Sunday, September 18, 2011

When we met again

Many years I spent wondering
what could have been
How things might have been different
if we had spoken up
Would they have been different?

How we may have been different people
had we not been racked by an unnecessary guilt
Would we have been different?

How we may have met
had we met without context.

Many years later, the storm has passed
leaving behind an engulfing peace,
a quiet acceptance
and faith in the belief
that if this is how the Universe intended it to be
this is how it best is.

And so it was amusing to see
that meeting after years
you were more nervous than me.

13 days vs 10 years…

Sometime back, in a fit of understandable rage, a friend of mine wrote this on facebook:


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3 SIMPLE REASONS why IRON WOMAN IROM SHARMILA's case probably doesn't get the attention an ANNA gets-


1. A WOMAN is heading this agitation.
2. She is from the 'CHINKI' NORTH-EAST, which is not really India, is it? Only Delhi and Bombay and the other two metros are India, no?
3. She is fighting for a SPECIFIC, REGION-BASED, 'NARROW' issue - the repeal of the AFSPA. She is not fighting a 'GENERAL EVIL' like ‘CORRUPTION' so why should we give two hoots, right?
Honestly, I don't care as much about this vague piece of shit called 'CORRUPTION'. I myself am bothered, disturbed & repulsed most by environmental & cultural corruption/pollution (But who gives a damn as long as pockets are filling up, right?)
But I think I should care even more for a human being's life, no?
Shame on the Government/s for letting someone go hungry for MORE THAN TEN YEARS and conveniently ignoring her. Ten years and counting. This is one world record India should be ashamed about.


Can we please make this the next viral internet 'REVOLUTION'?
Can we please not let someone die for doing the right thing?
CAN WE MAKE IROM EAT PLEASE?!


This will be the real test. Do we care as much about insignificant human life as we do about all-important money?
SPREAD THE WORD.
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And this was my response:


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Ok, I didn’t want to be drawn into discussions about Anna Hazare and especially not the inevitable comparisons with Gandhi and Irom Sharmila. But since it’s you, I will write out my few bits, not in any particular order.


While its natural to remember Irom Sharmila at a time like this, it’s not fair, neither to Irom Sharmila nor to Hazare. It’s two different causes and two different movements, independent of each other. One doesn’t become more important or legitimate than the other because of it numbers… and well, what can I say about the other… The thing is, I’m uncomfortable about the tendency to compare things- causes, people. Why should they be justified on the basis of how they stand up to each other? Why should anyone have to choose between corruption and AFSPA as being the bigger evil? Isn’t it enough that they’re both evil? And it seems almost an insult to Irom Sharmila for Hazare to write to her asking for support. They claim to be non political. Isn’t it a kind of politics though- you support my movement and I’ll support yours. Huh?
Having said that, it’s alright really by me- to each his own. The man in Manipur is a lot more troubled by the AFSPA than corruption, and the man in UP obviously cares two hoots about it because he’s weighed down by his own problems and has no inkling of what the Army’s been upto in Manipur or in Kashmir anyway. There is even less of a case for a movement automatically gaining legitimacy on the basis of numbers. By that logic, the Hindutva movement would be much larger than the anti corruption movement!
So I’m uncomfortable from the start when I read ’13 days vs 10 years…’
Moving on, the first reason you enlist is that the agitation is headed by a woman. I have to confess, that thought never occurred to me. Nor do I think that’s a real enough reason. There is much female discrimination that goes on in this country, and incredibly there is an equal amount of female veneration. Once you reach a certain stage though, I don’t think it matters, even in this country, which gender you belong to. Or so I’d like to think.
The other two causes you enlist are in my opinion, the real reasons. Who cares about what happens in the politically insignificant NE? Then again, whose attention is it that you seek? The government’s? It’s perfectly aware of wrongdoings in Manipur and elsewhere. For the government it’s really a matter of political significance which ultimately translates to numbers. If the Hazare agitation hadn’t managed the numbers that it did, it would have met the same fate, right? The sad, sad reality today is that it needs not moral justification but numbers for the government to come out of its slumber. And here too, corruption has a role to play. There are reasons why some places are kept constantly unstable. It’s called the business of war, and there are gains to be made from it. It’s a kind of corruption at the end of the day.
It’s really how you define it, this corruption. Just because it has been simplified and made palatable for the common man does not mean that it should be regarded as such. And by saying this, I do not in any way mean to belittle the ‘common man’. I just mean to be realistic. The common man has enough problems of his own. Who are you expecting will understand and support a cause, any cause, unless it touches them directly? The farmer contemplating suicide in Vidharbha, or the tribal watching helplessly as his land is taken away for the next development project, or the mother in Kashmir whose son disappears or the Dalit in UP whose wife is raped or the slumdweller in Mumbai whose shanty gets flooded every monsoon? Which ‘common man’ in this country has the time for Irom Sharmila? Who has even heard of her, or of AFSPA? But corruption… everyone’s suffered at the hands of corruption. So of course it’s something that they can immediately relate to.
But I digress. Don’t underestimate corruption. It’s not merely a matter of money. For those that don’t get the employment that they are entitled to under the MNREGA, or don’t get full wages even after working, it is a matter of livelihood, for those who don’t get the ration that they are entitled to under PDS, or who have to pay for their BPL cards, it’s a matter of survival. Understand corruption for what it truly is and the extent of the harm that it’s doing. Corruption may well be claiming more lives in this country than we realise.


That still doesn’t make Irom Sharmila’s cause less worth fighting for. But again, let me clarify. Is fasting as a symbol of protest something that I agree with? No! However right the cause maybe, fasting cannot/ should not be the means to achieve an end. Fasting is violence of a kind, even if it is to your own self. And it is coercive, it leaves little room for dialogue, or at least it places a time limit on it. That by itself should be enough reason to be opposed to fasting. But the way governments react to it these days, by forceful feeding which is violence of another kind, makes it, to my mind, even less desirable or effective a tool of protest. What use is a person whose organs fail, or whose mind no longer functions to an optimum because it has had no nutrition for however many days/ weeks/ months/ years, to a movement? Well, very useful apparently, if you can gain mileage out of it, as Team Anna managed to do, and Irom Sharmila and Swami Nigamananda, and all those teachers who were sitting on a fast sometime back in Mumbai for a cause that I’ve forgotten, did not. (For all you know there are many others in all parts of the country sitting on similar ‘fasts’ right this minute. As an aside, are you going to support them all?) No wonder then that a simple minded man like Anna is the one fasting, while the movement is being organized, strategised and co led by a group. Of course I understand that it is not easy to go on a fast, and not everyone can do it, and the people who can, have a deep belief in their cause and nerves of steel, and ought to respected for it. Having said that, its still not a form of protest that is, to my mind, ethically right.
Besides, a fast by itself does not guarantee results, though it does demonstrate the hopelessness of the person who undertakes it.
I’m all for Irom Sharmila and what she’s fighting for, because she, like any other citizen of the country deserves to be heard, because it is her right, and not because she has been sitting on a fast.
So if you’re suggesting that I should care for her because ‘I should care even more for a human being's life’, then well, I care for her life anyway. And I care for her cause because I believe she is right, but more than anything else she has the right to protest. I disagree with her means, but that’s a personal opinion.
I suppose what I am trying to tell you is, of course I’m with you, but for different reasons.
Can we please make this the next viral internet 'REVOLUTION'?
Can we please not let someone die for doing the right thing?
CAN WE MAKE IROM EAT PLEASE?!
Of course we should.
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