Tayyeb (name changed), in his 20s and from the Paktia province in eastern Afghanistan, cut a forlorn figure in central Calcutta on Monday, hours after his homeland fell to the Taliban.

“I have a father, step-mother and nine siblings (in Afghanistan). When the war began, all were spending sleepless nights amid the bombing and shelling. Nobody trusts the Taliban despite their assurances of ceasing torture. I don’t know if I will meet them again,” he said .

He said after a lot of effort, he could connect to someone over phone back home to learn his family was safe. “But I don’t know what lies ahead for them or my country,” he said, referring to the fast-paced developments in Afghanistan.

Tayyeb felt a knot in the pit of his stomach on Sunday when news emerged that even the country’s president Ashraf Ghani left the country with thousands of diplomats and the well-heeled. There were images of clogged roads to the Kabul airport and a frenzy among people to get on the last departing aircraft.

In Calcutta, home to hundreds of Afghans, many for generations, Tayyeb said he didn’t know whether to be happy with his privilege of being away from it all or sad about the turn of events. Tayyeb came to India around five years ago and stayed on.

“My family of farmers can’t go to the fields anymore, and the price of land fell drastically as soon as the Taliban started capturing the country. I am afraid for my two sisters who are schoolgirls…. Despite the Taliban’s assurance of not harming children and women, I can’t trust them,” he said, staring at his phone's news feed.

Afghanistan has a special link with Bengal. For most Bengalis, the word Kabuliwala brings to mind the 1957 Tapan Sinha film based on a beloved short story by Rabindranath Tagore in 1892. Chhabi Biswas played a hawker of Afghani origin, who endears himself to a little Bengali girl who reminds him of his daughter back in Afghanistan.

In Birbhum, real-life kabuliwala Rahaman Khan, 35, was in tears on Monday. With phones unreachable, he was clueless about his loved ones.

Rahaman’s mother is Bengali. His grandfather came to India and chose to settle in Bolpur. “This state has always given us love since Tagore’s story Kabuliwala,” he added.

Calcutta-based Yasmin Nigar Khan, president of the All India Pakhtoon Jirga-e-Hind, an association of Afghani citizens in India, and the great-granddaughter of Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan, also known as Frontier Gandhi, said the plight of simple Afghanis at the hands of zealots pained her. “My great-grandfather stood for women's education and empowerment, and humanity over religion. The Taliban are against all essential human values,” she said.

“:I wonder how long the people of Afghanistan will have to bear their atrocities.”