the hunger, the endless hunger, still lingers in the back of my throat, as though it never left. I have lived through many things since then—my own struggles, my own survival—but there is a part of me that will never be free from the memories of 1770, from the days when the land itself seemed to wither and die, and everything I knew was slowly, mercilessly taken away.
I did not choose to tell this story. It has chosen me.
There are times, at night, when the cries of my mother—of all those mothers who lost their children—echo in my ears, and I can feel the burden of their suffering as though it were my own. But I must speak. I must tell what happened, even if the telling is too painful, even if it is nothing more than a confession to the ghosts of the past. The memory is too vivid to forget. And it is a story that cannot be left untold. I may be the only one left to remember what happened, but I carry the weight of it all. This is not just my story; it is the story of every soul who perished in that famine—the forgotten faces, the lost lives, the broken dreams.
As I continue my third life, questions have begun to rise within me. What is death? Why am I living again and again? Maybe I’ll never know. Maybe, one day, I won’t even remember.
But perhaps this diary will be my proof—my link to all I’ve been and all I’ve endured.
And so, I begin.
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[ The Famine of 1770: A Glimpse of Bharat’s Struggle
In the year 1770, Bharat lay in the throes of a disaster unlike any it had seen before—a famine that would come to haunt the land for centuries, branded into the memories of generations to come. The skies above Bengal, which once promised life and prosperity, had turned cruel, their rains insufficient, their clouds empty. The seasons had betrayed the people.
The East India Company, a foreign entity that had already tightened its grip over the land, exacerbated the plight of the people. The policies that it imposed were merciless, draining the land’s wealth while stripping it of its soul. The Company’s demand for taxes remained unyielding, while the people, the lifeblood of the land, were left to wither in the heat of the summer. In 1769, the crops failed—rice, pulses, even the mustard seeds that had long been the foundation of Bengal’s agriculture. The rivers, once bountiful and full, had receded, leaving only barren riverbeds and stagnant pools of water. The weather, too, had turned, scorched by an unrelenting sun, leaving the soil cracked and infertile.
The harvests that should have been the harvests of life instead became the harvests of death.
The British merchants, who controlled the trade, diverted what little grain remained, sending it abroad to fill the bellies of those far away while the people of the land starved. Those who tried to speak out against this injustice were silenced by the colonial administration, their pleas drowned out by the sound of coins clinking in the hands of the foreigners. The people, once proud and resilient, were now reduced to desperate beggars, scraping by on scraps of food, if they were lucky. And even as the famine spread, its fingers curling into every village, the East India Company continued to reap its profits, unbothered by the suffering of the natives.
The land had turned into a graveyard of its own, where every step felt like a burial, where every breath carried the scent of the dying. The disease followed soon after—the sickness of the body that ravaged the people, from fever to dysentery, from the decay of flesh to the slow death of the soul. The land that had once been fertile with promise was now a desolate wasteland.
In the midst of this, one boy stood, his life caught between the unravelling threads of a land in agony and his own fading hopes.]
I remember the day I first felt the earth beneath my feet crumble. It wasn’t just the land that was dying—it was my family, my people, and everything I had ever known. It was the 1770s—a time of famine, of great upheaval, when nothing seemed to be in the hands of the people. We were living beneath a sky that refused to rain and a land that refused to grow. In a village too small to be on any map and too forgotten for the British to care about, I was born with nothing, into a family that barely had enough to feed itself.
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It was the year 1762, I was born in the early months of summer. Everything had been bright and beautiful until the 1770s—a time when Bengal was already reeling from the weight of exploitation by the East India Company, and the land had begun to wither under both man-made and natural forces. Crops had failed the year before, and the summer rains never came. People whispered that the gods had turned their faces away from us.
My father—if I can even call him that—was a shadow more than a man. His hands were worn from working the dry, cracked earth, his back bent like a tree about to break under the weight of years spent labouring for a land that no longer gave back. He spoke little, but when he did, it was with a bitterness that felt as if the very soul of the land had been drained. My mother, worn from the daily struggle, tried her best to protect me, but there was only so much she could do.
They named me Arjun, though it never felt like it belonged to me.
We had a small plot of land, a gift from my grandfather—or so they told us—but that land was dying, cracked and barren, offering only dust in return. The crops wilted before they could fully grow, and the animals grew thin. Every day was a battle, not just for survival, but for the strength to carry on, knowing that tomorrow might bring only more suffering. The famine had already begun to take hold by the time I was born, and people could see it in the distance.
And then the famine came.
I remember the hollow faces of my neighbours, their eyes haunted by hunger. I remember the whispers about people starving, about mothers boiling tree bark and leaves for their children, doing whatever they could to stave off death. The smell of decay was everywhere, inescapable, as many succumbed to hunger, disease, and the brutality of the British merchants who controlled grain. The merchants had stopped offering advances to the peasants, and the Company itself brought up what little rice there was, stockpiling it for its own purposes.
My father fought to keep me alive. He bartered what little we had left—old clay pots, broken tools, whatever he could—to get us rice or grain. He worked for the East India Company at times, doing menial tasks under their cruel gaze, but still, there was always less to go around. I watched him return home empty-handed too often, his eyes hollow, his hope slipping away.
I wanted to be strong, to endure it for him, for my mother. But the hunger tormented me, turning my insides into a raw ache that never faded. The pain was constant and there were times when I wondered if it would be easier to stop fighting, to let death take me, to surrender to the endless hunger.
But I held on. Because they needed me to.
The East India Company did nothing to alleviate the suffering, and the taxes remained unchanged, even as our bodies withered. Rice prices rose exponentially, and soon, even the most basic food was beyond our reach. We would have to wait for the rains, they said, but the rains never came. And when they did, they brought disease with them, sweeping through the weak and the starving like a plague. Entire villages were abandoned, and the once-thriving towns turned to ghost towns, overgrown and silent.
Still, we survived in the shadows of this terrible time. As the East India Company began to tighten its grip on Bengal, it was clear that the old ways of life—the customs, the crops, the people—were slipping away. The land that had been fertile for centuries now seemed to belong to no one.
I wanted to believe it could get better. I had to.
But the famine stretched long across the land, and even the gods seemed silent. In the end, all we had left was each other, and even that was sometimes not enough.
I tried to be strong—for them. Every day, I’d pick through the fields, gathering whatever weeds or scraps of grain I could find, hoping that maybe it would be enough for a meal. The land that had once given us life had turned against us, like a god forsaking his people. My father called it a punishment, as if we’d somehow earned this misery. But I was too tired to believe in such things. All I knew was hunger and the shame that came with watching my family wither while I stayed alive.
As the famine worsened, the village grew emptier. Neighbours became strangers. They’d gather around—some muttering, some silent—waiting for food that rarely came. The British trucks would roll in, the soldiers standing guard over sacks of grain that were worth more than any of our lives. The grain was rationed—handfuls at a time, barely enough for a meal. Those who could afford it would slip the soldiers a few coins, enough for an extra portion. The rest of us could only watch, our mouths watering as we imagined what it would feel like to eat without fear.
One day, my father took me along to the distribution. He held my hand tightly, his grip almost painful, as we stood in line beneath the merciless sun. The heat bore down on us, making our skin prickle, our mouths go dry. I remember my father’s face—lined with exhaustion, his eyes fixed on the sacks of grain as if they held salvation. When our turn came, he bowed his head, hands outstretched, and accepted our portion. It was a pitiful amount—barely enough for a day. But he held it like a treasure, a prize he’d fought for.
That night, he gave me most of the grain.
“Eat, Arjun,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “You need it more than I do.” I wanted to protest, to tell him that he needed it just as much, but the hunger was too strong. I ate in silence, feeling the shame curl in my stomach like a sickness.
Days turned into weeks, and I watched as my father grew weaker. His face grew gaunt, his body frail. I tried to take on more of the work to spare him the burden, but he’d only shake his head, insisting on doing his part. It was as if he was determined to fight, to hold on to his pride—even as his body betrayed him.
And then, one night, he didn’t come home.
To be continued...