The Assamese boy falls in love with the Chinese girl. He works as a clerk in a tea company; she is a homemaker.
The boy marries the girl against his father's wishes. Suddenly, a Sino-India war breaks out. As the People's Liberation Army advances, there's fear and panic in Assam, northeastern India. Even as China declares a ceasefire, Indian police go round arresting Chinese living in the countryside.
The boy's father tips off the police about his Chinese daughter-in-law. She is taken away to the northwestern state of Rajasthan. She's pregnant, and delivers in an internment camp in subhuman conditions.
Mother and child are deported to a state farm in southern China. After some time they are smuggled into Hong Kong. The woman succeeds in contacting her husband in Assam. The couple are finally reunited in Hong Kong.
This is the story of Makam, a 600-page novel in the Assamese language that was published in April and is already in its fifth edition. 'It's entirely based on facts,' the author Rita Chowdhury says. 'I have met the couple in Hong Kong, it's their story.'
She spent four years researching her novel, travelling to Nepal, Hong Kong and mainland China to meet the Chinese who were removed from Assam after the 1962 border conflict. Makam exposes how Indian Chinese were persecuted by the state.
