People who live in the shadows

 

Journalist Siddharthya Roy, in his book, ‘The Company of Violent Men’, focuses on the nether world of terrorists, Maoists, fixers, spies, and people escaping from ethnic strife like the Rohingyas

By Shevlin Sebastian

In the preface, journalist Siddharthya Roy gives an indication of the people we will meet in his book, ‘The Company of Violent Men.’ They include ‘militants and refugees, clandestine agents and insurgents, reporters and wheeler-dealers — some extraordinary and some very ordinary individuals caught in circumstances that news headlines, including those of my own stories, have flattened them into convenient tropes of good and evil and us and them.’

Roy continues: ‘These violent men and women I speak of, some of them fight for faith, others fight for power. Many fight just to belong. But peel away the burqa or the badge, scratch the skin of a military officer or a mercenary, and the fears and failings that lie beneath are not so foreign from yours or mine.’

In the beginning, Roy goes to Dhaka to investigate who was behind the mayhem at the Holey Artisan cafe in Dhaka on July 1, 2016. A group of five men, carrying assault guns and machetes, carried out the attack and took diners hostage.

They belonged to the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), a home-grown outlawed Islamist group. Army commandos stormed the cafe. In the ensuing shootout, 18 foreigners died. All five assailants were shot dead.

In his search, Roy ended up in Bagmara (190 kms from Dhaka). That was where Siddique-ul Islam, who called himself Bangla Bhai (Bengal’s Big Brother) of the JMB, first set up his base.

He ruled the place with violence. Bangla Bhai forcibly collected taxes from the villagers. The JMB prohibited all non-religious gatherings. They did not allow public singing, playing sports, and plays. Women could not go out of the house without male supervision. And they held kangaroo courts where they meted out justice.

And Roy saw Musa, a victim of Bangla Bhai’s senseless violence. ‘Musa couldn’t really talk. All he could do was gurgle and squeak while froth gathered at the edges of his misshapen mouth. But he started his narrative with gusto through agitated gurgles, frothing, as his hollowed-out eyes grew big and small.

His wife, who had been standing behind the threshold to the cowshed, pulled the ghomta of her saree lower, came in and rolled up his mud-stained dhoti.’

Roy continued: ‘There were his broken legs. They were ghastly twisted twig-thin limbs with dried-up gashes of rolled back flesh.’     

After a while, the government reacted. The Rapid Action Battalion moved to Bagmara. Bangla Bhai was hiding in a shed. He gave up without a fight. Authorities hanged him in 2007 along with other members of his group. But the group survives.

Thereafter, Roy went to Kutapalong in Cox’s Bazar, to meet the Rohingyas refugees who fled from Myanmar following a genocide.

While talking to the mother of a little girl called Shaheen, Roy gave you an idea of how one’s life can go topsy-turvy in a moment. The family lived in Maungdaw Township. This was near the Bangladesh-Myanmar border.

The husband ran a successful farm. The wife was a beautician who ran a beauty parlour. Shaheen was born in 2011 and then the woman had a son in 2014. Life was going on smoothly.

Then the military launched a crackdown in October 2016. It lasted for the next few months. Soon, it degenerated into a genocide. The Tatmadaw (the army) burned her husband and son in their house. Shaheen and her mother had gone to see some relatives in a neighbouring village. And so they survived.

“These men were so violent and heartless,” Shaheen’s mother said. “Like monsters.”

They had no option but to flee to Bangladesh, carrying nothing. Now Shaheen’s mother was doing haircuts and threading for the women in the camp. 

In Cox’s Bazar, Roy encountered young Rohingya women at a brothel. They had entered the sex trade to survive. One of them, Inan, was a mother of four children, who had fled while her husband had stayed back at a town called Buthidaung in Rakhine State.

There was no news from him after a while. She tried sewing, but that was not enough to feed five people. But most of the men who coerced the women from the refugee camps to get into the sex trade were Rohingya men.  

This is absorbing on-the-spot reporting. No sitting in an air-conditioned hotel in Dhaka and doing phone interviews. Roy goes and sees everything first-hand, meets people, and asks questions. And then writes about it.

This seems to be rare. Roy mentions how Western journalists pay local reporters in places like India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran or Kenya to write detailed reports for handsome money. Then they would pass them off as their stories, adding their bylines at the top.

Later, after he gets a grant, Roy goes to Germany. He wanted to find out whether IS fighters could use India as a base to fuel extremism on the subcontinent. Many IS fighters sneaked in after Germany allowed the migration of 10 lakh refugees from Syria.

But he felt they would fail because unlike in West Asia, where Islam is dominant, and the topography is similar all over, in India and other South Asian countries there was a multiplicity of religions, thought processes and the lay of the land varied from place to place.

‘The marshes of the Indus-Ganges-Padma-Brahmaputra would, in time, swallow the zeal of zealots as they had done so many times in history,’ wrote Roy. 

The scene now shifts to Chhattisgarh, where Roy goes deep into Maoist territory. He is keen to find out whether the Indian government was using drones to bomb the Maoists. He was also keen to interview Madvi Hidma, the legendary leader of the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army.

Hidma had conducted many successful attacks on the security forces. However, information and access were scarce, despite many promises by various middlemen. 

In a village called Orchha, he met the locals who told them their biggest enemy was not the State, the Army or Maoists, but bears and boars.

One of them said they had planted some corn in a piece of land. The harvest was about to take place within a couple of days. In the night, two young men were keeping guard. Unfortunately, one of them, Monu, had brought along two bottles of mohua, the local liquor. 

One villager said, “Just before dawn, the rustling began. Monu had drunk almost all of the two bottles and was sleeping. I tried waking him up, but when he didn’t, I took my spear and threw it into the bush. I couldn’t see well — but I took a chance. Sure enough, one of the beasts squealed and started struggling while smaller ones grunted and scattered. Hearing the sound, Monu woke up with a start and, like Salman Khan, ran to fight the pierced bear. The boar gave him what he deserved. Look at him now.”

On Monu’s back, there were long scars. It ran from the back to the side of the chest.

Like Monu, others, even without getting drunk, had suffered even more grievous injuries from boars, including slashes across the face. 

From a distance, many of these villages in Chhattisgarh look picturesque. But it does not seem so when you get closer.

Here is how Roy described the odour in a village where no State official or security forces had stepped foot. ‘If one wished away the shit-smeared pigs running around in the background and ignored the smell of cow dung and pig droppings, the glade was picture perfect,’ he wrote.

Here’s another description from a remote village called Metaguda.

‘A young boy had just defecated some twenty metres from where we were sitting,’ wrote Roy. ‘The pigs got into a fight over who’d eat the shit even before the boy had properly stood up. The ones who didn’t get a share of the shit cake went back to the unwashed dishes piled in a plastic tub near us and licked little bits of rice off them.’

In Metaguda, where villagers greeted Roy with a ‘Laal Salaam’, they confirmed they had been the victim of bomb attacks by drones.

“It’s been happening for three years now,” said one villager.

However, they were reluctant to show the bombing spots because the Maoists did not give permission. Roy wrote, ‘Most rebel-held areas — not just Maoists — are harsh, hegemonic and arbitrary, and not even a semblance of civil rights is maintained.’

In the end, Roy left with no one showing him any conclusive proof of the drone bomb attacks.

Roy also met with ‘N’, a Rohingya resistance fighter, at a hotel in Cox’s Bazar. And this was how the man defended his activities to Roy.

“Are we the ones killing, raping, looting, setting people’s homes alight? Or is the Tatmadaw doing that?” N said. “And what they’re doing to the Rohingya in the Arakan will be done to the Kachin in the North and the Shan in the East? The pattern is clear and the tactics are the same. A small bunch of elite Burmese sitting in the palatial offices of Naypyidaw funded by the nacro-moguls of Yangon are out to subjugate every other identity in Myanmar.

“They claim to be protecting the nation, but, in reality, they are destroying it. They’re destroying the centuries of unity different peoples had. Tearing apart the very people they vow to defend. We are patriots. And we’ve proven it time and time again. It is the Tatmadaw, which is a terrorist organisation. That too has been proven time and time again.

“The real reason the Burmese are driving us out and burning our homes and fields is because we sit on one of the world’s largest oil and gas reserves.”

Roy continued to meet all sorts of people, including fishermen who transported meth by boat from Myanmar to Bangladesh.  

And in a chapter called ‘The Louts’, Roy confirmed what most of us suspected. In many of these groups fighting for various causes, there are a lot of criminals who join.

As Roy wrote, ‘Essentially, a lot of street thugs do their run-of-the-mill thuggery and pass it off as soldiering. Their banners — whether green, red, black or stripes and stars — are just flimsy covers for acts that would’ve otherwise put them in prison.’

And so it goes. This book highlights the nether world which ordinary people do not know of. Roy has to be commended for risking his life, and many times, he experienced physical discomfort and danger, but he always went to where the action was. Thanks to his experiences, he has learnt to be sceptical. It is a world that abounds in falsehoods and misinformation. But he remained tenacious and courageous in his search for the truth.

This book is an eye-opener. And a welcome one at that.

(Published in Kitaab.org)

The divine energy in human form

 

Photo 3: Author Dr. Chandra Bhanu Satpathy

‘Shirdi Sai Baba — An Inspiring Life’ provides an intimate glimpse of one of India’s great spiritual teachers

By Shevlin Sebastian

Village woman Baijabai Kote Patil was walking among the bushes in Shirdi. She saw a 16-year-old boy sitting under a tree, cross-legged, with his eyes closed, in a deep meditation. Something about the youngster struck her. He had a divine radiance on his face.

Baijabai rushed home, made some food, and placed it in front of the boy. But the youngster did not open his eyes. Finally, she asked the boy to have a little food. The boy obliged. He was none other than Shirdi Sai Baba. Later, he became one of the greatest spiritual teachers India has produced.

Shirdi Sai Baba was born in the 1830s. Many versions exist regarding the identity of his parents, but because of a lack of records, none could be authenticated. Apparently, he was born in the village of Pathiri and settled in Shirdi as a boy.

There was also mention that his father’s name was Abdul Sattar, but there was no conclusive proof. In 1916, the British Directorate of Criminal Intelligence (DCI) identified Sai Baba as a fakir and a Muslim.

Sai Baba meditated throughout his teenage years. As a young man, he treated villagers with health problems with medicinal herbs from the nearby jungle. Many people were cured because of that.

One day, a man, Nanasaheb Dengle, approached Sai Baba and told him he had no son. To get a son, Nanasaheb married for the second time. Nevertheless, there was no child. Sai blessed him.

Soon, Nanasaheb’s wife got pregnant. The news about this miracle spread far and wide. Nanasaheb became a devotee.

Sai Baba’s name spread to places like Mumbai, Aurangabad, Nasik and Ahmednagar. Soon, people thronged the town of Shirdi.

Nationalist leader Bal Gangadhar Tilak came for Sai Baba’s darshan on May 19, 1917. Because of regular visits by nationalist leaders, the DCI maintained a presence in Shirdi.

‘Sai Baba was purely a spiritual man who tried to help the needy and sought to evolve spiritually all who came to him,’ wrote author

Dr. Chandra Bhanu Satpathy. ‘However, except for the conjectures of the DCI, in their reports, there is no evidence that Shirdi Sai ever made any political predictions or advised any of his devotees on matters of politics or encouraged any sort of political activism.’

Dr. Satpathy has recounted this in his biography called, ‘Shirdi Sai Baba — An Inspiring Life’. A scholar, Dr. Satpathy, visited the Holy Shrine of Sai Baba in 1986 and became a devotee.

In Shirdi, Sai Baba settled into a dilapidated mosque. It was called Dwarakamayi. This is where he met all those who came to meet him. Sometimes, he would go during the day to beg for food from his neighbours.

At other times, he cooked food in a big handi over a fireplace made of mud and brick. Sai Baba would distribute the food to his devotees. On alternative nights, Sai Baba would go to sleep in the Chavadi, a sort of guesthouse which was 30 steps away.

What was heartening to read was the cooperation between Hindus and Muslims at the darbars held by Sai Baba.

‘In large congregations where Muslims and Hindus perform religious rites and rituals side by side, some critical differences crop up, especially regarding the technicalities of the methods of worship,’ wrote Dr. Satpathy. ‘However, in Shirdi Sai’s darbar, Hindus and Muslims stood shoulder to shoulder like loving children before a caring father. Muslims treated him as an Awliya or Pir or Paigambar, whereas Hindus adored him as Sadguru Maharaj or Avatar. Facing west, Shirdi Sai himself would recite the “Fatiha” or ask someone from the community to do so. Muslims offered him “shirni” (sweet or other dishes).’

Sai Baba wanted his devotees to break the barriers of caste, class, status, gender, religion and appearance. ‘The innumerable people who met Shirdi Sai included the rich and the poor, the educated and the illiterate,’ wrote Dr. Satpathy. ‘People of all ages, all castes, all religious affiliations, women, men, children came to him. Shirdi Sai Baba wanted his devotees to learn humility and never disparage others, regardless of their appearance and situation in life.’

Once a leper came for the darshan carrying a few pedas in a packet tucked inside a dirty cloth. Sitadevi Ramachandra Tarkhad, whose husband was the manager of Khatau Mills in Mumbai, was standing nearby. She twitched her nose, as the stench from the leper was unbearable.

The leper hesitated to offer the pedas. When he left, she had a look of relief on her face. Sai Baba noticed it. He called the leper back and took a peda. He asked Sitadevi to eat one too. She did so and learned her lesson too: treat people with respect, irrespective of their backgrounds.

In a chapter focusing on the miracles of Sai Baba, Dr. Satpathy tells the story of a deputy collector, Nanasaheb Chandorkar, a devotee of Sai Baba.

Nanasaheb was climbing Harishchandra Hill, in the Western Ghats, while on a pilgrimage. He felt thirsty. Nanasaheb prayed to Sai Baba, who was in Shirdi, 173 kms away. Sai Baba said, “Hello, Nana is very thirsty. Should we not give him a handful of water?” The devotees who were present could not understand what Sai Baba meant by this.

Nanasaheb saw a Bhil tribesman pass by. He asked the tribal where water was available. The man said it was below the stone slab Nanasaheb was sitting on. When Nanasaheb removed the slab, he saw water underneath.

After Nanasaheb completed the pilgrimage, he went to Shirdi. The moment Sai Baba saw him, he said, “Nana, you were thirsty. I gave you water. Did you drink?” That was when Nanasaheb realised it was because of Sai Baba’s omnipresence he could answer the distress call of his devotees.

Sai Baba had a brick wrapped in a tattered piece of cloth. He rested his hand throughout the day on the brick. And when he went to sleep, he placed his head on the brick.

Once when a helper named Madhu Fasle broke the brick. Sai Baba knew that the end was near. He said, “It is not the brick, but my fate has been broken into pieces.”

Soon after, Sai Baba passed away on October 15, 1918. Devotees said he attained Mahasamadhi. Hindus and Muslims conducted rituals in their way.

In 1922, his devotees set up the Shirdi Saibaba Sansthan Trust. This looks after the Dwarakamayi and other structures. The Trust continues to conduct all activities to this day. Approximately 30,000 pilgrims from all over the world visit Shirdi daily to pay homage to the spiritual master.

It is a book with many sub-sections and photographs. You get an understanding of the life and character of Sai Baba. Some of the other subjects that Dr. Satpathy tackled included the link of Sai Baba with Sufism, the concept of reincarnation, Sai literature, and the sayings of the preacher.

Here are two sayings:

‘Let anybody speak hundreds of things against you. Do not resent by giving a bitter reply. If you tolerate such things, you will certainly be happy. Let the world go topsy-turvy. You remain where you are.’

‘Those who take refuge in God will be freed from her (Maya’s) clutches, with His grace.’

(Published in kitaab.org)

Living beside an angry river

 

Photos: TR Premkumar. Photos by NV Jose; A view of a house from outside; residents playing chess by the banks of the Chalakudy river 

The residents of the Moozhikulam Sala live close to nature, beside the Chalakudy River in Kerala. Then during the 2018 floods, the river water rose to a height of 25 feet inside the colony. Things have never been the same again  

By Shevlin Sebastian 

One of the first things that caught the eye at the Moozhikulam Sala (28 kms from Kochi) is that there is no gate. A few metres inside, there is a large banyan tree with overhanging branches. The mud paths abound in dry leaves. 

There is a good deal of vegetation: peanut, banana, fig, bamboo, sandalwood and cannonball trees. Because the Sala is right next to the Chalakudy river, a gentle breeze blows all the time. The cries of cicadas and the occasional cawing of a crow punctuate the silence. A dog barks when he sees strangers. Butterflies and bees circle the petals of flowers. 

TR Premkumar, 67, who grew up in Moozhikulam, was inspired by the history of the place. Maharaja Kulasekhara Varman (800-820 AD) was the ruler of the Chera kingdom. In Moozhikulam, he set up a sala or university. The university followed the Gurukula system, which focused mostly on the Vedas. The other salas that were put were in Thiruvananthapuram, Thiruvalla and Parthivapuram. 

Premkumar was a maths and physics teacher at a private college. Later, he became the manager of one of the Kochi branches of DC Books, one of Kerala’s leading publishers. One day, he read ‘Living with the Himalayan Masters’ by Swami Rama. 

“Swami Rama said the more possessions you can give up, and live simply, the better it is for you,” said Premkumar. “You will experience joy. It is only then that you will see nature in all its glory. That affected me. It was a turning point in my life.” Soon, Premkumar gave up his chain-smoking habit and stopped eating non-vegetarian food and imbibing alcohol. 

He came up with the concept of a colony where people could live in close connection with nature, beside the Chalakudy River. He located a two-acre plot. Premkumar put a one-page advertisement about the eco-friendly project in the Malayalam Weekly of ‘The New Indian Express’ group in November 2005. Buyers purchased all 52 plots within a month. 

“People became enamoured to live close to nature,” said Premkumar. 

The residents belong mostly to the middle class. Most of them are those who would often visit the DC bookstore. “They are art and culturally-inclined people,” said Premkumar. Around 70 men, women and children now live in the colony.

About six families have been there from the beginning. 

One of them is Pradeep Kumar, a freelance designer. Asked about the pleasures of living in the colony, Pradeep said, “I get to breathe pure air, especially in the early mornings. There is a beautiful silence mixed with the cries of birds. The neighbours are nice and friendly. There is no sound of vehicles.”  

However, many single-room houses are empty. The owners live in other places. But they come on the weekends or once a month to get a respite from their work pressures.

On a Saturday evening, a couple of men are playing chess on the steps leading to the river. 

“Is this the impact of India’s gold medal wins in the Chess Olympiad?” a visitor said. 

One of them, in a blue T-shirt and Bermuda shorts, smiled and said, “No, we always play chess whenever we have free time.”   

Today, the Sala comprises 23 ‘naalukettu’ houses, with an area of 1089 sq. ft., with three bedrooms and 29 one-bedroom houses with an area of 230 sq. ft. “It is like a studio apartment,” he said. “Two people can live comfortably. It is good for artists, writers, and those who have retired.” Interestingly, there are no walls between the houses.   

The houses are made of burnt brick and mud, in the Laurie Baker style. 

British-born Baker (1917-2007) was renowned for using local materials to make houses in Kerala. “There is an air pocket between the bricks,” said Premkumar. “This feature keeps the houses cool.”

There is water in the well throughout the year. Next to it, they have installed a 25,000-litre tank. So every house receives piped water. The people have a carbon-neutral kitchen. That means they do not cook the food. They eat the food raw, including the vegetables. To make it easy to digest, they smash it using the grinder. “After that, you will never get the feeling it is raw,” said Premkumar. “Believe me, it has a more delicious flavour than when you cook it.”

At a nearby patch of land, the residents grew vegetables, like brinjals, cucumber, onions, cauliflower, cabbage, potatoes and tomatoes. And all kinds of bananas. They do not use pesticides or chemicals. But now, because of erratic rainfall, it has been difficult to grow vegetables.    

On asked how he has changed as a man, after being in close contact with nature. Premkumar said, “I love nature and I respect it. The problem is that man has lost touch with nature because of lifestyle and attitudinal changes. We want to exploit it as much as possible. This causes enormous damage to the ecosystem.”

Animals live in close contact with nature. That is why nature cares about them. Premkumar mentioned that not a single animal died during the landslides that have afflicted Kerala in recent times. “They always receive a warning beforehand, because they are in tune with nature,” Premkumar said. “Before the tsunami happened, many animals escaped to higher ground. And that was the case with the recent landslide in Wayanad. The animals that died were the ones that man had domesticated and kept tied up.”

The devastation caused by flooding 

Life changed for Premkumar and the other residents following the massive flooding that afflicted Kerala in 2018. The waters from the Chalakudy river overflowed the banks and reached a height of 25 feet inside the colony. Only the tips of the roofs were visible. Owing to red alerts issued by the Meteorological Department, all the residents had left for distant places or the houses of relatives. 

“The flood destroyed all the furniture, fridge, TV, and other items. I lost my library of 2500 rare books,” said Premkumar. The next year, water again entered the colony. 

After that, in 2020 and 2021, there was a red alert because the river was almost overflowing the banks. So the people had to leave even though eventually the water did not enter the colony. “In July, this year, water entered the house at floor level,” said Premkumar.   

Pradeep said the residents are yet to recover from the shock of 2018. “But we have accepted that this danger of flooding will be ever-present,” he said. 

The lack of a first floor in all the houses has become a problem. There is no safe place to store anything. 

Premkumar admitted that he no longer enjoyed the rain like he did as a child. “There is always a fear now,” he said. “The romance of the rains is gone.”  

Some residents want to leave, but the price has crashed. So, they are stuck here. There is no guarantee that flooding will not take place in the future. So prospective buyers are reluctant to take the risk.  

After 2018, farming has become a problem because of the unpredictable changes in the weather. “The rain has become unpredictable,” said Premkumar. “When it is supposed to rain, it doesn’t and vice versa.” 

It is a man-made disaster, asserts Premkumar. In 2018, the 58 dams in Kerala released their water simultaneously. “Till now, the government has put no proper safety measures in place,” he said. “But there is one blessing. Because the Moozhikulam Sala is at sea level, there will be no landslides, like in Wayanad.”  

Premkumar lives with his wife Sudhamani, who retired from the High Court as an office superintendent. The couple has two children. Their eldest son Vineeth is a finance manager at Apollo Hospital in Bangalore. The second son, Vivek, is a professional Carnatic singer based in Chennai. Both sons are married. 

(An edited version was published in The Sunday Magazine, The New Indian Express, South India and Delhi)

A pen as sharp as a sword

 

Photos: Kiran Nagarkar: Photo by Tulsi Vatsal; Book cover; Author Salil Tripathi. Photo by Udayan Tripathi

In ‘Asides, Tirades, Meditations’ — Selected Essays, Kiran Nagarkar, one of the notable writers of post-Independence India, writes with an electric style on a host of topics   

By Shevlin Sebastian 

Author Salil Tripathi grew up in an apartment near Kemp’s Corner where Chaitra, an advertising agency, had an office. His mother would translate Chaitra’s advertising copy into Gujarati. Now and then his mother would meet the celebrated author Kiran Nagarkar, who also worked there. When Tripathi was in his twenties, he was introduced to Nagarkar. They began a lifelong friendship. 

After his studies abroad, Tripathi joined the Indian Post newspaper as an assistant editor. He offered Nagarkar an opportunity to write a column. The celebrated author became a film critic for foreign films. That is probably how Nagarkar became a columnist for an English-language newspaper. 

Tripathi recounted this in his introduction to the book, ‘Asides, Tirades, Meditations—Selected Essays’ by Nagarkar (Bloomsbury). 

Tripathi did mention that in 2018, three women journalists accused Nagarkar of behaving inappropriately. He denied the allegations. The next year, Nagarkar died of a cerebral haemorrhage. He was 77.  

Tripathi said, “I admired him as a gifted writer, a champion of freedoms, a friend who saw through the clouds clearly, who warned us about the seductive peril of majoritarianism.” 

There are 36 essays in the 317-page book, clubbed under the headings, ‘Writing’, ‘Cinema’ and ‘On Society and Politics’.  

In the first essay, ‘Clueless: An Occasional Writer’s Journey,’ Nagarkar states, ‘You can dictate to your characters. You can bind them hand and foot, you can take almost all decisions for them, you can make sure that they grow up the way you want them to, but the chances are that you will find in the end that they are not flesh-and-blood people but puppets and marionettes.’ 

This is probably the drawback of too many writers. But how to make characters come alive seems to be a gift from the Gods. Not everybody can do it.   

Nagarkar also confirms the important role played by the subconscious in creative work. ‘While there is no gainsaying the primary contribution of conscious thought and planning, it is the subconscious processes of the mind and that strange chemical laboratory called “gestation” whereby at times things seem to fall into place by themselves and trickier problems get resolved.’ 

It was interesting to note that Nagarkar studied Marathi for the first four years of his primary education. After that, his parents enrolled him in an English-medium school. Yet, he emerged as a major English writer. 

Nagarkar gained fame for his novels, including ‘Saat Sakkam Trechalis’ (tr. Seven Sixes Are Forty Three) (1974), ‘Ravan and Eddie’ (1994), and ‘Cuckold’ (1997). 

For ‘Cuckold’, he won the 2001 Sahitya Akademi Award in 2001. His books were very popular in Germany. In 2012, he received the Order of Merit from Germany. Nagarkar was also a dramatist and screenwriter.

Perception abounds in his essays. In an essay regarding libraries, Nagarkar writes, ‘The most extensive and underrated library in the world, especially in the poorer countries, however, is the institution of the grandmother…she is the mother of all libraries, the largest archive of the oral tradition. In India, she is the repository of the stories from the epics, from the Panchatantra and mythology. She is the one who transmits oral history from generation to generation and is the fount of traditional wisdom.’ 

And he also recalled interesting encounters and conversations. Once he met a friend’s Japanese fiancée. She told Nagarkar, “I know nothing about India, except the four things that I learnt at school.” 

“And what are they?” asked Nagarkar. 

The woman said, “You Indians eat with your right hand, wash your hind parts with your left. You burn your women and practise untouchability.” 

‘A brief, succinct and aphoristic, cultural, political and sociological history of India. A body blow,’ wrote Nagarkar.       

In the essay, ‘Shiva’s Blue Throat: A Persona; Vision of the Artist’s Role’, Nagarkar compared the writing style of Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez with Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie. 

‘Rushdie’s joie de vivre, exuberance and deliberate punning are irrepressible,’ wrote Nagarkar. ‘His language is brilliant, flamboyant and endlessly playful ... He is a virtuoso trapeze artist whose words are always flying and caught in mid-air, doing the most incredible twists and turns. How can anyone fail to be carried away by his masterful performance? But neither can we forget that it is a performance.’

As for Marquez, Nagarkar said the language doesn’t bring attention to itself. ‘What strikes you from the very start is the richness and fecundity of his imagery, the almost infinite variety of the stories within stories he has to tell. And yet what you remember most are his characters and their fate.’ 

Other subjects include memories of his childhood, ageing, pretentious art films, star power in Bollywood, the city of Bombay, climate change, and ‘the fine art of intolerance.’                                      

The book concludes with an afterword by prize-winning novelist Nayantara Sahgal. They met in 2104 and immediately became fast friends. 

Nagarkar’s style is direct, clear and straightforward. These are easy-to-read essays. He always has an original viewpoint. There are many insights that are sprinkled all across the essays. Insights that make you pause and reflect and finally, get enriched by. 

‘Asides, Tirades, Meditations’ is an engaging read. However, there is no mention of when and where these essays were published. Overall, this is a book worth buying. If you are a serious reader, you will not be disappointed.

(Published in Scroll.com)

Heart-breaking and disturbing

 

Captions: Book cover; Author Sanam Sutirath Wazir

Sanam Sutirath Wazir’s ‘The Kaurs of 1984 — the Untold, Unheard Stories of Sikh Women’ is a razor-sharp look at the extraordinary devastation that women suffered after the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984

By Shevlin Sebastian

On June 4, 1984, Rachpal Singh, the secretary of militant leader Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, was in a room in the Golden Temple. He was with his wife Pritam and their 18-day-old son. The Army was shooting into the Temple during Operation Bluestar. 

Pritam said, “A flash of light would come in from the space below the doors and blind us for a few seconds, followed by the deafening sounds of bombs. I could hear the sound of tank treads moving outside our room, proceeding towards the Akal Takht (the chief centre of religious authority among the Sikhs).”  

At 12.15 am on June 6, a bullet hit her baby’s back before hitting Pritam on the chest. As Rachpal bent over his wife and son, a bullet hit him on the head. He died instantly. Pritam lay in a pool of blood, with her dead husband beside her and her dead son lying on her chest. 

Manjeet Singh, the then press secretary of the Akali Dal, saw a young man and his infant son killed. The mother picked up the son and placed him on his father’s chest. “It’s been more than three decades now, but whenever I close my eyes, that scene comes back to me,” said Manjeet.  

Author Sanam Sutirath Wazir focuses on the suffering of Sikh women in the book, ‘The Kaurs of 1984 - the untold, unheard stories of Sikh women’. Many of whom were rape victims during the 1984 cataclysm that shook Punjab, and the riots that took place in Delhi and other places. 

The Sikh psyche was shattered because of the army’s widespread damage to the Golden Temple. ‘Over 350 bullets riddled the dome of the Golden Temple,’ wrote Wazir. ‘One bullet pierced the cushion on which the Guru Granth Sahib was placed, pushing through as many as eighty-two pages of the book itself. Most of the items in the toshakhana (a storehouse for valuables) were destroyed….all the handwritten hukamnamas (orders), penned by different Sikh gurus across the ages, were lost as well.’ 

Wazir writes with painstaking details about the damage to the Golden Temple and the human rights violations by the Army and the security agencies that took place thereafter. Even women and children were not spared. 

No surprises, there was a blowback. On October 31, 1984, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was shot dead by her Sikh guards, Beant Singh and Satwant Singh. Immediately, in Delhi, mobs, mainly orchestrated by the Congress Party, laid siege to the Sikh community. 

At Block 32 in Trilokpuri, East Delhi, local leader Rampal Saroj, accompanied by a group of men, asked resident Darshan Kaur where her husband Ram Singh was. She said he had gone out with his brother. 

The men did not believe her. They broke down the main door and barged into the house. Ram Singh was hiding in the kitchen. ‘They dragged him out by his hair,’ wrote Wazir. ‘They placed a quilt and tyre over his head, doused him in oil and then set him ablaze. Ram Singh was nearly burnt to death; he later succumbed to his injuries.’ In the end, all the Sikh men who were present in Block 32 on that day were killed. There were 275 widows across 180 homes.  

The men committed rape against elderly, middle-aged women, and teenage girls. Darshan said a young girl of 15 returned, naked and bruised. She had been raped many times, by some as old as her grandfather.  

Chapter by chapter Wazir tells harrowing tales about what happened to the Sikh women, in places like Sultanpuri, Raj Nagar and Mukherjee Nagar. Their lives were destroyed. Very few have recovered. As one woman, Satwant Kaur, said, “Those monsters had scarred me for life.”

Astoundingly, many women recalled that the rioters used white powder on the victims. Wazir said that it could have been white phosphorus. The powder burns human flesh and catches fire when exposed to the air.

The violence spread beyond Delhi. In Hondh Chillar, in the Rewari district in Haryana, a mass grave of Sikhs was discovered in 2010. 

However, India has not stepped back from this destructive route. Since 1984, according to a Google search, there have been over 70 riots in different parts of India. The latest was the Haldwani riots in Uttarakhand on February 9, 2024. 

Wazir also focuses on women who became militants and became part of pro-Khalistan groups as well as the lives of widows in refugee camps. 

This book is a very valuable document. It heightens awareness of the suffering that takes place. Or as feminist publisher Urvashi Butalia said on the cover, the book is ‘graphic, disturbing and searing.’ 

We need to read it, get appalled and vow to ourselves that as a people, we should never allow such events to happen again.

(An edited version was published in The Sunday Magazine, The New Indian Express, South India and Delhi)

Awakening our sensitivity

 

Photos: Pramod Thomas and his family; Pramod's friend, the journalist Jobin Augustine, who passed away in May, 2012. A condolence meeting was held at the Ernakulam Press Club

Journalist Pramod Thomas focuses on the everyday moments of life, as well as the tragedies that afflict society in his book of poems

By Shevlin Sebastian 

Pramod Thomas was my former colleague in The New Indian Express, Kochi. He was and remains an ace business journalist. Today, he works for an UK-based media group. 

But what nobody will realise when you meet him, with his focused, professional attitude, is that he is a sensitive poet. At spare moments, which I am sure, is rare since he has a wife and two daughters, Pramod writes poems. This is his way of battling stress and the lack of meaning in life that afflicts everybody now and then.  

In 2017, he published his first book of poetry, ‘A Shoe Named Revolution’. Now, he has published his second book, ‘Biography of a Couch Potato’. It comes as no surprise that he has dedicated it to his two daughters, Ayaana and Ahaana. 

It is also dedicated to ‘those who find comfort in the quiet moments and beauty in the ordinary; To the ones who see poetry in everyday life — in the sunrise, the rain, a stranger’s smile or a fleeting thought. May these poems be a companion on your journey, offering solace, reflection, and a sense of belonging.’  

When you realise how conflict (Ukraine/Gaza/Lebanon) has been dominating the news for over two years, the first poem, ‘Eulogy of the Unborn’, is about war:

‘Do not stare at me, for I am dead

Don’t cry for me, 

Cry for my child, unborn. 

Her eyes shattered 

In the rubble,   

Only I can see a rainbow,

A colourless one though.’ 

The book comprises 21 poems. 

One poem, ‘Blood Butterfly’, draws inspiration from a 13-year-old girl in Tamil Nadu who tragically lost her life during Cyclone Gaja. Her family forced her to stay alone in a barn because she was having her periods. 

Here is the concluding verse: 

‘While trying to please gods, 

We become less human. 

Forgive us, 

In the name of a zillion unborn. 

Now, we have blood on our hands.’

Pramod dedicated another poem, ‘Echoes of a Lost Spring’, to his journalist friend, Jobin Augustine, 28, who passed away in May, 2012. A sub-editor with the Madhyamam Daily newspaper in Kochi, Jobin fell from a private bus, got crushed under its wheels, and died. He was on his way to his home at Ramapuram.    

The poem, ‘A Poetic Flower’ is dedicated to the Kerala poet, A Ayyappan. Pramod is a fan of his work. Ayyappan was found unconscious on October 21, 2010, in front of a theatre in Thiruvananthapuram. 

The local people informed the police, who took the poet to the government hospital. Nobody, including the police, had recognised him. A bachelor, Ayyappan was 61 when he died. People knew him as the ‘Icon of Anarchism’ of Malayalam poetry.  

Pramod writes: 

‘The street was not deserted

There were a few people,

But none recognised the poet; 

They mistook him for a drunkard, 

Considering him a bad omen.’ 

Pramod concludes the poem by saying: 

‘In a city far away, many awaited the poet,

Eager to honour him for his poems, 

An event was ready to welcome him,

Ears eager to listen to his verses,

But life had other plans.’ 

‘The City of Sins’ focuses on the rape and murder of a 31-year-old trainee doctor at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata on August 9, 2024. 

‘Kolkata, hang your head in shame, 

Retreat to your ugly thoughts, and end yourself. 

How can you raise your head now? 

There is blood on your hands, 

Your dark streets can never be the same again.’ 

At the end of the poem, Pramod states: ‘Sexual violence against women is a widespread problem in India — an average of nearly 90 rapes a day was reported in 2022 across the country.’

In the title poem, ‘Biography of a Couch Potato’, Pramod says: 

‘There is no endgame in this dull drama,

You live the same life every day, year after year. 

When you’re glued to the screen, 

Your comfort zone embraces you,

And there’s no going back.’  

However, the book is not all gloom and doom. 

Pramod writes about love too. 

‘There is no boundary to my love for you;

I am connected to you, 

Like a train to its track, 

A thunder to the cloud. 

And a chalk to the blackboard. 

You are the last drop of my rain, 

The final drop in my blood bank,

The last atom in my body,

The last prisoner in the world’s last prison.’

One gets the feeling his wife Stephena is going to be moved to read this. 

Other poems include dealing with the suffering of a writer who has received rejection, the birth of a child to a gay couple, which is overseen by a lesbian nurse, American Vice President Kamala Harris, wokeism, the Wayanad landslide tragedy, a Filipino woman who donned a mermaid suit and performed in a large aquarium at Kochi, and the biography of a stone.

The poems reveal Pramod’s sensitivity to human suffering and emotional pain. He writes from his heart. And so it affects us who read these poems. It makes us pause in our hectic daily life and activates the sensitive aspects of our being. In short, these poems humanise us.    

‘Couch Potato’ is nominated for the 21st Century Emily Dickinson Award.