WB: Families want sons back from Kabul

Shocked at the brutal killing of Indian engineer K Suryanarayana by the Taliban in Afghanistan, families with sons, husbands and fathers serving in that country want them to come back home. In north Kolkata's Dum Dum area, where many families from suburban Durganagar have members working in Kabul, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Oman, morning and evening prayers have become longer affairs.

"We don't want money. We will be content with rice and dal... We want our son back," says Nikhil, brother of Akhil Barua who works for an American catering company in Kabul. Father Sudhir Ranjan Barua waits by the phone to hear from Akhil.

"He has been calling us regularly after the heinous incident. He keeps reassuring us that he is fine and asks us not to worry. But how can we not? Anything can happen anytime."

The slaying of the 41-year-old communications engineer working with a Bahrain firm has further shattered their faith in law and order in Afghanistan.

"May be he is telling us he's fine just so that we don't panic. God knows what he is suffering there," says Supriya wife of Piyush Gomes who works for an American firm in Kabul.

Members of Barua's family pray for his safety. "We don't want him to be there any more and we have conveyed the family's sentiments to him. We hope he comes back home soon," Sudhir Barua says. Gomes' school-going son Gourav does not know what has gone wrong suddenly for everyone in the family to be so grim. "We never wanted Baba to go in the first place. But now that there is some trouble in Kabul, we want him back," he says.

The families are united in anxiety. They exchange notes on the well being of their sons in far off land and have asked them to be in touch with one another in case of emergency. "But we will be at peace only when they come back," Supriya says.