Exile has a strange way of levelling power and authority. In a classic instance of a twist-in-tale that even history might hesitate to script, two women, once positioned as adversaries, now walk the same foreign streets, thousands of miles away from their people and home. In silence, they both yearn to return to their homeland, Bangladesh. One, Taslima Nasrin, was exiled by the Bangladesh government three decades ago. The other, Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh’s ousted prime minister, joined her fate three decades later. Both now live in Delhi. But only one had the power to banish the other and used it.

In an exclusive interview with News18 while visiting Odisha, Taslima Nasrin reflects on this unsettling symmetry and the possibility of “poetic justice”. “Hasina and I live in the same city now,” she said. “I’ve heard she sometimes goes out for walks. I often wonder, if I ever run into her in and around Lodhi Garden or somewhere else, what would I say? I think I’ll ask her, how does it feel to lose one’s home?” Taslima said on the sidelines of the Puri Literary Festival 2022, organised by the ministry of culture in collaboration with the Odisha government.