Finally, this piece I had started working on in October 2009 made its way to Sunday Real Page 3 of Indian Express on May 23, 2010. I had written about the girl with big, black eyes and her life in prison. The edited version seemed very different.
Here is what got published http://www.indianexpress.com/news/little-steps-in-prison/622469/
Here is what I wrote.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, November 6, 2009
On a cold December morning five years ago, two undertrials – husband and wife - sat on the cold stone steps inside a prison, and spoke urgently. The wife had just told him she was pregnant.
Their first child would be born inside the high walls of Tihar, shut off from the world, born free yet jailed. It would take its first steps inside a crammed barrack, and wear hand-me-downs most of its growing years until they took her away and put her in a residential school elsewhere, she said.
He didn’t know how to respond, Sonia recalled. Under the watchful gaze of the guards that kept pacing up and down, Mohd. Kalam felt awkward. Sonia could tell.
Walking up to him that morning, she had debated how to break the news to him. Two weeks after she was remanded to Jail no. 6 in Tihar, a co-accused in a murder case along with her husband Mohd. Kalam, the doctor at the Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital where she had been taken for medical checkup, a prison routine, had told her she was pregnant. That was 10 years after she was married. The law in India, as in many other countries, is that children can stay with their mothers in prison until they are five years of age. Then, they are put in residential schools where they live with other inmates’ children and complete school.
When their 30-minute interaction was over, the guards led them to their barracks to be locked up for a week before they would get to see each other. They had decided to keep the baby.
Sonia is a co-accused, along with her husband Mohd. Kalam who is serving time in Jail No. 3 for a murder case, and both are undertrials at Tihar Jail since 2005.
Inside the 400-acre campus of Tihar jail, in her stuffy barrack that she shared with eight other women, Sonia first told another inmate, who incidentally was also pregnant, about her fears, and joys, the bouts of ecstasy, and the subsequent pangs of guilt of wanting to give birth to her child inside a prison. She just couldn’t abort the baby.
“Who knows if I would ever get pregnant again? I am not getting younger,” Sonia said. “We thought about a lot of things. Her future, her needs. We have facilities inside the jail but it is not the same. Here we live in a limbo, waiting forever.”
For years after she married Kalam, a leather goods manufacturer in Mongolpuri, the couple had been hoping for a child.
And so when she took those hurried steps towards where her husband was sitting on the designated day of meeting (prisoners whose relatives are in the same complex get to meet for 30 minutes on the first, third and the fourth Saturdays in a month), Sonia had already decided her child would share her sentence.
A year later, while they were still fighting their case in the court, the baby was born in a city hospital. Two days later, she came home to her barrack inside the women’s jail at Tihar.
There could have been no other name for her. Tamanna was the sum total of their desires, the yearnings of two undertrials waiting for their sentence or acquittal, for a closure to their suspended lives in small prison cells where they spent their days oscillating between hope and dejection, hoping they could someday raise their daughter in a proper home, together, far from the madness of the prison, and its quirks, its stories of torture and sadness, its grim cells and its convicts.
They named the frail baby with thin arms, and dark hair Tamanna or desire. Inside the grim prison where they slept under the window that had no netting to keep the mosquitoes out,
Tamanna grew up inside the 40-acre prison compound, following the prison rules, meeting her father for 30 minutes over the weekend, supervised by the guards. At first she hadn’t known him, didn’t get used to him. It was only later that she started to respond to him. But the daughter breaks the deadening monotony of prison life for the mother. There is something to look forward to, she says.
Tamanna, now four years old, has large watery, unblinking eyes. The frail, quiet child, is one of around 2,000 children languishing in prisons across the country, including Tihar, as per the National Crime Records Bureau survey in 2007.
She doesn’t smile too often, and not so easily. She has learnt to be passive. When the other children tease her, pull her hair or tug at her sleeves, she doesn’t fight back.
Tamanna, the quiet child, always tags along the other children, trailing behind them.
Ruby, 6, is her friend. Soon, Ruby will leave the prison and go to a hostel where an NGO will take care of her studies.
Often, the children talk about home. Ruby is from Narela and has drawn on paper her house so Tamanna can see.
“Tamanna says she wants to come home with me,” she said. “I tell her we are in jail and she says when you get out, take me with you. I tell her there’s babu, there are cows, and flowers in my house. Tamanna’s house is far. She has told me.”
That’s what Sonia tells her daughter anyways. She wants her daughter to understand that this is a phase, that jail, its barracks, its convicts are only part of this life and that there is a life for her that’s different.
But Tamanna has no reference point. For her, home is the L-shaped barrack where the duo keeps their belongings in a bag, and where her mother plugs her ears when the women hurl abuses at each other.
The largest prison complex in Asia, Tihar was built in 1958 as a maximum security prison run by the Punjab government. In 1966, the Delhi government took over the prison and in 1984, it was renamed Tihar Prisons. It has nine jails, and staff quarters.
But it was not until 10 years later that Tihar started to experiment with prison reforms ushered in by Kiran Bedi who took over as the Director General in 1993.
When Bedi saw the children, who lived with their mothers till they turned six, hurling abuses and using legal jargons like custody and bail, and playing gang war games with paper knives and paper guns , she was shocked.
Then started a string of prison reforms under her. A crèche was established for the children where they could spend the day away from the barracks and learn to read and write. Stella Mama, a Nigerian, who has been convicted for smuggling narcotics, is in charge of the crèche. She knows the children by names, she has their background at her fingertips and she has grown fond of them because they provide a break in the monotony of her life, too.
“The children talked about courts and orders because they attended the courts, they talked about knives, played stab-stab and made knives out of spoons,” Bedi said. “When I saw all that, we didn’t take long. We put them in a play way school.”
Bedi won the 1994 Ramon Magsaysay Award in 1994 for initiating prison reforms policies inside Tihar.
Tamanna sleeps in the barracks in the women’s jail, and attends a school run by the former Director General of Tihar Kiran Bedi’s NGO India Vision Foundation.
In her cramped corridor-like cell where Sonia sleeps under the window, and where they keep their belongings – a bucket, a few clothes, and a few old toys handed down to the girl by the NGOs - the mother says she has tried to speak about home to Tamanna.
But the daughter who was born inside the prison has no reference point. Often her friends tell her they had a garden in the village, and an uncle and cattle. Home is an elusive concept, something that she can’t connect with, a vision she can’t imagine. She has never known freedom outside the prison, her mother says.
Instead, Tamanna knows the rules of the prison. She is not a troublesome child. After school, she plays with other children, and at 6 p.m., she quietly returns to her barrack.
She spends the rest of the evening in the crowded cell in her corner, leaning against the wall, playing with her doll, a birthday gift from the crèche till the lights go out.
That’s when her space expands. There’s nobody watching. It’s dark and it’s only her with her mother. She snuggles close to her mother and talks about her fights, and new friends and what Stella Mama, the warden, taught them.
When she was six months old, Sonia started taking Tamanna to the crèche run by Kiran Bedi’s NGO.
Sonia too started working in the crèche, cooking meals for 40 odd children, for Rs. 1,000 a month. The money gets deposited in her account and she can use coupons to buy little treats for Tamanna from the canteen inside the jail sells tea and snacks to inmates.
The prison provides meals. The canteen is one of the luxuries inside the prison complex for those who can afford it. A glass of tea costs Rs. 5.
On her daughter’s first birthday, Sonia asked another inmate to see if she could get her family outside to bring her two dresses for Tamanna. She traded her coupons for the baby clothes.
“You find a way out. It’s not easy brining her up here. There are so many things you can’t do. This was the least,” she said.
Bringing up a child in a prison with all its questions and demands isn’t easy. Sonia has realized that.
She has already spent about four years in the jail, and doesn’t know how many she has left. Inside the walls, she feels protected but even though she knows nobody is waiting for her release, she would rather be free.
It is the feeling of being locked up, of being branded that Sonia detests.
Inside the prison, the barracks and the cells hold hundreds of such stories, tales of abandonment, of love gone wrong, and of ambitions cut short.
Eva Jennifer Antony couldn’t give up on love. And she couldn’t make her man change his ways. So she became an accomplice in his crime, she said.
Together, they stole money through credit card fraud. She tried to dissuade him. Eva worked at a BPO, earned about Rs. 18,000 per month.
They could live well, she argued.
She had moved in with him by then. She got pregnant. There was no way out.
A few months later, both were incarcerated in a murder case of a man whose credit card details the duo had used to swindle money.
“I loved him and I ended up in jail,” she said.
Fissures in their relationship surfaced when her boyfriend wanted her to abort the baby.
But the 28-year-old wanted to keep the baby. Eva, with her dark, brooding eyes, and a ready smile, was abandoned when her husband got out on bail and never came back. He was lodged in Jail No.4.
Eva remained. Her mother came to meet her once in the prison. That was it.
“If he comes back, I will shut the door on him. He made his choices. I don’t need a man now,” Eva said, holding her five-and-a-half month old daughter. “Yes, I am a single mother, and I care two hoots about the society.”
Eva carries her baby around all day, and seldom speaks to other women.
She is worried about Rozanne’s future. It was one thing to bring her into the world. That was about her values, her love, and her rebel spirit. To bring her up inside the prison is a task, and Eva, a strong, free-spirited, and tough woman is slowly crumbling, disintegrating. The prison with all its reforms and comforts, and its abuses and criminals, and its depressing stories can’t give to her daughter what freedom could.
For those children whose mothers are in prison for years, the arrival of a fifth birthday is the most painful day because then the children must leave to live with their family outside, if they have one, or in residential schools.
Tihar, Asia's largest jail, is home to around 60 children. There are an estimated 1,392 children
living in jails across India, as per a Home Minitry figure in 2001.
The National Institute of Criminology Forensic Sciences, Ministry of Home Affairs, conducted a comprehensive study on the children in prisons in 1999. In it, head of criminology B.N. Chattoraj said the government needs to improve jail conditions for women and children. His researchers had found that there were no separate facilities for the children, who had to share their mothers' bed, usually a thin mattress in case of undertrials. Many prisons still don’t have crèches or recreational and educational facilities for children. In some cases, women and children share the same ward with men and conditions in prisons could be best described as sub human, the study said.
The study also said that children live in conditions of depravity.
The crèche in jail no. 6-A, where Sonia cooks and Tamanna learns to put names to colours, is a big, airy room with a high ceiling. On the walls are bright posters, and on the floor are scattered numerous red chairs and floor mats. There’s a cupboard with the toys and there are cribs where younger babies sleep rocked by women. Across the hall, there is a beauty parlour for women, yet another rehabilitation scheme at Tihar, where women learn the trade.
The India Vision Foundation established the crèche in 1994. Later, they tied up with residential missionary schools to educate the children like the Assisi Convent in Noida, and Grace Mission in Gurgaon. Rubeena is a six years old girl in Assisi Convent in Noida. Her mother is an undertrial and Rubeena is sent to the prison complex once a year to spend a week with her mother.
But their lives are suspended in the cycle of court hearings and sentences and arguments. The mesh is too dense for them to contemplate resolutions. So, they take the little pleasures of life and tuck it in their minds. Long after Tamanna is gone, Sonia will dig those out from the corridors of her memory and those will sustain her day after day in a prison where her baby was born, and she became hopeful.
For now, she is dreading the moment when her daughter will go. But the abdonment is imminent. Prison is a place of no luxuries. Motherhood, and love are expensive treats.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Marriage in silence
This was an experience. I saw the email invite in my inbox and it got me curious. So, I went and it was fun - the introduction, the courtship, everything. But what lurked beneath was fear of the unknown and of the future.
The marriages seemed to be working. After all they came from the same worlds, they spoke the same language of silence.
An edited version was published in the Real Page 3 section of the Indian Express on May 16, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, April 30, 2010
No word. No sound.
They mostly communicated in silence about their expectations, of love they were trying to find. She followed closely how his hands rose and fell, how his fingers clasped, unfolded, wound again, how his lips twitched as he tried to tell her what books he read or what time he goes to work. Before she said yes to Yogesh, Babal Kumari, a 25-year-old deaf and dumb girl, needed to know more about him.
He went through the motions again, adding more to his profile, hoping she would say yes to him. She knew how to decode. Outside the large hall where dozens of parents of deaf and dumb women and men congregated to participate in the Pranay Milan Sammelan, an annual event to facilitate matrimonial prospects for the hearing impaired, at the Sacred Heart Cathedral she met him first. Her brother-in-law and his father had approached each other before after Yogesh went up on the stage and communicated the family wanted a Rajput girl.
But Babal left unimpressed. The boy followed. Of the women who had come seeking an alliance, he had already set his heart upon Babal.
So, they met again. A friend facilitated the meeting. She stood and watched, listened through his hands and eyes what he had to say and excused herself and walked up to the front row to sit. She flipped through the file with the photos and the information on the men and then looked up at the stage where more men were still advertising themselves.
In its 18 th year, the Pranay Sammelan, organized by the Delhi Foundation for Deaf Women that was established in 1973 to help deaf women get education and vocational training, has gained popularity among the parents of deaf and dumb children who flock to the event to seek a groom or a bride because the deaf and the dumb have their own community, and their own language and it’s only within the like that they stray, express, love and hate.
When a utensil fell on the ground with a loud thud and Pooja didn’t look up, Brijendra Singh knew something was wrong. He took her to a doctor, and then did the rounds of hospitals in Agra where they lived and in Delhi, too, but the doctors said this was incurable. His daughter was deaf. She could speak, though. But in her world there was only silence. How would she then imitate the sounds she heard? There was no reference. Her lips moved but the sounds that came out didn’t conform to any language. She spoke her own tongue and only her mother seemed to understand.
Pooja learned the sign language so she could communicate. She also learned speech therapy in Agra and learned to say her name.
“It is difficult. It takes months to teach one word,” Brijendra Singh said.
When she was 23, he brought her to Delhi last May to participate in the Pranay Sammelan. She looked her best and the parents proudly walked up to the stage and talked about their only daughter.
A match was found the same day. A family from Agra was looking for a bride for their son who works in Hero Honda group. They liked the slight, coy girl.
On February 7 this year, the marriage was solemnized in a grand function at Agra. Renu, the girl’s mother, said when Pooja walked on to the revolving stage, she looked resplendent. She had never seen her so happy.
Pooja came along with her husband Santosh to the event on Friday. They shared their stories with others.
Pooja who is a trained beautician now lives with her husband in Gurgaon. They have evolved their own way of communicating while he is away at work.
A few minutes before he gets home, he sends her a text message and she comes down and opens the door. Little adjustments but they understand each other and they complement each other, Renu said.
Standing with her husband, Pooja spread her hands to include her mother-in-law, her parents and her husband and then clasped them to say they were all happy together.
“On her wedding a lot of their deaf and dumb friends had come. It was fun. They talked so fast we couldn’t keep track,” her father said.
Sometimes, the father becomes sad that there are so many things that have remained unspoken between the two of them. In their limited world of communication without words, he often wonders the boundless conversations the father and the daughter could have had it not been for the sound of silence that filled her ears and the words hat filled his mind.
But over the years, as he watched her grow up, he became part insider of her world.
“They have no pretensions. They have a lot of trust and faith,” he said. “Their world is simple. She tells me it is better this way. She doesn’t get to hear the bad things that go on in the world.”
In 1991, the Delhi Foundation of Deaf Women started hosting the event to facilitate matrimonials between the hearing-impaired. For years, they had filled in a crucial gap by providing vocational training but when they saw the families express anxiety about their future, and the girls’ themselves indicating how they needed a companion, they decided to help them find a match.
Rajlakshmi Rao, the president of DFDW, said the marriages survive because expectations are low.
“They learn to be grateful all their lives. They have a lot more empathy. All they want is a companion who can understand who they are,” she said.
The DFDW circulates the testimonials, including the salary and qualifications of the boys and the girls, and their profiles, and helps parents interact with each other.
Four years ago, www.shadi.com , the world’s largest matrimonial website partnered with the organization to help the cause. So, they have been sponsoring the events such as Friday’s and also offering to upload their profiles on their website for free.
Almost 5 percent cases on shadi.com are special cases, Neelesh Borgharkar, the national sales head for the website, said.
“This is just helping them to widen the platform,” he said.
For years, the organization has relied on word of mouth to get the parents to come to the event. SB Kumar and Durga Devi had heard about the event from a friend in Patna. Last year, they had attended a similar event in Varanasi to look for a match for their daughter Pragya Anand, who is pursuing her bachelor’s in sociology through distance learning.
“We weren’t lucky,” the father said.
Most of the men and women who came Friday had either left studies after high school or had pursued further education through distance education. Pragya's father said it would have been nice if the government opened more colleges and gave more opportunities to the deaf and dumb who are bright but only can't speak or hear. Pragya plays chess at the national level and is good in studies but has only limited options. It's difficult in college because many institutes of higher learning don't have special educators, he said.
On Friday, he had already short listed a few profiles in the file they had been handed. Pragya, 28, is not ready to marry yet but for parents, it's time she did.
“She doesn’t understand. What will happen to her when we are dead?”, the mother said.
The daughter and the mother learned to leave behind the luxuries of the language years ago. But they speak through the nights about their fears and longings. Where sound fails, eyes and hands take over. Emotions were never a prisoner of words, Durga Devi said.
But now, it is time their daughter found a man.
“We have come with a lot of hope. Let’s see if we can find someone for her,” the father said.
While the parents spoke about their concerns and reservations, Pragya and Rizwana were quietly watching Babal Kumari and Yogesh strike up a conversation. They hadn’t found their own suitors yet.
Raish Ahmed said he wasn’t able to find any Muslim grooms at the event. Rizwana, who has completed her high school and is well-versed in household chores, is already 25. the Pranay Sammelan was his biggest chance. Perhaps if they advertised better, more Muslim families would come.
“They don’t know. Many of us don’t know about this,” he said. “It’s so much better to come and find someone who belongs to the same world.”
Surabhi (name changed) would give it a second chance. She had been married once. But it ended in divorce because both of them didn’t speak the language of silence and signs. The man wasn’t deaf and dumb. After a while, it ended, her mother said.
“Those kinds of marriages don’t last. There’s nothing to speak after a point,” she said.
A few men showed interest. They were keeping their fingers crossed.
Up on the stage, men and women wearing numbers to identify them paraded in front of the audience.
Other voiceless pairs cheered on. What had never been told in a language or ornamented with words, shone through the eyes without the pomp of speech. They wanted to break the silence with a companion and that’s what brought them here.
The marriages seemed to be working. After all they came from the same worlds, they spoke the same language of silence.
An edited version was published in the Real Page 3 section of the Indian Express on May 16, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, April 30, 2010
No word. No sound.
They mostly communicated in silence about their expectations, of love they were trying to find. She followed closely how his hands rose and fell, how his fingers clasped, unfolded, wound again, how his lips twitched as he tried to tell her what books he read or what time he goes to work. Before she said yes to Yogesh, Babal Kumari, a 25-year-old deaf and dumb girl, needed to know more about him.
He went through the motions again, adding more to his profile, hoping she would say yes to him. She knew how to decode. Outside the large hall where dozens of parents of deaf and dumb women and men congregated to participate in the Pranay Milan Sammelan, an annual event to facilitate matrimonial prospects for the hearing impaired, at the Sacred Heart Cathedral she met him first. Her brother-in-law and his father had approached each other before after Yogesh went up on the stage and communicated the family wanted a Rajput girl.
But Babal left unimpressed. The boy followed. Of the women who had come seeking an alliance, he had already set his heart upon Babal.
So, they met again. A friend facilitated the meeting. She stood and watched, listened through his hands and eyes what he had to say and excused herself and walked up to the front row to sit. She flipped through the file with the photos and the information on the men and then looked up at the stage where more men were still advertising themselves.
In its 18 th year, the Pranay Sammelan, organized by the Delhi Foundation for Deaf Women that was established in 1973 to help deaf women get education and vocational training, has gained popularity among the parents of deaf and dumb children who flock to the event to seek a groom or a bride because the deaf and the dumb have their own community, and their own language and it’s only within the like that they stray, express, love and hate.
When a utensil fell on the ground with a loud thud and Pooja didn’t look up, Brijendra Singh knew something was wrong. He took her to a doctor, and then did the rounds of hospitals in Agra where they lived and in Delhi, too, but the doctors said this was incurable. His daughter was deaf. She could speak, though. But in her world there was only silence. How would she then imitate the sounds she heard? There was no reference. Her lips moved but the sounds that came out didn’t conform to any language. She spoke her own tongue and only her mother seemed to understand.
Pooja learned the sign language so she could communicate. She also learned speech therapy in Agra and learned to say her name.
“It is difficult. It takes months to teach one word,” Brijendra Singh said.
When she was 23, he brought her to Delhi last May to participate in the Pranay Sammelan. She looked her best and the parents proudly walked up to the stage and talked about their only daughter.
A match was found the same day. A family from Agra was looking for a bride for their son who works in Hero Honda group. They liked the slight, coy girl.
On February 7 this year, the marriage was solemnized in a grand function at Agra. Renu, the girl’s mother, said when Pooja walked on to the revolving stage, she looked resplendent. She had never seen her so happy.
Pooja came along with her husband Santosh to the event on Friday. They shared their stories with others.
Pooja who is a trained beautician now lives with her husband in Gurgaon. They have evolved their own way of communicating while he is away at work.
A few minutes before he gets home, he sends her a text message and she comes down and opens the door. Little adjustments but they understand each other and they complement each other, Renu said.
Standing with her husband, Pooja spread her hands to include her mother-in-law, her parents and her husband and then clasped them to say they were all happy together.
“On her wedding a lot of their deaf and dumb friends had come. It was fun. They talked so fast we couldn’t keep track,” her father said.
Sometimes, the father becomes sad that there are so many things that have remained unspoken between the two of them. In their limited world of communication without words, he often wonders the boundless conversations the father and the daughter could have had it not been for the sound of silence that filled her ears and the words hat filled his mind.
But over the years, as he watched her grow up, he became part insider of her world.
“They have no pretensions. They have a lot of trust and faith,” he said. “Their world is simple. She tells me it is better this way. She doesn’t get to hear the bad things that go on in the world.”
In 1991, the Delhi Foundation of Deaf Women started hosting the event to facilitate matrimonials between the hearing-impaired. For years, they had filled in a crucial gap by providing vocational training but when they saw the families express anxiety about their future, and the girls’ themselves indicating how they needed a companion, they decided to help them find a match.
Rajlakshmi Rao, the president of DFDW, said the marriages survive because expectations are low.
“They learn to be grateful all their lives. They have a lot more empathy. All they want is a companion who can understand who they are,” she said.
The DFDW circulates the testimonials, including the salary and qualifications of the boys and the girls, and their profiles, and helps parents interact with each other.
Four years ago, www.shadi.com , the world’s largest matrimonial website partnered with the organization to help the cause. So, they have been sponsoring the events such as Friday’s and also offering to upload their profiles on their website for free.
Almost 5 percent cases on shadi.com are special cases, Neelesh Borgharkar, the national sales head for the website, said.
“This is just helping them to widen the platform,” he said.
For years, the organization has relied on word of mouth to get the parents to come to the event. SB Kumar and Durga Devi had heard about the event from a friend in Patna. Last year, they had attended a similar event in Varanasi to look for a match for their daughter Pragya Anand, who is pursuing her bachelor’s in sociology through distance learning.
“We weren’t lucky,” the father said.
Most of the men and women who came Friday had either left studies after high school or had pursued further education through distance education. Pragya's father said it would have been nice if the government opened more colleges and gave more opportunities to the deaf and dumb who are bright but only can't speak or hear. Pragya plays chess at the national level and is good in studies but has only limited options. It's difficult in college because many institutes of higher learning don't have special educators, he said.
On Friday, he had already short listed a few profiles in the file they had been handed. Pragya, 28, is not ready to marry yet but for parents, it's time she did.
“She doesn’t understand. What will happen to her when we are dead?”, the mother said.
The daughter and the mother learned to leave behind the luxuries of the language years ago. But they speak through the nights about their fears and longings. Where sound fails, eyes and hands take over. Emotions were never a prisoner of words, Durga Devi said.
But now, it is time their daughter found a man.
“We have come with a lot of hope. Let’s see if we can find someone for her,” the father said.
While the parents spoke about their concerns and reservations, Pragya and Rizwana were quietly watching Babal Kumari and Yogesh strike up a conversation. They hadn’t found their own suitors yet.
Raish Ahmed said he wasn’t able to find any Muslim grooms at the event. Rizwana, who has completed her high school and is well-versed in household chores, is already 25. the Pranay Sammelan was his biggest chance. Perhaps if they advertised better, more Muslim families would come.
“They don’t know. Many of us don’t know about this,” he said. “It’s so much better to come and find someone who belongs to the same world.”
Surabhi (name changed) would give it a second chance. She had been married once. But it ended in divorce because both of them didn’t speak the language of silence and signs. The man wasn’t deaf and dumb. After a while, it ended, her mother said.
“Those kinds of marriages don’t last. There’s nothing to speak after a point,” she said.
A few men showed interest. They were keeping their fingers crossed.
Up on the stage, men and women wearing numbers to identify them paraded in front of the audience.
Other voiceless pairs cheered on. What had never been told in a language or ornamented with words, shone through the eyes without the pomp of speech. They wanted to break the silence with a companion and that’s what brought them here.
Monday, May 10, 2010
"Success has many fathers. Failure has none. Why do you come after me? Media always goes for those shining stars." - Ravi Kumar to me
We went to the UPSC building after the results were announced to "get colour" but there was nobody there except a few television crew members who were trying to capture some footage of the list. We hung around waiting for candidates to trickle in. At last we saw Ravi Kumar looking at the list anxiously. And we tried to help him find his name. At one time, I thought I saw it. But it was "Ravit Kumar" and he corrected me saying he had made the same mistake. When he was sure he hadn't cleared the exams, we were sad, too. I followed him and he told me something I will always remember "At the end of the day, I will be alone with my sorrow."
An edited verison was published in Indian Express Sunday Real Page 3 section on May 9, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, May 7, 2010
When he had only three pages of the list to scan for his name, his fingers stiffened as he rolled them down the list of successful candidates who had made it to the Union Public Service Commission examinations.
No, it was not there. But maybe he had missed it. At least that was the hope then. Ravi Kumar was one of the very few candidates who came to the UPSC building to see the list where they had pasted it on a notice board outside.
He went through the list again. When he had read through 440 names, almost half of the list, tiny beads of sweat appeared on his forehead. He fought off the tears. This was his last attempt. For three years, his name had eluded him. It wasn’t there this year, too.
For the school teacher, becoming a civil servant was a childhood dream, a passion that consumed him, an obsession that didn’t let him pursue anything else. Born and raised in Patna, Bihar, Kumar came to Delhi to prepare for the civil services examinations. He completed his teacher training and worked in a government school in Saket. But that was only to sustain him while he gave all he could to get where he wanted to.
But outside the building where aspirations converge and too many dreams crash, Ravi Kumar didn’t mourn his loss for too long. He needed to get away.
“Success has many fathers and failure has none. At the end of the day, my grief is personal,” he said.
On the list, Shah Faesal, a Kashmiri youth’s name stood out. A doctor, he had topped the list in his first attempt. Son on a man killed by the militants in the valley, he grew up believing he could do it and be a role model for others. He came to Delhi in 2008. Some of his coaching and lodging and boarding were sponsored by the Zakat Foundation of India, which was established in 1997 to help the poor and the needy. Two of the seven candidates the organization had helped – Shah Faesal and Mohd. Shahid Alam, who is from Jharkhand – have made it to the list. For many, the examinations are a great equalizer. It doesn’t cost more than Rs. 100 to take the examinations.
Faesal hadn’t come to see his name. He was the star of the day. Nor had the other toppers - Prakash Rajpurohit, a B Tech holder from IIT, Delhi, who was ranked second, and Iva Sahay, MA (Geography) from JNU, who secured the third rank.
Among the top 25 candidates who had cleared the examination, 15 are male and 10 are female candidates. Their phones were ringing off the hook. The news had reached them.
A few who had come, came anticipating the best, and fearing the worst. By then, they knew they weren’t in the top 25. But the list was long. Maybe, they too figured in the middle, towards the bottom, somewhere.
Ravi Kumar walked away slowly.
A few moments ago, Rahul Sinha had run along the same pavement to hug his friend. He had cracked the examinations and he couldn’t contain his excitement.
From his tea stall, Ravindar Nath watched the expressions closely. He was used to the exuberance that was infectious. But he was also used to seeing the fallen faces and itbroke his heart each time he saw somebody walking away slowly, unsteadily. He knew then that the building, its promise, its myth, and all that it stood for – change, exaltation, fame – had just eluded them.
Nath has been working at the tea stall for more than 35 years. Until five years ago, on the day the results were announced, it was like a mela. There used to be a lot of activity, buzz then.
“People camped here for hours. They would come and spread sheets and sit for hours. They came early and we sold them snacks and tea,” he recalled.
In those days, he also hung a light bulb from a wire on a pole so that in the evenings the place was well lit.
“They used to place the list here on this side. It used to be a different sight then. All along the road, cars were parked. The traffic got crazy as people came to see the list,” he said.
Now, he leaves early. Mostly by 8 p.m.
Now he doesn’t stock the little shop with snacks – patties, cakes and biscuits. The business was different then. He was hardly able to leave before 11 p.m.
“I sold a lot of tea. Now, hardly anyone comes to see the list. They see it on the internet,” he said. “Then the grief is not public.”
A few more trickled in. They were curious passers by, a few relatives, and some friends. An old man studied the list closely. He wasn’t searching for any name in particular. He was just partaking of their success. It made him feel good to see the list, to see so many had made it through.
Rajesh Kumar was on his way home from the Home Ministry office where he works when he jumped off the bus near the UPSC building. He saw some excitement around the place, a lot of television crew and he knew the list was out. His brother Ajay Kumar had taken the examinations and he wanted to surprise him with the good news.
“I hope his name is there,” he said as he scanned the list, meticulously going through every name.
Anup Pandey was already on the phone. His friend Jaishankar Upadhyay had made it to the list. As he was in Gorakhpur, he had asked Anup to look at the list for him. Sometimes, the excitement and the anxiety are too much for the candidates to see the list themselves. They are nervous of the fear, of the extreme possibilities – dejection and exhilaration.
“He is very happy. This was his last attempt,” he said. “He is rank 412.”
On Thursday, the list was put up at around 2:30 p.m. A few people came to see the list in the afternoon but by evening, it was deserted.
Jyoti, a woman guard said last year she had seen a few women last year celebrating outside the building.
“One of them had made it and they came to confirm. They had seen the list online but they wanted to see it on paper outside the building. Then, it wouldn’t be wrong,” she said.
“But this year, it is so silent.”
An edited verison was published in Indian Express Sunday Real Page 3 section on May 9, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, May 7, 2010
When he had only three pages of the list to scan for his name, his fingers stiffened as he rolled them down the list of successful candidates who had made it to the Union Public Service Commission examinations.
No, it was not there. But maybe he had missed it. At least that was the hope then. Ravi Kumar was one of the very few candidates who came to the UPSC building to see the list where they had pasted it on a notice board outside.
He went through the list again. When he had read through 440 names, almost half of the list, tiny beads of sweat appeared on his forehead. He fought off the tears. This was his last attempt. For three years, his name had eluded him. It wasn’t there this year, too.
For the school teacher, becoming a civil servant was a childhood dream, a passion that consumed him, an obsession that didn’t let him pursue anything else. Born and raised in Patna, Bihar, Kumar came to Delhi to prepare for the civil services examinations. He completed his teacher training and worked in a government school in Saket. But that was only to sustain him while he gave all he could to get where he wanted to.
But outside the building where aspirations converge and too many dreams crash, Ravi Kumar didn’t mourn his loss for too long. He needed to get away.
“Success has many fathers and failure has none. At the end of the day, my grief is personal,” he said.
On the list, Shah Faesal, a Kashmiri youth’s name stood out. A doctor, he had topped the list in his first attempt. Son on a man killed by the militants in the valley, he grew up believing he could do it and be a role model for others. He came to Delhi in 2008. Some of his coaching and lodging and boarding were sponsored by the Zakat Foundation of India, which was established in 1997 to help the poor and the needy. Two of the seven candidates the organization had helped – Shah Faesal and Mohd. Shahid Alam, who is from Jharkhand – have made it to the list. For many, the examinations are a great equalizer. It doesn’t cost more than Rs. 100 to take the examinations.
Faesal hadn’t come to see his name. He was the star of the day. Nor had the other toppers - Prakash Rajpurohit, a B Tech holder from IIT, Delhi, who was ranked second, and Iva Sahay, MA (Geography) from JNU, who secured the third rank.
Among the top 25 candidates who had cleared the examination, 15 are male and 10 are female candidates. Their phones were ringing off the hook. The news had reached them.
A few who had come, came anticipating the best, and fearing the worst. By then, they knew they weren’t in the top 25. But the list was long. Maybe, they too figured in the middle, towards the bottom, somewhere.
Ravi Kumar walked away slowly.
A few moments ago, Rahul Sinha had run along the same pavement to hug his friend. He had cracked the examinations and he couldn’t contain his excitement.
From his tea stall, Ravindar Nath watched the expressions closely. He was used to the exuberance that was infectious. But he was also used to seeing the fallen faces and itbroke his heart each time he saw somebody walking away slowly, unsteadily. He knew then that the building, its promise, its myth, and all that it stood for – change, exaltation, fame – had just eluded them.
Nath has been working at the tea stall for more than 35 years. Until five years ago, on the day the results were announced, it was like a mela. There used to be a lot of activity, buzz then.
“People camped here for hours. They would come and spread sheets and sit for hours. They came early and we sold them snacks and tea,” he recalled.
In those days, he also hung a light bulb from a wire on a pole so that in the evenings the place was well lit.
“They used to place the list here on this side. It used to be a different sight then. All along the road, cars were parked. The traffic got crazy as people came to see the list,” he said.
Now, he leaves early. Mostly by 8 p.m.
Now he doesn’t stock the little shop with snacks – patties, cakes and biscuits. The business was different then. He was hardly able to leave before 11 p.m.
“I sold a lot of tea. Now, hardly anyone comes to see the list. They see it on the internet,” he said. “Then the grief is not public.”
A few more trickled in. They were curious passers by, a few relatives, and some friends. An old man studied the list closely. He wasn’t searching for any name in particular. He was just partaking of their success. It made him feel good to see the list, to see so many had made it through.
Rajesh Kumar was on his way home from the Home Ministry office where he works when he jumped off the bus near the UPSC building. He saw some excitement around the place, a lot of television crew and he knew the list was out. His brother Ajay Kumar had taken the examinations and he wanted to surprise him with the good news.
“I hope his name is there,” he said as he scanned the list, meticulously going through every name.
Anup Pandey was already on the phone. His friend Jaishankar Upadhyay had made it to the list. As he was in Gorakhpur, he had asked Anup to look at the list for him. Sometimes, the excitement and the anxiety are too much for the candidates to see the list themselves. They are nervous of the fear, of the extreme possibilities – dejection and exhilaration.
“He is very happy. This was his last attempt,” he said. “He is rank 412.”
On Thursday, the list was put up at around 2:30 p.m. A few people came to see the list in the afternoon but by evening, it was deserted.
Jyoti, a woman guard said last year she had seen a few women last year celebrating outside the building.
“One of them had made it and they came to confirm. They had seen the list online but they wanted to see it on paper outside the building. Then, it wouldn’t be wrong,” she said.
“But this year, it is so silent.”
Monday, May 03, 2010
In Masada's narrative, Israel begins to live and convince
I wrote the piece after I got back from Israel in December. Masada stayed with me after I left the country. Its beauty enchanted me and its story made me wonder about the other side, the side I was so not willing to explore.
An edited version was published in Sunday Eye (Indian Express) on May 2, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
Masada
It’s in Masada that Israel begins to make sense. Because in this region where there are only two extreme identities – of the oppressed and the oppressor – in Masada the roles are reversed. And you must let Masada tell you its story. You must listen, and not ask questions. That will break the spell.
As we drove in the desert towards the fortress, Zivit Sari, our guide, stuck her neck outside and shouted she could see Masada. All we could see looming in the distance was a cluster of sandstone-colored mountains. Somewhere in the middle was a flat-topped mountain, Dead Sea in front, the desert in between them.
Then it began to slowly emerge - the three terraces of King Herod's grandiose palace on the north tip precariously balancing themselves down the rock like the gardens of Babylon. It came out of the rock, blended in, and yet carved out of it. Here’s where nature helped man forge a getaway fortress from its belly - beautiful, delicate, and yet so formidable. Masada sat in the mountain like an embryo – protected and enigmatic.
Masada is where stands the refuge palace of Roman King Herod, who was himself Jewish, built by him in 38-4 BCE, and this was where a thousand Jewish refugees died centuries ago defending the "last stand" of Israel. During the First Jewish War, the Jewish rebels captured the mountain as they fled from the Romans after Jerusalem was captured and the Temple was burnt. It is not like Caesarea where there are shopping arcades, and restaurants amid the ruins.
Only Masada remained because it was built to intimidate, and it was inaccessible. But in 73 AD, Roman General Flavius Silva besieged the fortress after camping there for months. The Jewish refugees, as the myth goes, killed themselves preferring death at their own hands rather then be enslaved by the enemy they so loathed that they wouldn’t even use the Roman bathhouse built by King Herod. While they stayed there, they built their Jewish baths around the ancient bathhouse and the ruins are a testimony to this.
The Roman armies destroyed the wall around the fortress, and then they burnt the new wall the refugees had built of wood. That’s when the Jewish refugees understood they could not hold out any longer. But embracing death was a calculated move, too. Zivit told us how they left the storage area intact to show to the enemy and to the world if they came to document the incident that they had enough food to last them for years, that they didn’t commit suicide because of the threat of the enemy but because they chose freedom and pride and rejected enslavement as narrated by Josephus in the The Jewish War .
As we waited for the cable car that would take us up the mountain and into the refuge fortress complete with a Roman bath and a palace overlooking the Dead Sea, I found the narrative getting to me, and I started believing in the myth, too. It was Masada enchanting me, charming me with its sadness, its magnificence and its fate. It was staring at me, it was in my face convincing me with all that was left of it, and when I looked down from the top, I knew why it was so beautiful in its remoteness. The Dead Sea, its blue water, the Jordanian mountains reflecting in its waters, changing colours, stretched across from the fortress. The desert was beneath it. The hills closed in on it, the rains had carved the limestone mountains when they gushed forth in the rainy season, pulled down by the earth’s force. This place had everything and maybe that’s why Herod came here, lured by its promise of everything.
Masada ’s appeal has only increased over the years. Conde’ Nast Traveler magazine rated it as the world’s most popular tourist side recently.
Of course Zivit had internalised its tragic story, passed it on to her children and didn’t once mention the controversy about the Masada myth of Jews sacrificing their lives to dodge enslavement by the Romans that diluted the story of heroism because then it would mean negating their own struggles, their beliefs and their place under the sun, her own time serving in the Israeli Army always trying that Masada didn’t fall yet again.
The battle of Masada was lost. But the settlers saw that the idea could help in recruiting a force, and Masada resurfaced, and remains as important as it ever was.
It is in Masada, perched on a flat-topped limestone mountain, that the Israeli Defence Force recruits held swearing-in ceremonies shouting “Masada shall not fall again” from the 1927 poem by the Ukrainian poet Yitzhak Lamdan for many years until doubts about the accuracy of the Masada story itself was challenged by a scholar.
The idea of Masada trained soldiers to do anything; it became a symbol of Israel surviving among enemies, and occupied a place in the collective memory.
The fact that Israel has mandatory army service, it is a nation constantly on alert, trying to defend its borders and expand them, too. They are surrounded with countries that have denied its very existence.
It is here in Masada that I began to understand why Israel can fight the way it does, aggressively, ruthlessly, to defend the piece of land that’s their home and refuge and a place where Jews from all over the world can return to.
On most holidays, Zivit would pack her children in the car and drive over two hours to Masada in the Judean Desert, and the children would climb up the Snake Path and listen to the narrative of the Jewish refugees. They needed to be inspired, to look forward to the army time, and they needed to believe in the cause, feel sorry for the victims, she told us.
Because this is the age of doubt and doubt corrodes faith, she added.
The story that was relevant almost 2,000 years ago still holds ground. Surrounded by countries that have not recognized its existence , it is the perennial source of inspiration and dozens of children still climb up to the fortress, their mothers prodding them on, their teachers exhorting them to climb faster.
Zivit’s children too had soaked in the story, walk through the ruins, and listened to their mother saying how they should always be brave and never fear death.
That’s a ritual that Jewish mothers believe in. It’s part of the Jewish upbringing, a way of preparing their sons and daughters for the army, a service that is mandatory for the youth in Israel, she said.
“Because then they will never show their backs on the army and fight,” she said. “That’s how we raise our children.”
When Zivit, who now works as a tourist guide out of Haifa, was a young girl, she had trekked the narrow and steep path, too. The story of Masada is an important part of Israel’s national narrative, a myth that sustains its ideology, its wars, and its space.
I had been to Jerusalem, walked in Jesus’ footsteps, the Via Dolorosa, the path that Jesus took when he walked to his crucifixion, stood outside the Al Aqsa Mosque and wrote my wishes on a piece of paper and stuck it in the Western Wall so they could be answered, and watched in silence the hundreds of Jewish women reading the Torah facing the Wailing Wall, the last remnant of the second Jewish Temple. But in the old city I found identities, its clashes. Religion hung heavy on us, but even in the tears of the Jewish women I saw praying at the Western Wall, I couldn’t find the idea of Israel convincing enough.
Until I saw Masada, I was still trying to understand the Jewish mind. There were memorials scattered throughout the country, there was the Holocaust Museum, but it needed more, at least for me. Because in Jerusalem, past the security checkpoints, past the heavily-armed gunmen, it didn’t take much to see why Palestine needed its own place. This was their space denied to them.
In Masada, I knew why Israel needed to exist, too. Because here I saw how the Jewish refugees struggled to defend Israel after everything else had been taken over and how they died in the hopes that Messiah will gift Israel back to them. According to the account by Josephus, they killed each other until the last man killed himself while the walls burnt around them believing that God was punishing them for not being able to defend Israel. When they reclaimed Israel, they knew they were only trying to get what had been theirs. It’s another story that in the intervening 2,000 years, others had come to inhabit the region – the Palestinians.
In Israel, the first immigrants after the Nazi Germany hounded them and persecuted them, established communes called Kibbutz, pushing the boundaries of their country into the deserts, into hostile neighbor’s territories, incurring the wrath of those who were uprooted, and the world that often criticized them. They needed to sustain the zeal, and wanted their children to grow up believing in the struggle, and their victimization.
And this is why they needed Masada, and its heroic narrative.
For years, the schools have been bringing students to the fortress, narrating to them the story they have heard at home, that they will grow up with, and which will kill their doubts on war.
Masada is key to understanding the country’s insecurities, its youth and its transformation as its old generation gives way to new, the ones who are growing up in an age of aspiration.
Masada was rediscovered in 1838 by two American travelers, Edward Robinson and E. Smith, in 1838.
And from the 1930 onwards, after the Jewish National Fund bought it, it was a destination for Zionist youth. It wasn’t excavated until 1960s and at once became the centre of national interest, a site of pride for settlers who derived their sense of clan and community living from those Jewish refugees who came here. It injected Israelis with heroism needed to survive in a hostile environment, Zivit told us.
But Israeli new historians like Nachman Ben Yehuda have debunked the Masada story saying only a few skeletons were found in excavations later and Romans could not have waited out the whole night to get into the fortress whose walls they had burnt already.
But anyone visiting Israel, who needs to understand the Jewish people, needs to walk in the ruins of Masada and let it enchant you, and let it explain to you why it should not fall again and why they won’t let it fall again and why its beauty is so tragic and so convincing.
Facts about Masada
The Israel Nature and Parks Protection Authority has restored Masada’s ruins and adding to the historical site a museum consisting of nine rooms that house statues and other finds to help tourists reconstruct history was opened in 2007.
Masada was incorporated in the UNESCO’s World Heritage Site list in 2001. While Masada presents spectacular scenery in the night when the moon is strong and the ruins glow with its light, the sunrise viewed from the top of the flat mountain is equally famous. An audio-visual light show chronicling Masada's history is presented at the night time during summers. The dramatic show takes place during March and October and documents the last days of the rebel’s in the cliff-top fortress.
While a cable car has been built, a winding snake path built in those days to ferry people and supplies is still used by the people. The Snake Path opens about one hour before sunrise but is closed during extreme weather conditions. The treacherous path was built by Herod to get food and raw materials up on the 450 meters fortress. It is very narrow and steep and many still wonder how the palace was constructed and how slabs of stones were carried to that height. But there is what seems like a mining quarry that suggests the stones used to build the palaces were from the quarry.
Masada, with its myth and its conflict, will also host Verdi’s opera “Nabucco” in June. It will be produced by the Israeli Opera.
The fortress that sits in the mountain like an embryo was voted as the most popular tourist site in Israel in 2008 by Dun and Bradstreet.
Also known as Metzada, the fortress is on the western shore of the Dead Sea and is in the Judean Desert. Its east and west edge’s measure between 400 meters and 90 meters in height. This is where the Sicarii, the Jewish rebels, fled to after being hounded by the Romans centuries ago.
It was largely undiscovered until a Hebrew poet’s poem called Masada in 1920s generated interest in the site. Then, in 1960s Yigael Yadin started to excavate the region and the site became one of symbols of Israel.
An edited version was published in Sunday Eye (Indian Express) on May 2, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
Masada
It’s in Masada that Israel begins to make sense. Because in this region where there are only two extreme identities – of the oppressed and the oppressor – in Masada the roles are reversed. And you must let Masada tell you its story. You must listen, and not ask questions. That will break the spell.
As we drove in the desert towards the fortress, Zivit Sari, our guide, stuck her neck outside and shouted she could see Masada. All we could see looming in the distance was a cluster of sandstone-colored mountains. Somewhere in the middle was a flat-topped mountain, Dead Sea in front, the desert in between them.
Then it began to slowly emerge - the three terraces of King Herod's grandiose palace on the north tip precariously balancing themselves down the rock like the gardens of Babylon. It came out of the rock, blended in, and yet carved out of it. Here’s where nature helped man forge a getaway fortress from its belly - beautiful, delicate, and yet so formidable. Masada sat in the mountain like an embryo – protected and enigmatic.
Masada is where stands the refuge palace of Roman King Herod, who was himself Jewish, built by him in 38-4 BCE, and this was where a thousand Jewish refugees died centuries ago defending the "last stand" of Israel. During the First Jewish War, the Jewish rebels captured the mountain as they fled from the Romans after Jerusalem was captured and the Temple was burnt. It is not like Caesarea where there are shopping arcades, and restaurants amid the ruins.
Only Masada remained because it was built to intimidate, and it was inaccessible. But in 73 AD, Roman General Flavius Silva besieged the fortress after camping there for months. The Jewish refugees, as the myth goes, killed themselves preferring death at their own hands rather then be enslaved by the enemy they so loathed that they wouldn’t even use the Roman bathhouse built by King Herod. While they stayed there, they built their Jewish baths around the ancient bathhouse and the ruins are a testimony to this.
The Roman armies destroyed the wall around the fortress, and then they burnt the new wall the refugees had built of wood. That’s when the Jewish refugees understood they could not hold out any longer. But embracing death was a calculated move, too. Zivit told us how they left the storage area intact to show to the enemy and to the world if they came to document the incident that they had enough food to last them for years, that they didn’t commit suicide because of the threat of the enemy but because they chose freedom and pride and rejected enslavement as narrated by Josephus in the The Jewish War .
As we waited for the cable car that would take us up the mountain and into the refuge fortress complete with a Roman bath and a palace overlooking the Dead Sea, I found the narrative getting to me, and I started believing in the myth, too. It was Masada enchanting me, charming me with its sadness, its magnificence and its fate. It was staring at me, it was in my face convincing me with all that was left of it, and when I looked down from the top, I knew why it was so beautiful in its remoteness. The Dead Sea, its blue water, the Jordanian mountains reflecting in its waters, changing colours, stretched across from the fortress. The desert was beneath it. The hills closed in on it, the rains had carved the limestone mountains when they gushed forth in the rainy season, pulled down by the earth’s force. This place had everything and maybe that’s why Herod came here, lured by its promise of everything.
Masada ’s appeal has only increased over the years. Conde’ Nast Traveler magazine rated it as the world’s most popular tourist side recently.
Of course Zivit had internalised its tragic story, passed it on to her children and didn’t once mention the controversy about the Masada myth of Jews sacrificing their lives to dodge enslavement by the Romans that diluted the story of heroism because then it would mean negating their own struggles, their beliefs and their place under the sun, her own time serving in the Israeli Army always trying that Masada didn’t fall yet again.
The battle of Masada was lost. But the settlers saw that the idea could help in recruiting a force, and Masada resurfaced, and remains as important as it ever was.
It is in Masada, perched on a flat-topped limestone mountain, that the Israeli Defence Force recruits held swearing-in ceremonies shouting “Masada shall not fall again” from the 1927 poem by the Ukrainian poet Yitzhak Lamdan for many years until doubts about the accuracy of the Masada story itself was challenged by a scholar.
The idea of Masada trained soldiers to do anything; it became a symbol of Israel surviving among enemies, and occupied a place in the collective memory.
The fact that Israel has mandatory army service, it is a nation constantly on alert, trying to defend its borders and expand them, too. They are surrounded with countries that have denied its very existence.
It is here in Masada that I began to understand why Israel can fight the way it does, aggressively, ruthlessly, to defend the piece of land that’s their home and refuge and a place where Jews from all over the world can return to.
On most holidays, Zivit would pack her children in the car and drive over two hours to Masada in the Judean Desert, and the children would climb up the Snake Path and listen to the narrative of the Jewish refugees. They needed to be inspired, to look forward to the army time, and they needed to believe in the cause, feel sorry for the victims, she told us.
Because this is the age of doubt and doubt corrodes faith, she added.
The story that was relevant almost 2,000 years ago still holds ground. Surrounded by countries that have not recognized its existence , it is the perennial source of inspiration and dozens of children still climb up to the fortress, their mothers prodding them on, their teachers exhorting them to climb faster.
Zivit’s children too had soaked in the story, walk through the ruins, and listened to their mother saying how they should always be brave and never fear death.
That’s a ritual that Jewish mothers believe in. It’s part of the Jewish upbringing, a way of preparing their sons and daughters for the army, a service that is mandatory for the youth in Israel, she said.
“Because then they will never show their backs on the army and fight,” she said. “That’s how we raise our children.”
When Zivit, who now works as a tourist guide out of Haifa, was a young girl, she had trekked the narrow and steep path, too. The story of Masada is an important part of Israel’s national narrative, a myth that sustains its ideology, its wars, and its space.
I had been to Jerusalem, walked in Jesus’ footsteps, the Via Dolorosa, the path that Jesus took when he walked to his crucifixion, stood outside the Al Aqsa Mosque and wrote my wishes on a piece of paper and stuck it in the Western Wall so they could be answered, and watched in silence the hundreds of Jewish women reading the Torah facing the Wailing Wall, the last remnant of the second Jewish Temple. But in the old city I found identities, its clashes. Religion hung heavy on us, but even in the tears of the Jewish women I saw praying at the Western Wall, I couldn’t find the idea of Israel convincing enough.
Until I saw Masada, I was still trying to understand the Jewish mind. There were memorials scattered throughout the country, there was the Holocaust Museum, but it needed more, at least for me. Because in Jerusalem, past the security checkpoints, past the heavily-armed gunmen, it didn’t take much to see why Palestine needed its own place. This was their space denied to them.
In Masada, I knew why Israel needed to exist, too. Because here I saw how the Jewish refugees struggled to defend Israel after everything else had been taken over and how they died in the hopes that Messiah will gift Israel back to them. According to the account by Josephus, they killed each other until the last man killed himself while the walls burnt around them believing that God was punishing them for not being able to defend Israel. When they reclaimed Israel, they knew they were only trying to get what had been theirs. It’s another story that in the intervening 2,000 years, others had come to inhabit the region – the Palestinians.
In Israel, the first immigrants after the Nazi Germany hounded them and persecuted them, established communes called Kibbutz, pushing the boundaries of their country into the deserts, into hostile neighbor’s territories, incurring the wrath of those who were uprooted, and the world that often criticized them. They needed to sustain the zeal, and wanted their children to grow up believing in the struggle, and their victimization.
And this is why they needed Masada, and its heroic narrative.
For years, the schools have been bringing students to the fortress, narrating to them the story they have heard at home, that they will grow up with, and which will kill their doubts on war.
Masada is key to understanding the country’s insecurities, its youth and its transformation as its old generation gives way to new, the ones who are growing up in an age of aspiration.
Masada was rediscovered in 1838 by two American travelers, Edward Robinson and E. Smith, in 1838.
And from the 1930 onwards, after the Jewish National Fund bought it, it was a destination for Zionist youth. It wasn’t excavated until 1960s and at once became the centre of national interest, a site of pride for settlers who derived their sense of clan and community living from those Jewish refugees who came here. It injected Israelis with heroism needed to survive in a hostile environment, Zivit told us.
But Israeli new historians like Nachman Ben Yehuda have debunked the Masada story saying only a few skeletons were found in excavations later and Romans could not have waited out the whole night to get into the fortress whose walls they had burnt already.
But anyone visiting Israel, who needs to understand the Jewish people, needs to walk in the ruins of Masada and let it enchant you, and let it explain to you why it should not fall again and why they won’t let it fall again and why its beauty is so tragic and so convincing.
Facts about Masada
The Israel Nature and Parks Protection Authority has restored Masada’s ruins and adding to the historical site a museum consisting of nine rooms that house statues and other finds to help tourists reconstruct history was opened in 2007.
Masada was incorporated in the UNESCO’s World Heritage Site list in 2001. While Masada presents spectacular scenery in the night when the moon is strong and the ruins glow with its light, the sunrise viewed from the top of the flat mountain is equally famous. An audio-visual light show chronicling Masada's history is presented at the night time during summers. The dramatic show takes place during March and October and documents the last days of the rebel’s in the cliff-top fortress.
While a cable car has been built, a winding snake path built in those days to ferry people and supplies is still used by the people. The Snake Path opens about one hour before sunrise but is closed during extreme weather conditions. The treacherous path was built by Herod to get food and raw materials up on the 450 meters fortress. It is very narrow and steep and many still wonder how the palace was constructed and how slabs of stones were carried to that height. But there is what seems like a mining quarry that suggests the stones used to build the palaces were from the quarry.
Masada, with its myth and its conflict, will also host Verdi’s opera “Nabucco” in June. It will be produced by the Israeli Opera.
The fortress that sits in the mountain like an embryo was voted as the most popular tourist site in Israel in 2008 by Dun and Bradstreet.
Also known as Metzada, the fortress is on the western shore of the Dead Sea and is in the Judean Desert. Its east and west edge’s measure between 400 meters and 90 meters in height. This is where the Sicarii, the Jewish rebels, fled to after being hounded by the Romans centuries ago.
It was largely undiscovered until a Hebrew poet’s poem called Masada in 1920s generated interest in the site. Then, in 1960s Yigael Yadin started to excavate the region and the site became one of symbols of Israel.
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