Tuesday 16 November 2010

Death in the time of Climate Change


And quietly she came, in the night, slowly taking away life on earth, spreading wrinkles in skin, callouses in hands, aches and pains slowing movement. Sometimes she came like the whirlwind, snatching away young life, bubbling with energy, fresh skin, beautiful hair... The body is washed, clothes changed, perfumed candles lit. Invariably, relatives turned up to weep, priests came to bury or burn, rituals performed. Then the living got on with life to face just another day.

   The dead don’t worry no more about old age, fears of being poor and indigent, not whether children would fight over one’s belongings on earth. Death is eternal, inexorable and induces a hush in thoughts, in conversations. There are obituaries, increasingly exaggerated legends and hidden values of the deceased that everyone failed to see when they lived.
    M.P Narayana Pillai is a writer who was much ahead of his times- A journalist who transmuted into a story writer. His works of non fiction aren’t available easily anymore. He loved to shock the gentle, staid Kerala society. He shook the notions of political correctness in an increasingly hypocritical society. He wrote on politics, sex, middle class morality and turned conventional wisdom on its’ head. He could foresee the advent of cable and satellite TV so many years before technology took baby steps. He advocated sponsorship of roads and stadiums named after dead rich guys whose relatives won’t mind sparing some rupees to get their forefathers’ names etched in stone; and not after political personalities whose successors treat the country as inherited property. It could defray the cost of construction and who cares if they are named after rubber tycoons in Kottayam or Cashew kings in Kollam. He advocated reservation for Nair caste- who else has family gods, who else usurps priestly duties, who else has matrilineal system? Tribals, of course and if the stuck-up Nairs don’t see the benefits of reservation, they ought to be consigned to mental asylums, he said. So all ye Nair warriors- stop bragging about dubious lineage and sit in dharna in Kerala Government Secretariat, said he.
       And he wrote about suicides and other more painful forms of death. He advocated for the right of humans to die at the time of their choosing. Jains starved to death. Vedas spoke about spreading the holy Darbha grass on river banks and awaiting death. It was the Semitic religions that spread canards about suicide. They spread the belief that your life doesn’t belong to you but to some woozy creature in the sky called god. This wasn’t done with altruistic aims. It is smart to spread that belief to prevent mass suicide among slaves- wouldn’t it destroy the medieval empires if slaves decided to resort to mass suicide and put their masters in a spot? If poultry chicken had brains won’t they expedite their relentless march of death, thus depriving their owners of juicy meat and revenues? 

  If Pillai were alive, he would have reiterated his theories on suicide in these times of climate change. The burgeoning billions of living, breathing humans and their reckless consumption of energy and goods have really raised questions about sustainability of our planet. He would have advocated peaceful, painless suicides. He would have written against burning dead bodies, against using wooden boxes and marble plaques to bury them. He would have argued that it is better to dig a big hole, lower the body sans clothes, fill it with red soil and plant a fruit tree… He would have found a ready supporter in me…

Monday 8 November 2010

Closure


It has been almost two years since I started writing this blog. When I read old posts, I am often embarrassed with my immaturity and poor ability with words. Given a chance I’d rewrite most of the stuff I had written earlier. Still I doubt if they’d look any better.

But the one piece for which I get most responses still remains “The autumn of a Naxalite.” That story itself is part of the reason why I started this blog. I looked around for someone to write it then. I wrote it myself before I forgot much. It was just an evening’s conversation with a man who was trying to move on with life, putting his past behind him. When I re-read it recently, I felt that there is more about me in that story than about the protagonist. 

 Then I started getting a flurry of mails- in the last few months. I discovered that the story has become a link in some websites which are known for extreme left positions. The mails came mostly from people who were reluctant to express their opinion in the blog itself. I had journalists requesting me for a meeting with Bhaskaran. ( He was reluctant to meet journalists). I heard from NRIs who, in the midst of their cosy existence, reached out and told me that the story reminded them of those dark days.  I also had a phone call from a friend who seemed to think that some of the facts have been disputed in another story that appeared in another blog. I was also told to remove a name which I had mentioned incorrectly (I removed it immediately- if anyone has an old printed copy of that story, it could still be seen). Some readers complemented me for the truly neutral stand I had taken in the story. (That’s what comes of many years as a faceless bureaucrat- one learns to be ambivalent about everything!!). Some wanted me to write the story of the victim’s son- who must be about my age. How they lived through the aftermath of the brutal murder. I am just a passive watcher of the left movement who wishes that the Indian society and state could obliterate vast divides in our midst- so that future generations do not drift to violence. I am no writer-Only a pretender who wishes he could write.

The Missus is worried that these developments would slot me as a sympathizer to the Naxalites/Maoists and cause me trouble in my unspectacular career of a Babu. I have no such fears. In the social scale, I am somewhat closer to the meek and deprived classes. When I read about protests in front of a writer’s house, I was more shocked by the address of the neighbourhood, than by the undemocratic nature of the protests. No one is surprised by the writer’s overt sympathy to secessionism or Maoism. I am shocked by the duplicity in characterizing every instrument of the Indian State as conspiratorial, corrupt and brutal- while living in tony Chanakyapuri addresses. Do they realize what their strident critique does to the spirit and morale of small foot-soldiers of the State who are earnestly trying to make a difference, while living solely on Sarkar wages? Can we have an apprenticeship scheme in Government, where NGOs, journalists and even Maoists can do a stint as Government Officials and help out in streamlining land records, relocating slum dwellers, preventing crime and maintaining roads, power and water supply in this vast populous country with a noisy democracy? They’d be a lot less shrill after that chastising experience.
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        It has the makings of a potboiler. It has everything, a slice of history, the romance of revolution, police brutality and lives quietly falling away like autumn leaves.    It was a policeman suffering from pangs of conscience who opened a can of worms.  He confessed that Varghese’s (the Naxal leader of the 1960s) murder was no encounter- but a cold blooded murder by police, on the orders of senior policemen. It set in motion a whole new process, a CBI enquiry and trial, which culminated in the sentencing of a retired Police Officer, who is in his 80s’, to jail. Does it bring closure to Varghese’s killing? The old man may not last out his sentence in jail. He was known even in those days as the demolition man of the Naxal movement. But remember, this was the 1970s. Institutions of law, policing etc were effective but not evolved.  

Funnily enough, I can see it from the police perspective. As guardians of law, it is their duty to preserve peace. The guys who attack police stations, burn and kill stand against every democratic institution. The very same establishment that they are striving to overthrow cannot afford the luxury of a trial. So, a cold blooded killing it is. Did the cops do it for money? Did they do it for revenge? Did they do it out of a sense of righteousness? 

They did what they did: driven by circumstances. Do we get closure to Varghese’s killing by sending an old man to jail? No. Let us hold a mirror to ourselves and promise that it won’t happen again.