You open your eyes one fine day and realise the country is no longer yours ...you realise,from that moment you are living in a foreign land..the soil you considered your mother has been snatched away from you by decisions made by some power hungry politicians sitting miles away..deciding your destiny..then you realise was this the independence we fought for.."freedom at midnight" becomes "doom at midnight"..the place where you spent your childhood, you thought you will make your destiny is to be left as it is. What will be your first reaction? - What will I do now? Some one suggested..' you can sell everything and take cash or gold with and flee to the other side', destiny was laughing at you when you were thinking of this, wealth was a far fetched dream..when you faced the stark reality, question stood out to be - Can you take your family safely to the otherside saving them from the hands of the butchers invading you with that pretentious freedom bugle call ?
"At the stroke of the midnight hour,when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.." this was the freedom speech JL Nehru made.. the 'tryst with destiny' as it was called ..truly for many of us became a 'tryst'..a tryst with the gory partition which brought with it the blood bath,wails of children, men & women..orphaned as their family butchered in front of their eyes, people changed their religion when death was staring right at them, women did not return to their families to save shame as they were brutally raped. This makes you think and ask yourself what makes a man kill another in the name of religion?...Am i different if i remember god five times or only once...my foreskin is intact or not..or if i carry a sikha at the back or if i have have a vermilion on my forehead. Does it really makes a difference?? or is this madness?
The hatred with which we live in this world .. is it all worth it ? this is the question each of us have to ask ourselves?
- narrative inspired from my grandfather's memoirs of partition shared with me in my childhood (he had a narrow escape from death)
..I have a life to live on and my life is a gift ..a gift destiny bestowed to him.
Life is a gift to all of us, probably we should live it like that..
4 comments:
There are two sides of a coin.Your view depends on the side of coin you are seeing.
One should see the things in totality.Who knows what you might have been doing if the partition had not been put into effect,may be doing some menial work in a remote rural backdrop ?
Most of those who had migrated,are now in excellent positions,both in India as well as in developed countries like US,UK , Australia etc.
Let us not dwell on issues which have lost their relevance in the present era and concentrate on more burning issues like Global warming, Terrorism, safe drinking water & education for the rural poor.
..let us not talk about possibilities !...possibility would have been,if not for partition.. given an integrated resources, man power & economy of today's pakistan and india- we would have been a global super power long back.....and then poverty stricken people of both sides today would have been a better lot... the write up deals with facts of past and let us dwell on them only .. it no where says partition should have been avoided ... or discusses the merits and demerits ..like sides of coin... it just tells what 1947 partition was all about, what underwent and what feelings you would have had if u would have been there..
.whether it is relevant in today's scenario or not?..i would say communal riots are not things of past only..it has been happening constantly since our independence ...
also I am not a regular columnist or an editor of a popular newspaper whose viewership is so huge that i have to feel responsible for what i write because it effects so many minds...and motive here is definitely not to bring out popular/burning issues and discuss them...the idea here was to share with people of second and third generations who don't know today our bloody past...from the mouth person who had "the first hand experience"..i had something in my mind since my childhood something which i knew from my gran pa...and the motive was just to put it across in my personal space...the voice was his I was just a medium..and I don't think it is bad to learn from history which we most of the times forget !
If you had gangrine on one of your limbs,would it not be advisable to amputate the affected organ,so that it does not spread to the otherwise healthy body ??
And one need not dwell on the pains suffered in the process, since it was essential,and instead be happy on the end results ie. a healthy body
The youth today must look forward to challenging oppertunities instead of brooding over bitter memories of the past,which,anyway have proved to be blessings in disguise !
analogy to a healthy body and blessing in disguise !! ..i would say the perceptions differ again .. 4 wars and 20 years of proxy war with the same nation .. innumerable loss of lives...is this the healthy body we are talking about ??...godhra riots, bombay riots are not things of past ..how can we ignore this when we have to look things in totality..when i see from here regions/religions/communities 'maketh a man' seems to be the truth ...while in reality man has made all of them...when i see from here i see politicians taking advantage of our sentiments our religious allegiance , since our independence ..inciting & dividing us ....i think this peaceful coexistence is the biggest challenge world is facing today ... isn't terrorism / conflicts /wars have it's roots here...we would be living in a fool's paradise if we ignore them in the name of india rising campaign...and sit in some corner of world having a plush job.. when your own country needs you more...i think this is the time when youth should enter into political sphere which needs a major overhauling... there is a course which is taught in first semester of MBA in IIMs .. social transformation in India...time has come to put it into practice probably.. 5 IITians haev started a political party 'paritrana' .. examples like this should inspire...
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