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

What’s your passion?

I watched the ‘Million Dollar Baby’ yesterday. For the zillionth time. Every time I watch it, I feel Maggie Fitzgerald’s passion so strongly. She’s a raging bull, more in the head than in the body; her interminable struggle and intensity concealed in her reclusive calmness. She’s the one you’ll pass a hundred times on the street and probably never notice - not her, not her struggle, not her pain, not her passion, nothing; we don’t have time for the below best; how can we spare for the inconspicuous and mundane? An inferno grabs attention, not incinerating garbage.

As I watch the screen, with each punch she delivers, not to the crunching jaw or a rupturing cartilage of an opponent, not even to a punching bag but to the oppression of circumstances, I see a tiny fighter dancing in her footwork trance against a twin headed Goliath called destiny and life, not giving up, not giving in but just growing and growing and growing with her tired beautiful smile.

And for the first time, I wonder; why boxing of all things? Sounds unlikely and a bit unrealistic for a downtown waitress, doesn’t it? What got her to it in the first place? Was it just a survival instinct to fight back; well she had enough reasons and opportunities to do so. Fight, fight, fight. Destroy, break, suffer, die, win! Did the monster of revenge whisper this every single day in her innocent and naïve ears?

No matter how many times you pull a web down, a spider relentlessly constructs it again, painstakingly or otherwise. Is web building its passion then? And does it enjoy it; can it survive without doing it? Your guess is as good as mine. We, robotically wake up every single day and go about doing our chores, going to office, earning money, eating, sleeping and repeating. These acts of necessity, are they shards of passion? I hope not.

What defines passion then? Do we find it or does it find us? Can passion capriciously change from one thing to another; does our ability to be successful at it or not explain it? How does one identify it? Does it just strike us one fine day, like love and lightning? Is it something that we’ve loved for a very long time? Are the reasons for loving it selfless; do the reasons matter? Is it something that we’re good at? Is it self-driven or imposed?  Or have we just trained our mind like the thousand other things to tell us that this is it?

I think the answer lies in how truthful and honest we are to our feelings when we do things. There are very few times when we are really ourselves, and not what the situation wants us to be. We just replace masks, one after another as we move through the proceeds of life; abandoning passion among other things in the crowded alleys routine.

To me passion is something that invigorates you from within. Other factors and others become inconspicuous when you are at it. It is one of the few things you enjoy and do even when no-one notices or is interested; it’s unpretentious. Learning, falling, being broken and disappointment are inevitable, yet you nurture it. It will entice you into that meditative trance difficult to break free from; it’s important to feel that connection.

Unconditional love couldn’t find a better example. This love, if real, is one of the purest and interminable forms. The world, its disparaging taunts fade, as obdurately you refuse to budge and give in. It makes you feel good about yourself. It’ll test you though, rest assured, time and again, relentlessly and demand nothing less than all you’ve got. And the rest depends on how much you are ready to give to it.

That faint touch of the extended chest at the finish line, the completion of the last piece of the quartet, that final punch that brings your opponent down to his knees; the satisfaction cannot be recorded – it is not the last, it never will be the last. It goes on and even when one is incapable later in life, it stays in the mind till the last breath.

Pink Floyd were passionate about their music; they didn’t create music for the world.  They believed in what they were doing and just created lasting melodies that have made them so beautiful, unique and enchanting.

Passion - you can’t physically embrace it, it can’t smile back but the pleasure it can give is like a mental orgasm.

So what’s your passion?




Picture courtesy

© Million Dollar Baby image - https://www.altfg.com/film/million-dollar-baby/

© Pink Floyd image - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pink_Floyd_(1971).png

© Runner image -https://www.boston.com/news/boston-marathon/2019/04/15/boston-marathon-2019-photos

The end of the affair by Graham Greene – A book review

A few days ago, I met a gentleman or rather the gentleman met me. As I sat quietly with a book, about to start reading it, he settled himself in the seat beside me. It was rather eccentric of him to start speaking the very next moment and say that he knew a lot about me and my thoughts. I smiled at first and knew it was now time to look the other way but he persisted. He kept speaking without looking at me. And what he said with each utterance not just intrigued but shocked me. I sat there, hypnotized, listening helplessly.

Just as he had come unannounced, he left after his soliloquy, without bidding adieu and I sat there feeling naked and exposed, feeling heavy; my emotions, thoughts, doubts, affairs, my love and hatred, jealousy and pity whirling in eddies of wind right where he had sat.

And as I finish this engrossing book, I know it was Greene that I’d met.

And I know that I will read this book again; probably ten times, even more. It’s a treasure that I’ve not had to hunt for; it’s a treasure that has found me. I usually highlight beautiful thoughts in books and weave them in my review but amusingly, I ended up highlighting almost the entire book. It’s pure in its beauty and ugliness and madness. It’s for everyone in love, out of love, married or just human. It’s for everyone who loves and has innumerable questions for God. It’s about your fight against love, for it, against and for your understanding of His mysterious ways. And as you’re left deprived of answers at the end of this mental entanglement, you inanely end up grinning that there are others, like you, who are capable of the same immorality in the helplessness and powerlessness of the situation, as if that is even justified. It’s a mirror for lovers and what you see, isn’t physical.

I’d thought I dare not write a review for this one but have ended up doing just that, if this can be called one. All I feel as I keep it back on my shelves is the universe trying to tell me something; something very strong. And it isn’t a whisper; it’s a loud and constant yell asking me to suspend judgments and believe. I’ve been made to read this one for a reason.

I love a butterfly. Should I just watch and admire it from a distance even though my heart longs to possess it? Or should I attempt to capture and keep it or should I let it go? Will it ever come to me, to stay forever or just tease and flit around? Maurice Bendrix never got his answers, why would I; surely the orchestrator has.

My rating: 10/10


Image copyrights

© Graham Greene - https://www.businessdestinations.com/bd-portrait/graham-green-our-man-around-the-globe/

© Book cover - https://epublib.info/the-end-of-the-affair-by-graham-greene/

Will we ever learn?

Will we ever learn?

About a thousand and a half people assembled outside a Masjid near Bandra station on the 14^th Apr 2020. And by any mean, it didn’t seem to be a capricious move; rather a well planned one. Someone had been messaging them since the last 4—5 days to gather at Bandra station; they were to be facilitated to go home. Really? It wouldn’t be distressing news on a normal day, but to see a mob in the midst of a lockdown left everyone distraught. Let’s try and break this up.

Who were these people?

These people were workers and labourers, migrants mostly from Malda in West Bengal. Malda, by the way, is near the India Bangladesh border, so for all we know they might even be illegal Bangladeshi migrants, in Mumbai to earn their livelihood.

And how do we know that they were mostly workers from West Bengal? Because that’s what’s been reported by the reporters on ground. Now, we know that it’s not possible to have asked every person present there where he/she was from and then draw a graph. However, my concern is why wasn’t there a single interview or media coverage of the labourers, why weren’t questions asked directly to them and have answers shot on a camera like is already done; was there something to hide?

And a religious person dressed in green was addressing them and mentioning their God again and again. How did he know that most of them were from a particular religion? If I wake up tomorrow and see a crowd of thousands gathered outside my building, I wouldn’t know what religion they belonged to unless their attire gave it away or unless I was told so. And why would I ask them about their religion in the first place; why should that be my focus?

Why did they gather there?

Was it a protest? They had been receiving messages for the last 4-5 days on WhatsApp asking them to gather at Bandra station if they wanted to go home. They wanted to go home and be with their families.

To empathize, they were probably cramped up in confined spaces, 4-5 living in each and if they were daily wage labourers, where were they getting their food from. I don’t think they were even carrying their ration cards.

We, amidst this lockdown are safely tucked in our 1,2,3 BHK houses, cleaning our sneezes with tissues and throwing them in a lidded dustbin like Amitabh Bachan says, some are working out extensively and vulgarly displaying their bodies on online posts, someone’s showing a mosquito bite – wow, and a few are exploiting and rediscovering their culinary skills.

What do we really expect from these poor people though? Die before they die? Starving to death in confinement? Was food really being made available to them?

Were they foolish enough to not know that there could be lathi charge by the police, that there could be a stampede? Educated or not, I find it a bit difficult to believe that these poverty stricken workers braved the act on an impulse.

Even the quietest and calmest of children break-down or give it back at a certain point to the bullies; there is always a trigger. What was it in this case? And who provided it? And why was it provided – a political move, to bring unrest or to really help these people (that really sounds ridiculous in the current circumstances)?

Having said and asked that, none of them looked to be in a hurry; they seemed to be dressed well and more importantly it wasn’t inconspicuous that they were there without any luggage. Isn’t that surprising now? And why gather outside the station? Did they really intend to be sent home or were just masquerading for an ulterior agenda?

These are the questions, I think we should be asking before passing our judgments.

How did they get there?

Now this is one of the million dollar questions. We step out today and there are police barricades everywhere asking questions, discouraging social interaction, policemen carrying lathis, making arrests. So, how then did around fifteen hundred people appear all of a sudden outside the Masjid; how were they allowed. Could it be possible without the complicity of authorities? Now who are the authorities? The police, politicians, religious leaders, fake news specialists?

And why should they believe you?

And while all this was happening, the concerned rulers of the state were safe in their barricaded and protected houses thinking why this happened and what’s to be done. They surely took their time. A few blamed the centre. They were probably conducting internal meetings to decide on what was the best thing to say to the camera. The best thing!

It was frivolous of them to address the crowd on television saying that they’ve come to our state, were welcome to stay here and would be protected. What a farce. Why should they be believed and trusted? Didn’t they do everything possible to drive away these very people from the state? And would this have happened if these workers felt protected in the first place?

My friend works for an NGO and they’ve tied up with a food delivery company to create a platform where the needy can request for food during this lockdown and people who want to give donations can reach out to them. Daily, on our television screens, we are seeing lot of NGOs and good Samaritans doing the same. Shouldn’t the BMC, one of the richest governmental institutions, be interceding and doing more in this time of crisis? We aren’t asking for much – let the skyrocketed toll money you’ve collected from us go to them. At least that; it’d suffice.

And what are the opposition and other parties doing?

Is the task of an opposition just to oppose and excoriate the government in power? Can’t they get their hands dirty and be on the ground lending a helping hand or do they deem it enough to denounce others on television screens in pointless debates?


But there’s a more basic issue here. Things like these have always been orchestrated, probably a million, zillion times in the past. And every time, the people of this country or any country have seen who suffers finally. Read and listen between the lines when people of God and people of power invigorate you to go overboard, apply that uncommon common sense. Don’t make WhatsApp your God of information. Think when something is said to you, think of the repercussions, think if there are other ways to highlight and condemn things. Have love for the country; in no other country are people of all religions let to thrive.

Is this virus, pandemic showing us the true us in more ways than one?

Be a rebel but with a cause. Don't cause panic, don't let people suffer because of you.
Image copyright - © https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/migrant-workers-keen-to-return-to-villages-gather-outside-mumbais-bandra-station-defying-lockdown/article31340674.ece

When we were orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro – A book review

Christopher Bank is a celebrated detective in London but the one case that has always been haunting him is the mysterious/enigmatic disappearance of his parents when he lived in Shanghai. As an investigator, he relentlessly gathers facts and clues to substantiate his theories and connections; and after all these years he is closer in his pursuit than he ever was to reveal the truth and get them back, he thinks. He thinks! But little does he know, for the puzzle box he’d opened years ago and the pieces he’d been putting together, the rules of the game had been changed and the actual picture had already been put together, stacked somewhere unsafely in one of the horrendous dusty shelves of life. That he was a part of this altered and orchestrated puzzle never occurred to him; how would it? 

What he finally finds out is not just tragic but horrible. He himself is a case that has been solved years ago. An intelligently written book, I liked the style where every character is introduced in a sort of casual and informal manner as if you knew them from before.

And in these meandering lanes of search are intensities, a love for someone not liked, a passionate hatred for a true yet unrequited love, and a loathing nurtured to grow so strong that the result is a shattering of all boundaries of moral cognizance.

We are lucky. Most of us, in our lifetimes, are fortunate to get away committing small atrocities of power, hatred, jealousy and the likes. And we are forgiven. Or they’re never found out. Or they’re forgotten. We are indeed favoured to not be presented with empowered situations where we realize our power over someone or a situation and are equipped to exercise it surreptitiously. If this weren’t true, the number of encaged lurking demons within ourselves would surprise us, they with their evil piercing fiery eyes and devilish grin, swooshing around in an unsettled trance all ready to tear down and rip apart at command. It would not only scare and shame us as we sit there lost in despair, finding it hard to believe we were ever capable of this abominable mess.

Beware and be thankful.

My rating – 8/10

Images courtesy:
Book cover – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28923.When_We_Were_Orphans
Kazuo Ishiguro - https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/10/15/557217635/nobel-laureate-kazuo-ishiguro-once-wrote-a-screenplay-about-eating-a-ghost