Mr Jaishankar, it is India who must decide what kind of relationship it wants with Bangladesh!

My wife's grandmothers on both her father's and mother's sides hail from what is now Paschim Banga. Growing up, she spent her entire summer holidays with her family in Kolkata, at her paternal grandmother's ancestral home, and till this day, I get to hear numerous stories, snippets and memories from their time spent at that house in New Alipore. 

When they went to the grocery, the grocer refused to sell vegetables in kilograms and instead sold them as single pieces — a mind boggling custom for anyone from Bangladesh. And then you have all the inside jokes about the famous penny-pinching habits of West Bengalis — when four of them visited another relative's house, they were served exactly four pieces of chicken with rice.

For hundreds of Bangladeshis like my in-laws, Kolkata, Murshidabad and other places of Paschim Banga are a repository of similar stories and memories forged with homes and family left behind during the partition of 1947. Some others have memories and bonds with cities, towns and villages in the seven sister states, with Bihar, and even at times, far flung places inside India. 

And for Bangladeshis of the Hindu faith, these ties, of course, run deeper. Even those without a direct family connection have nonetheless travelled to India for holidays and healthcare, for boarding school or higher education, for shopping or cross-border trade, soaking up the culture and environment of places they naturally feel a deep bond with.

None of these Bangladeshis, of course, care a hoot about how the South Block in Delhi views Bangladeshis (aka infiltrators), about one after another Indian administration's penchant for seeing the Bangladesh Awami League (BAL) as their only ally, or about Indian media's constant rant that Bangladesh is becoming a fanatical state like their perennial enemy Pakistan. 

When hundreds of Bangladeshis are brutally shot at the porous border between the two countries, Bangladeshis are naturally enraged. When the Indian government plots and schemes to help its ally, the BAL, stay in power through rigged and boycotted elections, Bangladeshis feel betrayed. When Bangladesh is forced into unfair power deals that drive up the debt burden of its citizens and while, at the same time, Bangladeshi businesses are denied entry into Indian markets through protectionist measures, Bangladeshis are deeply offended. When Indian trucks are allowed to ply Bangladeshi highways while Bangladeshis are starved of water from cross-boundary rivers, Bangladeshis are indignant. When Bangladeshis disappear from their homes inside the country and mysteriously end up in Indian jails, Bangladeshis are horrified.

So, Mr Jaishankar, to answer your question about what kind of relationship Bangladesh would like to have with India: It is a relationship where you do not view Bangladesh as a satellite state which you strong-arm into submission with the help of a proxy political party, but a genuine peer-to-peer relationship that recognises that deep historical and cultural ties of the two people. 

It is a relationship where India recognises the genuine democratic aspirations of Bangladeshi people, and not interfere to place puppet regimes that serve their interest before that of Bangladeshis. It is a relationship that utilises the immense economic potential of a genuine partnership between the two countries, to the benefit of both people. 

It is a relationship where India does not discriminate between Bangladeshi Hindus and Muslims by introducing insulting laws such as the Citizenship Amendment Act or trying to paint Bangladesh as a communal state in the international arena. It is a relationship where a former Bangladeshi prime minister cannot go and find refuge in your country after killing its own people and then try to rile up trouble while living there. 

It is interesting to note how, over the last month, the narrative in the India media — that minorities are facing a 'genocide' — is slowly starting to take a backseat. It would appear that the Indian government is at least partially concerned about normalising relations, given the extent and depth of actual people-to-people relations between the two countries. 

It would be unsustainable for either country to maintain indefinitely the thaw in relations that currently exists. We are too deeply tied together through history, geography and culture. 

Given that you are making overtures for normalising relations Mr Jaishankar, albeit through mixed signals, it is probably time you understand some things about Bangladesh and Bangladeshis — a country all of you often correctly point out that India helped give birth to. 

Bangladeshis broke away from Pakistan in 1971 because it clearly did not want to be a nation defined by its religious faith, but at the same time, it did not sign up to become a little India either. 

Bangladeshis wanted to create a state where the economic, historic and cultural aspirations of Bangalis on this side of historical Bengal are genuinely reflected. Those aspirations have time and again been interrupted and interfered with by not just your government, but other international actors and machinations (in the last 15 years, however, your role has been particularly egregious). 

That is why, even after 50 years, we once again find ourselves trying to redraw our social contract and rebuild our institutions. It is a messy process, and some of the noise coming out of this can be unsettling to your ears. Be that as it may, you still have to let it play out and this time, it would behoove you to make an effort to genuinely understand the aspirations of your neighbours and not wield a big brotherly cane, like you have become used to. If you do that, Bangladeshis will remember, and when the time comes to protect your interests — such as your security concerns surrounding the seven sisters — Bangladeshis will also not let you down.