Interview with Duniya Khandoker

Dhaka, December 2019

In storytelling, we bring lots of emotions—characters and situations. Sometimes we bring our past, and the past is always a very emotional place for people. In our country, music, story, the imagination, dreams, all of those things are really emotional for us.

People! It’s not a bad thing to have emotions.

If you think you can’t be emotional it means you are a robot. Deep in the sea, scuba diving; if you do that, don’t you feel like you could cry? Scuba diving is something! There are no sounds from the world, but different sounds, feelings, lots of colourful things in front of you, and you can feel the music of the ocean. Someone who goes scuba diving, I feel definitely that she or he could cry. You know why? Because of what she experienced.

The people who are leading the world. They’re taking all the decisions. They are taking the lead to design development. But they don’t have emotions. Maybe they have emotions, but in practice, they don’t use that emotion. They think: if I get emotional it will be a weak point, maybe someone else can use my emotion … It means they are working with someone they really don’t trust. They are together, but they don’t trust each other. They can’t cry for their families. If they feel sick, they can’t express it, because maybe the other person might use it as a weapon. Mad. Madness. That’s why it becomes so brutal.

Who was responsible for partition? Some people without emotions. If they had had emotions, maybe it would have been different. Maybe when they were cutting people off from each other, maybe with emotional experience, experience and expression, maybe their personalities would have been different. Then the decision might have been made differently.

If they were no longer afraid to show emotion, maybe they would. And maybe things could change, maybe all the world could change.

Interview with Emilie Flower and Ruth Kelly, transcribed and edited by Ruth Kelly