They and We

When you see the families desperately stretching their hands to touch the names of their loved ones or making an impression of those names in papers or simply kissing those names imprinted by the memorial pool at the 9/11 site, you see how important it is for these people to have this little emotional solidarity  that the nation actually cares for their loved ones. At this scene, I can't but feel for the families of numerous terror and riot victims of my selfish, callous, cruel nation who would never ever see any iota of justice, let alone a little place where they can come to remember their dead or expect any genuine sympathy from the government or the people at large, beyond the initial political response! In thousand of years of civilization, we, somehow, have mastered the art of not feeling at all for anyone but our very narrow selves. Surely, US as a state doesn't respect the innocent victims of Iraq or Afghanistan but at least they respect their own. We, the selfish bastards, do neither.

Painful Pangs of Partition

I came across an article by Suhel Seth in Times of India asking Gujrat riot victims to forget and move on, to take advantage of the development wave of Gujrat. The first thing that came to my mind is that Suhel probably doesn’t know what he is talking about. And what made me think so is memories of a frail old man in his deathbed telling stories of his small village to an inquisitive and impressionable child.

My grandfather was a school teacher in an East Bengal village. He left his job to join India’s freedom movement. When India won her freedom, he, like millions of others,  lost his only means of livelihood: his small piece of land. Our family made that fateful journey from the East to the West.

Years of poverty and despair followed, bright students from an entire generation just didn’t have enough support to pursuit the education of their dreams. Our family was set back by at least a generation. But we also came to a more dynamic urban life from a rural setting: it meant more opportunities. By the second generation, we have achieved a life standard that was (and probably still is) unthinkable in the small village of Bengal.

But memories are memories. And my grandfather did not live long enough to see any of these later-day-luxuries. In his deathbed in a lower than lower middle class neighborhood, fighting cancer in the 1980’s, he would tell me stories of Ramayana, Mahabharatha and of his beloved village. How he wished I had tasted mangoes from “that tree”; and how beautiful it is when the monsoon clouds gather over the supari trees; how I could have easily learnt swimming living amidst the ponds. When the earth smells after the rains, and I would be excited: he would tell me how sweet is the smell of “that earth”…

So powerful were his emotions that 23 years and tours round the world later I still long to smell “that earth” once, just to get a closure. My father, my uncle (father’s elder brother) and aunt (father’s elder sister) were all borne on that earth. And whenever I tell of them visiting that place again, my father just says “It’s too dangerous.. . we can’t go there..we can’t take our families, especially women, there…”  More than 60 years have passed..and it IS still too dangerous a proposition for my father to bring us there. Such was the pain…

If there is one truth about life, then this is it: life goes on. And life will go on for the Gujrat victims as well. They will probably forgive because this is too hard a burden on heart. They will probably move on and even join Modi’s development drive. But forget? Two generations later, there will be a child writing such hijbijbij…

“Hey Ram”!

P.S: Just today (Feb 26, 2011) I saw Ashish Nandy saying on NDTV “Left, Right, and Center” program that millions still live with the Partition every day. I wish victims of the different communities could meet face to face without any politician in sight…they would find so much in common in their pains and pangs. When I see the old lady in “Garam Hawa” (1975) just asking for the right to die in her homeland, I don’t see a Muslim there: I see my grandfather.