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I am living a life out of a suitcase: Taslima

Taslima Nasreen

KOLKATA: “Paris has offered me an apartment [to stay in]. Sweden too offered me an apartment. [But] it does not mean I have to live there... I have been living a life out of a suitcase since I was forced to leave India last year,” controversial Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen wrote to The Hindu on Monday.

In an e-mail from Europe, Ms. Nasreen said she would return to India this month.

“My visa [in India] expires on February 17. I hope it will be extended.”

She did not mention where she was writing from.

Ms. Nasreen, who left India for Europe in October 2008, said she wanted to “live in Bangladesh or in India.”

“All my belongings are in India. I hope I will be allowed to live there. If not, if I am forced to leave India again, then I have to be back to a nomadic life or live in Paris, which would be like a bus stand for me waiting for a bus to go home,” Ms. Nasreen wrote.

She points out that “it is strange that in India and Bangladesh there was a competition among politicians on who could hate me more.”

In contrast, in the West, it was “who could love me more.”India was as democratic as any country in Europe.

But “in some democracies the freedom of expression is valued. In some it is not.”

Ms. Nasreen left Kolkata, which she calls her home in the wake of violent protests in the city in September 2007 by supporters of the State unit of the All India Minority Forum, demanding that her visa be revoked.

“I want to be proud of India. I want to tell Paris that I don’t need their shelter. That there is a place for me in a vast country like India, in the world’s largest democracy.”

Ms. Nasreen was made an honorary citizen of Paris in July 2008.

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