Tunnels of War
IN THE BENGAL OF EARLY 1970S, students protesting against the institutions they perceived as bourgeois had a curious chant, “Tomar naam, aamaar naam, tomar aamaar mayer naam Vietnam,” meaning ‘your name, my name, our mother’s name is Vietnam’. They felt a kinship with the Vietnamese, who, thousands of miles away, were fighting a powerful and technologically more advanced country. Key to that fight were the Cu Chi Tunnels, a network of underground pathways criss-crossing Vietnam that helped the guerrilla fighters of Viet Cong evade American forces and maintain supply networks.
We gather on a chilly morning at the Saigon Opera House in Ho Chi Minh City for
