Just another massacre!

Our country has always been the ground for atrocities. We have accepted it, have become immune to it. We call ourselves resilient. Yes we do recover, but weaker and distorted; resilience has become shameful more than a matter of pride.

Be it the Mughals or the British, the Dutch or the Portuguese, India and Indians have been razed and ruined time and again. We’ve always been easy prey to devouring vultures. World history is replete with gory stories of Hitler but few other than historians and people who have lived that era know about Churchill and his obliteration of races, an abominable rapist who not just snatched every ornament from the beauty of our homeland but defiled it mercilessly and left it there – mutilated, burnt, broken, dying.

And today, as I watch the television in this lockdown, another equally inhuman event comes to mind – the Jallianwala Baug massacre.

On Sunday, 13 April 1919, Acting Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer, convinced a major insurrection could take place, banned all meetings. This notice was not widely disseminated, and many villagers gathered in the Bagh to celebrate the important Indian festival of Baisakhi, and peacefully protest the arrest and deportation of two national leaders, Satyapal and Saifuddin Kitchlew. Dyer and his troops entered the garden, blocking the main entrance behind them, took up position on a raised bank, and with no warning opened fire on the crowd for about ten minutes, directing their bullets largely towards the few open gates through which people were trying to flee, until the ammunition supply was almost exhausted. The following day Dyer stated in a report that "I hear that between 200 and 300 of the crowd were killed. My party fired 1,650 rounds". – Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre#Before_the_massacre

The audacity, the shamelessness, the inhumanity!

But they were others, not countrymen; these monsters. Centuries have passed, power has shifted hands but have things changed? Do we need Dyers and Churchills anymore? No, we have our own power hungry, intelligence devoid, indifferent special squad.

I’m sure you would have watched these on television many times, but take a few seconds to watch them again before you read further.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-852f1PXBo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jq0tj5IYhL4

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Don’t hold it back – let go as you witness the biggest Corona virus immunity test that’s been happening in Mumbai, the financial capital of India over the last few days? Hordes of migrants being stuffed in tempos, buses; thousands lined up outside railway stations flaunting the best examples of social distancing – I can see the Corona virus grinning! Thousands of BEST buses stand unused in the bus-depots, probably cringing to help but they can’t; they need permission. The elderly, children and everyone else have been invited to the circus. Hungry, poorer, unemployed, they stand there in hope, like sheep, herded, probably to death, probably to freedom. And all they want is to go home and be with their families. Some will get on a train, some will wait, and others will be forced to leave in the hope to come back the next day. Virus carriers? Who cares?

A perfectly organized and managed circus; acrobats falling from their swings to their deaths, the skilled knife thrower not missing his mark and killing the girl with a knife right between her eyes, the lion chomping on the trainer’s bones – its salivating teeth red, the joker laughing but not the audience.  

Ghalib had said:

ye ishq nahin asan itna hi samjh liije

ik aag ka dariya hai aur duubke jaana hai

That’s a thing of the past Ghalib miya; let’s make it relevant to the present.

Ye ghar jaana nahi asan itna hi samjh liije

Corona aur politics ka dariya hai aur duubke jaana hai

If not a massacre, what is this?

Picture copyrights:

© https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/chaos-at-stations-maharashtra-calls-out-railways-for-cover-up-job/article31682538.ece

© https://www.thequint.com/news/india/migrants-stranded-at-mumbai-bus-depot-as-centre-and-state-spar-over-shramik-trains

Jallianwala Baug massacre picture - © https://scroll.in/article/806572/bloodbath-on-baisakhi-the-jallianwala-bagh-massacre-april-13-1919

The garden of evening mists by Tan Twang Eng – A book review

‘The garden will remember it for you!’

‘The goddess of Memory’, I said. ‘Who’s the other woman?’ ‘Her twin sister, of course. The goddess of Forgetting.’

‘For what is a person without memories? A ghost trapped between worlds, without an identity, with no future, no past.’

'My memory is like the moon tonight, full and bright, so bright you can see all its scars.' 

In the middle of the forest, amidst the plantations, I see a garden; a quaint Japanese garden. As I enter, I realize there’s no-one. A thick mist shrouds the garden. There’s something strange about the place. It’s beautiful, but is that why it’s strange? I hear voices but I can’t see anything. I wonder if the ubiquitous mist protects or hides what lies underneath; it looks heavy, yet balancing itself perfectly; it’s movement, if any, is inconspicuous. The heaviness conceived by the eyes isn’t really there; I don’t feel anything but a tingle as I trespass further. Like a savage, the cloudy white scatter engulfs me, eating parts of me, making them disappear; I’m walking but I don’t see my legs. I’m floating.

I try and listen carefully. The voices are many; they crave for attention; they want to be heard. In the cacophony of faint whispers, they’re telling me loud stories of the Occupation war, the concentration camps, of atrocities, of power, of belonging, of separation. There seems to be a strange complicity in the voices of those who’ve committed them and the ones who’ve endured them.

I attempt to listen carefully; they disconcert me. They seem to read my thoughts, “Why did you chop her fingers, why did you rape those girls, why did you inflict so much pain, why did you behave so grotesquely, did you not feel anything when you buried them alive?”

“No”, they say, “I did it because I could. Because she was beautiful. Well, I was raped once. I had my urges to satisfy. They were brought here for this. They needed to be punished. I was asked to.”

I move further across and there’s a part where the mist seems unwelcome; a patch of grass trimmed to different heights, manipulated to make a Taoist symbol. A misery emanates from the waving grass and I ask, “So a lot happened to you, now what?

They answer in myriad echoes “I’m trying to forget. Like Magnus, I have forgiven and forgotten else life will be difficult to live. I carry all the angst and hatred with me like Judge Teoh. I won’t rest until I know, I will avenge. It’s my fate, I have nothing against anyone.”

‘What words could have healed my pain, returned my sister to me? None. And he understood that. Not many people did.’

‘They couldn’t kill me when we were at war. And they couldn’t kill me when I was in the camp.’ He said finally, his voice subdued. ‘But holding on to my hatred for forty-six years … that would have killed me.’

I move away from the voices but they linger in my mind. I reach a pond and the mist lifts as beguilingly as it appeared and stayed and now I see clearly. The voices disappear with the mist, their lives swept away. Tan Twang Eng’s enchanted garden is more beautiful than I had imagined. Everything seems to be perfectly pleasing to the eye. I sort of understand the strangeness now, the fusing of things from the surrounding, borrowing from it - ‘Shakkei’. The mist is part of the garden, a part of the décor like the scattered leaves.

All the characters from his lush, manicured garden are sitting around the pond, oblivious of my presence. Most of them are mutilated, more in the minds and hearts than physically. I see a landscape of human frailties and strength, of a war infested cosmopolitan Malaya; being ravaged by the Japanese, British, and Communists alike. It’s an unacceptable, unaccepted, unwelcome cosmopolitan Malaya.

A lone heron stands in the pond, confused by its own reflection, fusing into one. Only when it alights to disappear into the sky, is the reverie broken. The clouds drift in the water. I look in the sky and they’re the same. I wonder if it’s the same sky everyone sees, the same mountains, the same air that everyone breathes. Thankfully, there’s no line drawn, no fence erected there; yet!

My thoughts drift as I wonder – This love for one’s country, why isn’t it enough by itself; why does it inevitably induce hate for another? Does it need to be proven by conquests and hatred for the ‘not you’? And what brings this hatred, the looks, the mannerisms, the dissimilarity? Or is it the inability of acceptance? Every war is less a story of the brave and more a saga of inhumanity from the interminably grotesque power that we yield to, anger arousing from the throes of helplessness and being overworked.

No! No! It isn’t inhuman. How can we call it so when it’s so common a trait and event? We’re better off accepting that selfishness, jealousy, hatred, anger are what we are. We’re human! It is just the mist of power and situations that keep it unexposed; it is, was always there, though.

‘Sparrows rise from the grass into the trees, like fallen leaves returning to their branches. I think about those elements of gardening Frederik is opposed to, aspects so loved by the Japanese – the techniques of controlling nature, perfected over a thousand years. Was it because they lived in lands so regularly rocked by earthquakes and natural calamities that they sought to tame the world around them? My eyes move to the sitting room, to the bonsai of a pine tree Ah Cheong has so faithfully looked after. The immense trunk the pine would have grown into is now constrained to a size that would not look out of place on a scholar’s desk, trained to the desired shape by copper wire coiled around its branches.’

In the fight of memory against forgetfulness, the power of acceptance, I think is what makes all the difference. We can tell the mind a thousand reasons but the heart has its own way of behaving; happy are those people who can hear their mind stronger than their heart. What else justifies Yun Ling’s love and respect for Aritomo, the Japanese emperor’s gardener after all that was inflicted upon her sister and her and millions of others at their concentration camps; she was the lone survivor? I want to see the thin line where the hatred is gradually erased and love trickles in. In this fusion, does there still remain a line? Yes, I guess, but it comes and goes.

‘What is gardening but the controlling and perfecting of nature?’

It all looks deceptive to me now, the gardener Aritomo’s work of art. Like his ‘horimono’ (tattoos), though beautiful, it is nothing but a manipulated and contrived design. In the understated elegance of the garden, like his life, is a dexterous touch of cunningness. Like his rocks, deliberately placed to imperfection, he craftily uses the people around him to complete his enigmatic design. There’s no map, no blueprint; he schemes, what one doesn’t know doesn’t hurt, but a discovery later, will

If there’s one prayer I want to make today in all earnestness, it’ll be to not let one to ever gain power over another. Let us not see the worst side of ourselves.

‘The palest ink will outlast the memory of men.’ - True Tan Twang Eng, your story will outlast the memory of men.

‘The sounds of the world outside faded away, absorbed into the leaves.’

‘When the work is done, it’s time to leave.’

My rating - 9/10

Image courtesy:

Book cover - © https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12031532-the-garden-of-evening-mists

Tan Twang Eng - © https://www.davidhigham.co.uk/authors-dh/twan-tan-eng/

Shakkei 1 - © http://robertketchell.blogspot.com/2013/06/borrowed-landscapes-shakkei.html

Shakkei 2 - © http://wabisabi-trip.com/shakkei-meigetsu-in-kamakura/

Shakkei 3 - © https://www.mnn.com/your-home/organic-farming-gardening/stories/art-shakkei-or-borrowed-scenery

For the love of reading

“It’s only words, and words are all I have, to take your heart away.”
                                                                                       The Bee Gees

We are made of words, as many as our feelings, probably more, and we use them unsparingly. Though feelings come before words, we need the latter to express the former. More importantly, the right ones are essential and if they fail the tongue, the expressions become misguided, misinterpreted and often misrepresented. If you’ve ever been in love, you’d know how difficult it is to find the right words to pour your heart out; there’s always so much to say but so little meaningfully said and sometimes so much said but so little meaningfully registered. It goes to the researched concept of sender, medium and receiver – how well and absolutely do you feel my love, vanity, anger, resentment when I express it? And then there’s an important life beyond words; do I feel the pain in your eyes or the fear you convey without anything or much being said? These seemingly piddly things are weapons of eloquence. As thoughts and expressions dance around in our minds shaped in these words, a chaos reigns and we are either trapped or released.  

“Oliver asks for more!” Is this sentence so intense that it is likely to arouse and trigger someone’s love for reading? Or is it the exclamation mark that did the trick (I don’t even remember if there was one.) I guess it did for me, though; else it wouldn’t be so deeply imbibed for it to stay and for me to be able to recollect it so easily. If you’ve read Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens, you’ll identify that sentence where Oliver is with the other urchins being trained to be a thief, and as they’re having lunch, he asks for more; an audacious and horrendous crime to commit; everyone staring at him in shock and disbelief. And me at them and him.

I read quite a few books as a child, but Oliver Twist struck a chord that has stayed. Later in life, I did read it again and it had the same effect. Probably as a child I wouldn’t have been able to explain why I liked the book or the ‘bringing to life’ of characters.

My parents were never into books and reading, so I can't put a finger where my love for reading has come from. I do remember though we had this shop collecting old materials and the mustached lanky shopkeeper, always sniffling, used to keep used story books as well. Sometimes, I used to buy; most times I borrowed for a price.

Growing up with Moby dick, Treasure Island, Kidnapped, Robinson Crusoe was such a delight. And then Enid Blyton happened. Though I don’t remember much now, The Famous Five,The Fatty series, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Archie and his pals were a craze then. Also the comics – Phantom, Tarzan, Mandrake, Chacha Chaudhari, Champak, Chandamama, Tinkle – some characters like Shikari Shambhu, Supandi and Saboo are so vivid in the mind that the moment you utter their names, one can actually see them as they were, their looks, their attire, their expressions, simply everything. Ah, childhood!

So, what do I like about reading; what does anyone?

© Samyukta, my friend.

I’ve often read, and more than once have written myself that you live and breathe the characters you read; one becomes them, but does that really happen? Are you really transported to that era and emotions, do you actually see the sky as it is described – a purple spread of despair; do you feel the pain and anguish as is felt by the lover – my hatred was so intense as I loved her so much; and are you telling me that you can think and behave like that demented child? 

While reading a good book, we often don’t realize but end up writing our own story as we read along. How many Japanese gardens have I visited? None. So when Tan Twang Eng talks about ‘shakkei’ (borrowing from the scenery) in ‘The garden of evening mists’, do I understand? No. So I find out, I look for pictures on the internet and I realize. But do I still know what exactly the writer’s particular garden looks like? Probably not. So I make my own; I place the rocks where the writer claims to have placed it, I see the clouds in the pond as the lone heron, disconcerted by my presence and stuck in its own shadow sees it too and when this fusion of thoughts happen, it’s nothing but sheer magic invigorating the senses.

Yes, we can’t have lived all the experiences; so we do the next best or worst thing. Don’t tell anyone that you can empathize with the repugnance and brutality they faced in a concentration camp; you’ll be apparently lying then unless you were in one, being untrue to yourself and the others. When we can’t feel the bullets piercing the skin and can’t empathize, we just surrender to the closest resembling experience. We see the soldier from ‘Saving private Ryan’ instead, taking the bullet, the wound so fresh and raw, wisps of smoke emanating from the burnt gunpowder and we succumb to the heaviness and fall as he falls. 

You are in awe of how the simplest, subtlest and even the most complicated feelings can be sketched and magnified so perfectly, oh so clearly. The beauty, the clarity in some pages are so real and felt, you end up reading them twice, thrice, sometimes to understand, other times just to relive the richness. 

How often do you drift apart in your own thoughts, emotionally connected, feeling and living the situation and the characters?

I do. I do drift, I do feel. A derisive laugh does escape in a conspicuous disgust or treachery, a wave of anger does arise in an obdurate pride or a disparaging conduct, I do think of someone in words of passion, I do live the character/s even if for a while. I do! I run ahead - I want to tell the characters what to do, I want to warn them, I want to …

… I am there with Estha each time he makes the same walk in the rain; I feel his pain, I am his twin then, not Rahel. - The God of small things
… I strongly felt hatred for the person I loved as Maurice did; I was jealous just as he was; I yearned to cause pain just like the kind I was going through. - The end of the affair
… I didn’t feel disgust or guilt as Otto Gottlieb, making love to a married woman. - Unexploded
… I feel my chopped finger stubs beneath the glove and want to hate Tatsuji for what his people, the Japanese did to me in the concentration camps, I want to feel the hatred, for it to come back, but it doesn’t; I feel sorry for him in fact. - The garden of evening mists

Most novels, if you’ve noticed, are tales of sorrow; is that the truest of emotions and feelings then? There, I digress again!

The other gratifying thing about reading good mature writing is the realization that there exist others, who think and behave just like you; a kind of reassurance probably filling the emptiness you could never understand or probably express in your real life emotions. It gives a sadistic pleasure when you realize you’re not the only one capable of those contriving thoughts, feeling the gloom of an unrequited love, or so muddled in the head that madness, consequently, becomes a cure.

On the other hand one encounters many situations and feelings they haven’t experienced before. The author challenges you to visualize, to comprehend his characters and their feelings; his feelings. Even in the labyrinth of those million words, s/he leaves a lot unspoken as he hands over the reins of his thoughts to you - the reader, even for those brief moments, concealing himself in the shadows as you read between the lines; the story halts there in anticipation, watching you and either frowns from a failure to have been understood or displays a prized grin as the right chord is struck. A good writer is never a profligate spender of words; he respects the reader and treats him as intelligent.

For a lover in the story, the writer probably wouldn’t want to make him read between the lines; it’d make him go insane when he always reads it wrong. Or is it an act of deliberation for the character/s to go wrong? It’s a game the creator is adept at, a game he will always win, the rules are his and he tweaks them to his convenience and pleasure; not to the lover’s, not to yours!

In contrast, as a poet, the writer attempts to hone your skills of imagination. He feels a strong urge to force you to read between the lines; he believes expressing everything in black and white, not letting curiosity and fascination to bloom and scatter heedlessly, is not just mundane but vulgar, a shame to his vanity. I feel the best story tellers are prose writers who are really poets inside.

I’m so glad that I developed this habit of reading. Books like The God of small things, The secret scripture, Unexploded, The garden of evening mists, Waterland, The Heart of the matter, Disgrace and many others have left memories that can’t be erased; they’ll probably fade in time like everything else but I don’t want them to. I want to hold on to them for ever, forever.

I wish more parents would induce this love for reading in their children. It’s a world, rather many worlds and they’re out there waiting for you. Embrace and give in. Get lost in them and you’ll not emerge the same again.

Happy reading! :)

Pictures courtesy 
Open book - © https://www.halifaxpubliclibraries.ca/blogs/post/the-journey-of-a-book-part-1/
Books - © https://lithub.com/this-cruel-calculator-will-tell-you-how-many-extra-books-you-could-read-a-year-if-you-quit-social-media/

Does reel romance win over reality yet again? – missing Irfan Khan and Rishi Kapoor

When it comes to reel life, the romances and ‘larger than life’ vividness has almost always overweighed the simple yet real. Pining for attention has been the intensely hued plots, expressions, running around trees and flowery love making; the garish ensemble of cinema for the masses has always been able to overshadow the brilliant tediousness of reality.

And how easily it has transcended to real life as well, even after death.

Irfan Khan has been my favourite actor from Doordarshan days. I remember the intensity he portrayed in his role of a psycho serial killer in a TV series called ‘Darr’, written by Anurag Kashyap. With the piercing glare and ruthlessness of a damaged lover in Maqbool, the despair in Haider, the simplicity and truthfulness in The Namesake, the playfulness in Life in a metro and many more, Irfan Khan, you have honoured the art and artist in you; you have truly worshipped the deity of cinema. At 53, you’ve gone too soon and have left a void that won’t be filled because uniqueness has no substitute. That inebriated look with those puffy eyes and that tired innocent smile will be missed. I hope the city wasn’t responsible for your illness as you aptly mentioned on a roof in ‘Life in a Metro’,

“Ye shaher hame jitna deta hai, badle mein kahin jyada humse le leta hai.”

(For what the city gives, it takes much more from us.) 

I remember, on an award’s night, Shahrukh Khan and you arguing and disputing over the grandeur of his romances against the diminutiveness of existential drama. Your derision was justified but we know that the justification doesn’t matter, rather wouldn’t matter for long.

Likewise, we hadn’t mourned you enough, when the stage was yet again taken over by another romantic stalwart; inadvertently in this case, and you were pushed, even if for the moment, to the recesses. Instantly, people’s WhatsApp display pictures changed from your smiling face to the chubby Rishi Kapoor’s. That’s again a name that needs no introduction either. Synonymous with romance, Rishi Kapooor went on from being a frivolous child in Bobby to be the romantic face of the 70s; he was probably the only actor who did justice to any musical instrument in his hands.  He brought an era of romance that is again unparalleled. Despite his playing varied dramatic roles later on, his true fans are more likely to remember him for his chocolate boy youthful exuberance and the stubborn arrogance he exuded as a passionate lover; that mischievous smile of youth I’m sure had stirred a lot of hearts.

He made lovers believe,

“Mai shayar toh nahi, magar ai hasin, jab se dekha maine tujhko, mujhko, shayari aa gayi,

Mai aashiq toh nahi, magar ai hasin, jab se dekha maine tujhko, mujhko, aashiqui aa gayi.”

His vanity in the ways of portrayal of love led him to even berate another unconventional actor and denounce him with this disparaging remark, “You (Nawazuddin) haven’t done it (running around trees) in your life; neither will you get a chance to do it. And you aren’t capable of doing it either. You don’t have the image; you don’t have the talent.” All Nawazuddin had done was comment on clichéd romances terming it the act of ‘running around trees’.

However, the eclipse of the WhatsApp display pictures didn’t last beyond the day as they changed to other random pictures (the restricted time for memories we have). Forgive us our nonchalance because your art and work are much more than our vain attempt to glorify you for the day; the pictures might have changed but the essence of your work remains.

The stars have gone back to the sky. As you dazzle there as celestial bodies in the sky, know that you were revered and are remembered and will be missed forever. Every time you grace our television sets, the path will be tread down memory lane.

Image copyrights:

© Irfan Khan pic1 - https://www.quora.com/Which-is-Irfan-Khans-best-movie

© Irfan Khan pic 2 - https://sahiwal.tv/irfan-khan-will-perform-12-hour-fast-for-laborers-today-revealed-on-social-media/

© Rishi Kapoor pic 1 - https://www.rediff.com/movies/column/rishi-kapoor-knowing-the-real-rishi-kapoor/20200501.htm

© Rishi Kapoor pic 2 - https://english.fashion101.in/news/FAS-CELF-CSF-rishi-kapoor-neetu-singh-rare-pics-fashion-india-5563879-PHO.html?seq=7