As Afghanistan boils, a look at the Kabuliwallahs of Kolkata

The men from Kabul have been the subject of many films and stories

The first impression of the Kabuliwallah emerges out of the shadows of most children born in Bengal. Right from an impressionable age, children are made to believe that these merchants from Kabul trafficked small children and had wild animals such as elephants and lions in their ‘jholas’ and, therefore, one had to be wary of them. The fear of the Kabuliwallah is deep-rooted in the minds of Kolkata people, which defined their children’s first whiffs and brushes with the image of the Kabuliwallah. Typically dressed in a long, overflowing pathan suit, an ill-fitting turban and sporting unkempt mehendi dyed hair and a beard, the Kabuliwallahs are primarily traders, moneylenders and sellers of exotic dry fruits and attars (perfumes) from Afghanistan, who have been living in Kolkata for decades. The slow, reluctant inertia of their walk and their far-reaching cries to sell their wares have reverberated in every by-lane in the city. At a time when Afghanistan is torn by war, conflict, displacement and terror, the figure of the Kabuliwallah emerges not from the hardcovers of books, but from between the pages, as memorialised by Rabindranath Tagore in his short story Kabuliwala.