CALCUTTA, Oct. 25—Nripendranath Mandl has spent this afternoon working and inspecting his radish garden; Tuesday afternoon, and Wednesday and many days thereafter will find him doing the same thing.
It isn't that the garden, about 3 feet long by 3 feet wide, requires that much attention. But Mandl, like his fellow 9.3 million East Pakistani refugees now living in dire poverty in India, has little else to do with his time.
Mandl is one of the few who even has a garden to occupy his time. The 30year-old farmer, who had seven acres of his own land in East Pakistan, works one day a week, for 20 cents, for local farmers. With this sum he bought radish seeds and planted them in an open space beside the 30-foot long tent where he, his wife, and infant son have lived with 25 other people for the past five months. They live in the giant Kalyani camp, north of Calcutta, where more than 200,000 refugees are bivouacked across open fields in tents and some empty cowsheds.
The free rations the Indian government provides varies from camp to camp, but a standard diet seems to consist of about one pound of rice, one-half pound of lentils and a quarter pound of potatoes for each person for a week. Vegetable oils, salt, and onions are also distributed when available.
"It is enough to get by on," Mandl said, adding with a frown, "somehow." His main worry now is a lack of clothes for his family, and the lack of blankets in the coming winter season here.
Despite the misery his family has lived in for the five months, since he fled his village, which he says was burned down by Pakistani soldiers, Mandl does not think he will be able to go back to East Pakistan any time soon—if ever. More than two weeks ago he met refugees who had just come out of the same area in which he he lived. Their village had been untouched in the original wave of trouble. "But they told me that the day before they left the police station was burned down and people shot by soldiers. How can we go back as long as that is happening? We can go back only when the army leaves and our country is free."