An edited version appeared in the Indian Express http://www.indianexpress.com/news/day-discotheques-in-patna/716915/ on November 27, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, November 26, 2010
That year, Ali wanted to change many things about Patna. He wanted the
boys and girls to dance to the music he would mix on the decks in a
restaurant with revolving neon lights, and a dance floor.
He wanted Patna, reeling under the lack of security for women and men,
to experiment with a day discotheque. Colleges shut at around 4 p.m.
The discotheque would close at 4:30 p.m. so girls and boys could come
in and dance and go home before the sun went down.
That was about a decade ago. Ali had spent a few months in Delhi,
Mumbai, Chandigarh, and wore anti-fit jeans and cool sweat shirts and
knew how to party.
He had rehearsed his role, too. He would play the DJ with headphones
plugged in his ears, a glass of beer on the side, and play his own
funky brand of music.
In those days, under the shadow of Lalu’s reign with his goons roaming
around, kidnapping women, raiding shops at will, we never partied at
clubs. In the evenings, we would sit at home and drink tea, or watch
television.
We all wanted some change, a break from the monotony of our routine
lives, from the oppressive fear that kept us indoors. We were young
and we wanted everything that everyone else in other cities had
access, too.
We wanted a discotheque even if it meant dancing under cheap neon
lights during the daylight hours.
Ali even managed to convince a restaurant owner to let him use the space.
He transported his equipment, huge speakers, a mixer, and headphones,
and we all sneaked out of the political science class, changed into
jeans, applied some cheap mascara and giggled at the prospect of going
to a disco.
I remember many students came. But the magic didn’t last. Towards the
afternoon, Ali could sense trouble was coming his way. The restaurant
owner, he told me, was anxious. This was dangerous. He was excited but
this was courting trouble.
The day discotheque shut.
Patna wasn’t ready for such adventures.
Lalu’s men were on the streets. They were indomitable, fearless, and lawless.
Those were the times I grew up in Patna, under the shadow of fear and
kidnapping. If I didn’t reach home by 4 p.m., my mother would start
calling up my friends’ homes, asking if I was ok.
We didn’t have cell phones then.
News was scary, too.
In July 1999, Shilpi Jain, my senior in Patna Women’s College, was
raped and murdered. They later dismissed it as a suicide. But
politicians were involved. On young politician refused to get his DNA
tested, saying he didn’t want to cooperate.
I had seen her at the coaching institute I attended to crack the MBA
examinations that morning. She was young, beautiful, and had been
crowned as Miss St. Joseph’s Convent at the farewell event.
The next day, the papers were full of tales of her grim, ruthless
murder. Her naked body had been dumped on some highway along with
Gautam Singh, her boyfriend. In 2003, the CBI closed the case terming
it as a suicide case.
But the infamous case had done its damage to our lives. We weren’t
allowed to have boyfriends, go out with friends, wear jeans with short
tops. It is better to be invisible in the strange times that we live
in, my mother had said then.
Fifteen years of my growing up years were filled with the fear of
rape, of being spotted, of desperately trying to get out of Bihar.
Those years were filled with longing, too, to do things that others
could with so much ease.
They used to call it “jungle raj”.
It was anarchy everywhere. Lalu engaged us all with his wit and we
laughed. But we also knew we were missing out on so much. There was
too much corruption. Roads were bumpy, shops downed their shutters by
8 p.m., and my father gave up on driving to Patliputra Colony on the
other side of the town for card parties because one night, he was
stopped by a bunch of men who demanded ransom and said he was on the
hit list.
Brain drain peaked in the state. Those who could get out, chose to
pack up and leave. A friend who had a franchise of Mahindra cars
relocated to Pune after men came and picked up cars from the showrooms
saying it was Lalu’s daughter’s wedding and they needed cars.
Caste barriers were enforced. We felt isolated. My family gave up on
the "Sinha" tag. We started using two first names so our caste doesn't
become our identity in a state that was showing the nation how to
divide and rule. My cousins are all a set of two first names. We were
the last of the "Sinha" surname in our family. A lot happened in those
15 years. Fear, and insecurity ruled all decisions.
I moved out in 2001. My mother would give me a list of instructions
before I took from Delhi or Mumbai to Patna, citing examples. There
were too many of those. A woman was drugged and her body was dumped at
one of the stations.
We never took the Rajdhani train to Delhi. It was packed with party
people, who clanked glasses, got drunk and created mayhem.
At the university, too many strikes became the order of the day. There
were strange men roaming the campus, saying they could do anything. I
went to a convent college, and was relatively safe. But my friends
faced issues. They dressed in plain clothes, tied their hair, anything
to avoid getting noticed.
On August 3, 2001, Pandora's Box, a discotheque, opened its doors.
This was yet another attempt to defy the system. It wasn’t Ali this
time but a young graduate named Aayush Sahay. But this was a day
discotheque. Nobody could risk late night brawls, etc.
But this too shut down. A local journalist told me gunshots were heard
inside the discotheque and it closed down a few months after it dared
to change the status quo.
Patna remained in its cocoon.
When I went home in 2008, after I moved back from the United States,
something had changed. Maybe just a little but it felt a lot easier
just going to the Patna Market on my own.
Then the floating restaurant opened and I went on it with my mother. I
saw many young girls and boys having a good time in the evenings. A
few malls had opened up. A lot more restaurants had opened up. They
looked fresh, full of life unlike the ones that had their waiters wait
it out for hours before people walked in. The fear was gone.
Someone asked me if I feel empowered with this spectacular win. I
don’t know if I feel empowered but I definitely feel safe and at ease
now.
Maybe Ali should come back and play his music now.
Maybe he is on to a banking career now, or maybe something else, like
all of us who just left when our moment came.
We had lost too much. Those 15 years, we felt imprisoned in our own house.
Maybe now is the time to return and reclaim our lost years in our home state.
More from memory ...
Not that everything is perfect in Bihar. But of course roads are
better, and the drive is no longer bumpy. I remember we drove to Ara
to my grandmother's place on weekends. It was a distance of perhaps
just 60 kms but on the potholed roads, it took us 2.5 hours. We
avoided leaving late from Ara and used to leave in the sweltering
afternoons during summers. Now, I hear those roads are nice and wide
and it takes only an hour. In those days, we only Maruti 800s and
Ambassadors, those bulky, heavy vehicles. Now, I see all sorts of
cars. People are not afraid to park more than one car in their
driveways. In those days, you'd be afraid to attarct too much
attention lest you got on the "hit list."
Doctors got kidnapped, young girls were picked up from Dusshera melas.
After a point, we ceased to go out and enjoy the melas through the
night. It became too tight for us to move around. It was like living
in some bubble. You knew your limits.
My mother still complains of the long power cuts in Patna. And people
complain of the power cuts at the crematoriums where half-burnt bodies
languishing in the furnace till the power comes back on, make a
mockery of the state and its upward swing on the development curve.
But I tell her that it is in the little details that we see the
change. In those days, there was only Lee Cooper. Now, we have all
brands. Now jewelry shops don't have an army of security men posted
outside the shop. Now, we go to the movies, the multiplexes and buy
popcorn and watch films without the fear. We had dared to go watch
Fire once at Ashok cinema. It was mad rush, and then they pushed us,
tried to grope us. We had to shout for help.
Once we went to watch DDLJ in a crumbling theatre in Ara. They told
the men to take the other side of the hall, and moved the women to the
other part. It was for security, they said.
In a theatre, in our boxes, once a man came and demanded my friend
accept his proposal. Then he went after her, and created a scene
outside her aprtment. He said he had political connections, and he
could get her picked up. My friend was married off in the next few
months. The family couldn't have dealt with the kidnapping stigma and
the shame.
Such were the times we lived in. We had dreams, too. But those 15
years of that fearful regime crushed those.
So I tell my mother she needs to see the change in little things, in
my smile, in my coffee dates with friends. Change is coming. It may be
slow but it will.
Then, we won't have to migrate, and we won't have to deal with the
hatred spewed upon us by the likes of MNS. Then, we will have our own
opportunities in our own state and the trains won't be so packed with
Biharis, the poor migrants, the rustic fellows, the unwanted,
invisible people, trying to leave a ravaged state to find livelihood
elsewhere.
Give him sometime to undo the damage done in the 15 years, I tell her.
From a sick state with so much to deal with, we are now a state on the
right track with young entrepreneurs willing to come back and invest.
We are going to be fine, I assure her.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Deft, nimble fingers
The tragedy and its aftermath's spillover continues. As I stood outside the LNJP Hospital, I met this man who was trying to scan the board for more familiar faces. An edited version was published in the Indian Express on November 18, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, November 17, 2010
The child's deft, nimble fingers had been crushed under the weight of the building.
They didn't show on the photograph pasted on the board, one among the nameless 42 who had perished in the building collapse.
It was only a face, eyes shut, distorted. Blood that dripped from the forehead, or seeped from the bandage, was a shade darker on the gray scale photo.
Majju, 14, was the youngest among a group of young men, who traveled from Dhapra in Katihar a few months ago to barter the speed of their slender fingers that could bead artificial jewelry faster than adults, for a few hundred rupees. They stayed in a group, under the supervision of the contractor who had promised them the moon, or what looked like a first step towards a better bargain at life. They came from the very marginalized families in the village, the poorest of the poor.
Abdul Bari almost missed the crushed face of Majju, ashen and grim, pasted in the third row of the board outside LNJP Hospital where the victims of the Lalita Park mishap had been brought.
He was third in the row. The first was 23-year-old Arshad, who also hailed from Dhapra. But Bari, who works in a garment manufacturing unit in Mehrauli, could not put together a whole face from the crushed features on other photos. He kept scanning the board for familiar faces. Out of the 10, only two were adults and over the age of 18 years, Bari said.
Eight of the ten in the group of mostly minors whose fingers worked for hours threading beads into threads, making jewelry that was exported to foreign countries, had died. Their fingers mangled and reduced to pulp with the disaster that killed more than 67 people, and injured many others.
“The contractor is also injured. We found the bodies here. They are in the mortuary. We will leave tomorrow for Katihar,” Bari said.
It would be a journey spanning hours. Almost 24 hours by train to Katihar, and then local transport till they reach Dhapra, where wailing mothers and sisters are waiting to bid the final farewell, the village mourning its loss and poverty, and its fate.
On the board, the faces of children, innocent even in their painful death, stood out. There were side profiles, and a few captured their faces turned towards the camera.
Of the 67 reported to be dead, 21 are minors, or under the age of 18 years. The youngest to die in the collapse is a one-and-a-half-year-old child. Then there is a three-year-old and a four-year-old, too. Most of the children who died were at home when their mothers had gone to their work at the nearby, more affluent houses. That's when the tragedy struck, and that's when then the dark thumb of fate pressed them to dust and rubble.
Most of who died were under 40 years of age, mostly labourers. Of the 42 that were brought dead to LNJP, only three were above 40 years.
In the drizzle, the mortuary seemed a dark, dreary place. The faces, now on A 4 size paper, were pasted on the wall. Relatives, friends, acquaintances crowded under a parapet, under the photos. They had recognized their dead. No paperwork was required. One just had to get the series of number handwritten on the photos and take those to the mortuary, claim the bodies, and wait it out.
The smell of stale blood filled the passage as a Mithilesh's body emerged from the back, the dark chamber where many such bodies lay. His brother-in-law was pushing the stretcher. Its steel was splattered with blood, the sheets reddened.
At least 29 bodies from the ramshackle building that fell Monday night lay there, waiting to be identified, or taken away. Another 26 were languishing in various departments in the hospital, a few in the ICU even. No more deaths were reported from the hospital on Wednesday.
According to the Medical Superintendent Dr. Amit Banerjee, 20 bodies had been identified by 3 p.m. The hospital had put up photos of the men, women and children because most families that lost their kin were illiterate, could barely make out the letters. Their eyes could only recognize the features, the shape of the familiar faces.
Most children died because of haemorrhage and asphyxiation as they lay crumpled, and crushed under the debris.
“Their families have been informed. Some of their relatives are here. It will be a sad journey, taking bodies of children to their parents who never anticipated this,” he said. “But they were so poor. The contractor would only take children.”
It was all about the deft fingers, the speed at which they wove together the beads. Now, they had been rendered lifeless, a pulpy mix of flesh and blood, and dead.
BOX
The census of India reported 12.66 million working children.
But agencies like The Global March and the International Center on Child Labor and Education (ICCLE) estimate that here are roughly 25-30 million child workers in India. Human Rights Watch pegs the number at 100 million.
According to the UN case study of the Delhi garment industry, poor, first generation industrial workers are recruited by contractors known as thekedars from rural areas as migrants do not unionize and can be exploited.
Many of these migrant workers are Muslim boys and young men from Bihar who work in small units in and outside Delhi. They are the invisible links in the in the global supply chain.
The case study also reveals that these children work up to 12 or more hours a day and work all seven days of the week.
They live in “extremely difficult and dangerous conditions”.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, November 17, 2010
The child's deft, nimble fingers had been crushed under the weight of the building.
They didn't show on the photograph pasted on the board, one among the nameless 42 who had perished in the building collapse.
It was only a face, eyes shut, distorted. Blood that dripped from the forehead, or seeped from the bandage, was a shade darker on the gray scale photo.
Majju, 14, was the youngest among a group of young men, who traveled from Dhapra in Katihar a few months ago to barter the speed of their slender fingers that could bead artificial jewelry faster than adults, for a few hundred rupees. They stayed in a group, under the supervision of the contractor who had promised them the moon, or what looked like a first step towards a better bargain at life. They came from the very marginalized families in the village, the poorest of the poor.
Abdul Bari almost missed the crushed face of Majju, ashen and grim, pasted in the third row of the board outside LNJP Hospital where the victims of the Lalita Park mishap had been brought.
He was third in the row. The first was 23-year-old Arshad, who also hailed from Dhapra. But Bari, who works in a garment manufacturing unit in Mehrauli, could not put together a whole face from the crushed features on other photos. He kept scanning the board for familiar faces. Out of the 10, only two were adults and over the age of 18 years, Bari said.
Eight of the ten in the group of mostly minors whose fingers worked for hours threading beads into threads, making jewelry that was exported to foreign countries, had died. Their fingers mangled and reduced to pulp with the disaster that killed more than 67 people, and injured many others.
“The contractor is also injured. We found the bodies here. They are in the mortuary. We will leave tomorrow for Katihar,” Bari said.
It would be a journey spanning hours. Almost 24 hours by train to Katihar, and then local transport till they reach Dhapra, where wailing mothers and sisters are waiting to bid the final farewell, the village mourning its loss and poverty, and its fate.
On the board, the faces of children, innocent even in their painful death, stood out. There were side profiles, and a few captured their faces turned towards the camera.
Of the 67 reported to be dead, 21 are minors, or under the age of 18 years. The youngest to die in the collapse is a one-and-a-half-year-old child. Then there is a three-year-old and a four-year-old, too. Most of the children who died were at home when their mothers had gone to their work at the nearby, more affluent houses. That's when the tragedy struck, and that's when then the dark thumb of fate pressed them to dust and rubble.
Most of who died were under 40 years of age, mostly labourers. Of the 42 that were brought dead to LNJP, only three were above 40 years.
In the drizzle, the mortuary seemed a dark, dreary place. The faces, now on A 4 size paper, were pasted on the wall. Relatives, friends, acquaintances crowded under a parapet, under the photos. They had recognized their dead. No paperwork was required. One just had to get the series of number handwritten on the photos and take those to the mortuary, claim the bodies, and wait it out.
The smell of stale blood filled the passage as a Mithilesh's body emerged from the back, the dark chamber where many such bodies lay. His brother-in-law was pushing the stretcher. Its steel was splattered with blood, the sheets reddened.
At least 29 bodies from the ramshackle building that fell Monday night lay there, waiting to be identified, or taken away. Another 26 were languishing in various departments in the hospital, a few in the ICU even. No more deaths were reported from the hospital on Wednesday.
According to the Medical Superintendent Dr. Amit Banerjee, 20 bodies had been identified by 3 p.m. The hospital had put up photos of the men, women and children because most families that lost their kin were illiterate, could barely make out the letters. Their eyes could only recognize the features, the shape of the familiar faces.
Most children died because of haemorrhage and asphyxiation as they lay crumpled, and crushed under the debris.
“Their families have been informed. Some of their relatives are here. It will be a sad journey, taking bodies of children to their parents who never anticipated this,” he said. “But they were so poor. The contractor would only take children.”
It was all about the deft fingers, the speed at which they wove together the beads. Now, they had been rendered lifeless, a pulpy mix of flesh and blood, and dead.
BOX
The census of India reported 12.66 million working children.
But agencies like The Global March and the International Center on Child Labor and Education (ICCLE) estimate that here are roughly 25-30 million child workers in India. Human Rights Watch pegs the number at 100 million.
According to the UN case study of the Delhi garment industry, poor, first generation industrial workers are recruited by contractors known as thekedars from rural areas as migrants do not unionize and can be exploited.
Many of these migrant workers are Muslim boys and young men from Bihar who work in small units in and outside Delhi. They are the invisible links in the in the global supply chain.
The case study also reveals that these children work up to 12 or more hours a day and work all seven days of the week.
They live in “extremely difficult and dangerous conditions”.
Remnants in the rubble
The building collapsed and we were at the site where I couldn't just walk away from the rubble. Leftovers from lives can tell one so much about people who once owned these. An edited version was published in the Indian Express on November 17, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, November 16, 2010
A red saree, or what remained of it, fluttered in the breeze. An Amul milk packet, torn, peeped from the chinks in the pile. Too much of everyday life that was consumed in seconds was there. A clock that stopped at the hour when the tragedy struck was among the objects that were slavaged, not by choice, but because they were part of the debris.
Between the tragedy and the resurrection, a pile of rubble lies. It is a connector of sorts, a bridge between the remnants of the past and an uncertain future.
From the bricks the crane spewed on to the playground as the officials cleared the debris on the site of the collapse, emerged details of lives that had been uprooted, lost or left in a limbo. They fell with the bricks just like the five-floor building in the corner did Monday evening.
The pink pillars, measuring only the size of an index finger, had been struck off. But the figurines in the wedding snow ball were intact. The crystal globe with its pink and black hero and heroine dancing lay on a pile of bricks, illuminating the loss. The broken pillars reminded of the immediate event, the tragedy that sent reverberations across the neighborhood.
In the juxtaposition of the joy that was when the snow ball may have occupied a place of pride in the dinghy rooms where men and women slept in dozens, and the present moment where it was a part of the ruins, summed the human tragedy that left more than 65 people dead, and displaced hundreds of others. The tension between what remained, and what was lost played out in the rubble.
In the shattered, mangled remnants, lives had been trapped.
A kettle, lopsided in its tragic placement, was thrown on the side. Next to it, a few plates were strewn. A gas stove, blackened and distorted, also filled the space as rescue workers and police scrambled to get to the actual site. The rubble was on the way, neglected in a corner, a space where such things collected.
A few leaves from an album was found, too. A mother and a son are shot against the backdrop of a fir tree and turquoise skies, and blossoming flowers. A studio in one of the villages they must have hailed from. They said it was Karimpur in Bengal.
The mother is sitting in a red plastic chair. The son is standing, his face tense as he gazed into the camera.
From the rubble, voices also emerged, pleas for help, they said.
The ones under the heap dialled from their cell phones. They were desperate to claim their lives, get rescued before the battery died, or before they died.
The rescue workers talked about a woman who called someone. She was buried. But that was in the morning. After that, she didn't call.
Nobody knew what happened to her. Maybe the rrubble consumed her and she became a remnant of the rubble, too.
Through the afternoon, and the evening, the rubble piled up. More stories, not a coherent whole, but scattered and thrown apart and told through notebooks, passport photos, torn clothes, and distorted kitchen utensils, emerged from the heap of bricks.
Vikram Halder's English notebook was placed on a bed of bricks. It had been arranged carefully, and juxtaposed with the snow ball, and yet another notebook of a Class 12 student of the Govt. Co-ed Senior Secondary School.
A few members of the television crew had arranged them to show the scale of the tragedy, and its toll on aspirations, dreams, opportunities.
In one of the pages, Mukesh, the Class 12 student, had written “Who told you this news? What harm did I do to you?”
A child's innocent drawings, his jibes at his classmates and teachers were now a public spectacle, a photo-op, part of material that could tell a story of someone who either had come out alive, or had perished or maybe was still waiting under debris to be rescued.
On the same page, a lined notebook, oblong, Mukesh wrote “Memoirs of a childhood.”
Under it, he wrote “agony” and then in Hindi, he wrote “Afsos.”
On yet another page, he scribbled “Today when I am not there, then everybody want me.”
Towards evening, nobody had come to claim the notebooks. A passport photo of a young boy was in the pages. But in the confusion of who was and who wasn't, the name and the photo were separate identities, and existed without the other.
He had sketched portraits, pigeons, dogs. He had meticulously translated sentences in Hindi into English. He even had a teacher write “good” on a few pages.
He must have been fumbling for words when he wrote “There are some strangers that cross that river.”
What he was meant to write instead of “strangers” was “fishermen.”
But in that moment, in that confusion of loss, many strangers had crossed the river. Nobody could tell if Mukesh and Vikram were among them, or they had been cast on the shore.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, November 16, 2010
A red saree, or what remained of it, fluttered in the breeze. An Amul milk packet, torn, peeped from the chinks in the pile. Too much of everyday life that was consumed in seconds was there. A clock that stopped at the hour when the tragedy struck was among the objects that were slavaged, not by choice, but because they were part of the debris.
Between the tragedy and the resurrection, a pile of rubble lies. It is a connector of sorts, a bridge between the remnants of the past and an uncertain future.
From the bricks the crane spewed on to the playground as the officials cleared the debris on the site of the collapse, emerged details of lives that had been uprooted, lost or left in a limbo. They fell with the bricks just like the five-floor building in the corner did Monday evening.
The pink pillars, measuring only the size of an index finger, had been struck off. But the figurines in the wedding snow ball were intact. The crystal globe with its pink and black hero and heroine dancing lay on a pile of bricks, illuminating the loss. The broken pillars reminded of the immediate event, the tragedy that sent reverberations across the neighborhood.
In the juxtaposition of the joy that was when the snow ball may have occupied a place of pride in the dinghy rooms where men and women slept in dozens, and the present moment where it was a part of the ruins, summed the human tragedy that left more than 65 people dead, and displaced hundreds of others. The tension between what remained, and what was lost played out in the rubble.
In the shattered, mangled remnants, lives had been trapped.
A kettle, lopsided in its tragic placement, was thrown on the side. Next to it, a few plates were strewn. A gas stove, blackened and distorted, also filled the space as rescue workers and police scrambled to get to the actual site. The rubble was on the way, neglected in a corner, a space where such things collected.
A few leaves from an album was found, too. A mother and a son are shot against the backdrop of a fir tree and turquoise skies, and blossoming flowers. A studio in one of the villages they must have hailed from. They said it was Karimpur in Bengal.
The mother is sitting in a red plastic chair. The son is standing, his face tense as he gazed into the camera.
From the rubble, voices also emerged, pleas for help, they said.
The ones under the heap dialled from their cell phones. They were desperate to claim their lives, get rescued before the battery died, or before they died.
The rescue workers talked about a woman who called someone. She was buried. But that was in the morning. After that, she didn't call.
Nobody knew what happened to her. Maybe the rrubble consumed her and she became a remnant of the rubble, too.
Through the afternoon, and the evening, the rubble piled up. More stories, not a coherent whole, but scattered and thrown apart and told through notebooks, passport photos, torn clothes, and distorted kitchen utensils, emerged from the heap of bricks.
Vikram Halder's English notebook was placed on a bed of bricks. It had been arranged carefully, and juxtaposed with the snow ball, and yet another notebook of a Class 12 student of the Govt. Co-ed Senior Secondary School.
A few members of the television crew had arranged them to show the scale of the tragedy, and its toll on aspirations, dreams, opportunities.
In one of the pages, Mukesh, the Class 12 student, had written “Who told you this news? What harm did I do to you?”
A child's innocent drawings, his jibes at his classmates and teachers were now a public spectacle, a photo-op, part of material that could tell a story of someone who either had come out alive, or had perished or maybe was still waiting under debris to be rescued.
On the same page, a lined notebook, oblong, Mukesh wrote “Memoirs of a childhood.”
Under it, he wrote “agony” and then in Hindi, he wrote “Afsos.”
On yet another page, he scribbled “Today when I am not there, then everybody want me.”
Towards evening, nobody had come to claim the notebooks. A passport photo of a young boy was in the pages. But in the confusion of who was and who wasn't, the name and the photo were separate identities, and existed without the other.
He had sketched portraits, pigeons, dogs. He had meticulously translated sentences in Hindi into English. He even had a teacher write “good” on a few pages.
He must have been fumbling for words when he wrote “There are some strangers that cross that river.”
What he was meant to write instead of “strangers” was “fishermen.”
But in that moment, in that confusion of loss, many strangers had crossed the river. Nobody could tell if Mukesh and Vikram were among them, or they had been cast on the shore.
Tuesday, November 09, 2010
Obama's tribute to Gandhi
Went to Rajghat in the morning to se Mr. President. Was whisked away, made to sit under a store parapet, a rifle pointed towards me lest I jump and wave to Barack Obama. Made it to Rajghat later, and saw the signs of his visit.
An edited version appeared in the The Indian Express on November 9, 2010.
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/king-memorabilia-for-rajghat-is-tryst-with-his-heroes/708417/
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, November 8, 2010
In his fluid handwriting, his two sentences sprawled across five rows of the visitor's notebook. A sweeping signature, with its “B” and “O” rising above the other letters, marking their prominence, also cut through five rows. Underneath it, the First Lady Michelle Obama wrote her name.
Four years ago, on March 2, George and Laura Bush had visited the site, a simple black marble platform on the right bank of the river Yamuna with an eternal flame at its back, too. Their two-line tribute was spread across the page. Bush, the former president, Obama's predecessor, had placed Gandhi among the “great leaders” of history for his “contribution to all mankind.”
A decade ago, Bill Clinton paid homage to the slain Father of the Nation with a single sentence “Thank you for keeping this sacred place.”
At around 10:30 am on Monday morning, the president, his wife in tow, entered through the VIP Gate at Rajghat, and walked towards the black stone. The green carpets had been laid out as the protocol for dignitaries required. Two velvet chairs had been placed side by side. The couple sat, removed their shoes, and walked barefoot to the memorial, a white wreath in front. Green tarpaulin sheets hid the world from those who were present in the morning, lending the place a solemn, surreal look, isolating it from the issues that waited outside. This was a personal moment, and the curtains ensured the world didn't spill over.
They stood in silence for a minute, and walked back. Four times, the president uttered “very simple and beautiful memorial.”
For Obama, the man who was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize, for his efforts to bring about peace, his connection with Gandhi runs deep. This wasn't a head of state marking a visit to a man the world recognizes as a great leader but a man paying his homage to the leader he proclaims has influenced him.
Towards the end of his 20-minute visit to the memorial, Obama sat in the brown velvet upholstered chair, a lone one placed in the foreground of the Mahatma's samadhi, its back facing the black stone covered with flowers and a wreath made of carnations and lilies and tied together with a ribbon of the US flag colors, and scribbled a tribute to the “Great Soul.”
“More than 60 years after his passing, his light continues to inspire the world.”
On Saturday when he landed in Mumbai, Obama had walked into the two-storey building on Laburnum Road, the Mani Bhavan Gandhi Sangrahalaya, a museum that contains memorabilia and more than 50,000 books. Almost half-a-century ago, Rev. Martin Luther King, yet another world hero for Obama, had spent two days at the building with his wife Coretta King.
In a gold box, with the Eagle emblem of the United States embossed on it, Obama carried a stone from the memorial being built at the National Mall, Washington D.C., and is being funded by the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation to revere Martin Luther King, also the first black man and the third non-president to be commemorated with a memorial in the National Mall area. He presented it to Rajnish Kumar, the secretary of Rajghat Samadhi Samiti, who received him in the morning.
“I could see it in his eyes, his admiration for Gandhi. I can read from the expression,” he said. “He is a follower. No guest is small but he is more influenced with Gandhi.”
On behalf of the Samadhi Samiti, the President was gifted with a Charkha procured from Kerala Emporium, a scroll with the seven sins written on them, a bust of Gandhi, and three books – an autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi called The Story of My Experiments with Truth, The Mind of Mahatma Gandhi, and Mahatma Gandhi 100 Years.
As he sat writing his tribute, Michelle leaned over. According to Rajnish Kumar, the First Lady's excitement was contagious. She had gasped saying “very beautiful” when the marble stone loomed in front of her.
She later sat on the chair her husband had occupied and signed her name.
As the couple walked out, the champa tree that Bill Clinton had planted, and the mango tree that George Bush Senior had planted, flanked the path. These are among the 200 trees planted by various dignitaries.
On Monday, Obama didn't plant ant saplings. They say there is no space. But the stone that he brought combining his love for the two great leaders, bringing the tangible memory of one to the memorial of the other, will be kept in the office. That would be his mark, a testament to his visit to the testament of the life of who he referred to as his “real hero”.
Just when he was about to step in his car, Rajnish Kumar said to the President “In our culture, we always say come again and never say bye.”
Obama laughed.
On the way to Rajghat
As the cavalcade started to move again, life bounced back to its usual chaotic self. A few staff that were confined to the offices during the visit came out. They were packing away the velvet chairs, folding the carpets. A group of European tourists descended on the Samadhi.
“It ain't that speacial,” Vannoten Reno, a Belgian man, said. “I mean, he just visited.”
But for others, it was unusual like the policemen who reported for duty at 5 a.m. or the Rajghat staff that worked through the night decorating the samadhi, hanging the garlands, making the sun logo with white, red and yellow flower petals on the shrine.
From silence, a forced one, cacophony, almost a suppressed shriek that crackles at first, emerged. And then it was all honks, human voices, and usual sounds of life in a metro, and everyone in a hurry.
From behind a park, and underneath the parapets of store fronts near Delhi Gate, a group of men and women rushed to the street. They had been whisked behind the trees, and made to sit without talking, by the Delhi Police officers on duty who panicked about the security.
After all, it was Obama. The nation's promise and pride were at stake. Civilians walking around, scrambling to get to office and avoid the traffic blues, had to be restricted.
At 10:11 a.m. when the cavalcade moved along the deserted, silent streets of Daryaganj and Rajghat areas, a woman stood up.
“Wow, so many cars,” she shouted.
The policeman rattled his gun.
“No, you can't get up. Don't talk,” he said, his face tense.
“This is pandemonium,” Subhashini Rajan, who works at the nearby Oriental Insurance office, said. They say India is on the front page of the US nespapers but I wonder for how long. We have this colonial mentality.”
A harried policeman came running and shouted “shant raho”.
“In a free country, you can't do this,” Bharti Gupta, another woman who waited it out squatting on the sidewalk said. “We should move Rajghat out of Delhi or build a helipad so Obama can directly land there and not get us stranded here like this.”
This was their brush with the President of the United States. At least they walked through the same streets that he wad crisscrossed a few minutes earlier. They didn't need to see him. He was there, and they were witness to it, even though their gaze was interrupted by a rifle.
An edited version appeared in the The Indian Express on November 9, 2010.
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/king-memorabilia-for-rajghat-is-tryst-with-his-heroes/708417/
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, November 8, 2010
In his fluid handwriting, his two sentences sprawled across five rows of the visitor's notebook. A sweeping signature, with its “B” and “O” rising above the other letters, marking their prominence, also cut through five rows. Underneath it, the First Lady Michelle Obama wrote her name.
Four years ago, on March 2, George and Laura Bush had visited the site, a simple black marble platform on the right bank of the river Yamuna with an eternal flame at its back, too. Their two-line tribute was spread across the page. Bush, the former president, Obama's predecessor, had placed Gandhi among the “great leaders” of history for his “contribution to all mankind.”
A decade ago, Bill Clinton paid homage to the slain Father of the Nation with a single sentence “Thank you for keeping this sacred place.”
At around 10:30 am on Monday morning, the president, his wife in tow, entered through the VIP Gate at Rajghat, and walked towards the black stone. The green carpets had been laid out as the protocol for dignitaries required. Two velvet chairs had been placed side by side. The couple sat, removed their shoes, and walked barefoot to the memorial, a white wreath in front. Green tarpaulin sheets hid the world from those who were present in the morning, lending the place a solemn, surreal look, isolating it from the issues that waited outside. This was a personal moment, and the curtains ensured the world didn't spill over.
They stood in silence for a minute, and walked back. Four times, the president uttered “very simple and beautiful memorial.”
For Obama, the man who was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize, for his efforts to bring about peace, his connection with Gandhi runs deep. This wasn't a head of state marking a visit to a man the world recognizes as a great leader but a man paying his homage to the leader he proclaims has influenced him.
Towards the end of his 20-minute visit to the memorial, Obama sat in the brown velvet upholstered chair, a lone one placed in the foreground of the Mahatma's samadhi, its back facing the black stone covered with flowers and a wreath made of carnations and lilies and tied together with a ribbon of the US flag colors, and scribbled a tribute to the “Great Soul.”
“More than 60 years after his passing, his light continues to inspire the world.”
On Saturday when he landed in Mumbai, Obama had walked into the two-storey building on Laburnum Road, the Mani Bhavan Gandhi Sangrahalaya, a museum that contains memorabilia and more than 50,000 books. Almost half-a-century ago, Rev. Martin Luther King, yet another world hero for Obama, had spent two days at the building with his wife Coretta King.
In a gold box, with the Eagle emblem of the United States embossed on it, Obama carried a stone from the memorial being built at the National Mall, Washington D.C., and is being funded by the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation to revere Martin Luther King, also the first black man and the third non-president to be commemorated with a memorial in the National Mall area. He presented it to Rajnish Kumar, the secretary of Rajghat Samadhi Samiti, who received him in the morning.
“I could see it in his eyes, his admiration for Gandhi. I can read from the expression,” he said. “He is a follower. No guest is small but he is more influenced with Gandhi.”
On behalf of the Samadhi Samiti, the President was gifted with a Charkha procured from Kerala Emporium, a scroll with the seven sins written on them, a bust of Gandhi, and three books – an autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi called The Story of My Experiments with Truth, The Mind of Mahatma Gandhi, and Mahatma Gandhi 100 Years.
As he sat writing his tribute, Michelle leaned over. According to Rajnish Kumar, the First Lady's excitement was contagious. She had gasped saying “very beautiful” when the marble stone loomed in front of her.
She later sat on the chair her husband had occupied and signed her name.
As the couple walked out, the champa tree that Bill Clinton had planted, and the mango tree that George Bush Senior had planted, flanked the path. These are among the 200 trees planted by various dignitaries.
On Monday, Obama didn't plant ant saplings. They say there is no space. But the stone that he brought combining his love for the two great leaders, bringing the tangible memory of one to the memorial of the other, will be kept in the office. That would be his mark, a testament to his visit to the testament of the life of who he referred to as his “real hero”.
Just when he was about to step in his car, Rajnish Kumar said to the President “In our culture, we always say come again and never say bye.”
Obama laughed.
On the way to Rajghat
As the cavalcade started to move again, life bounced back to its usual chaotic self. A few staff that were confined to the offices during the visit came out. They were packing away the velvet chairs, folding the carpets. A group of European tourists descended on the Samadhi.
“It ain't that speacial,” Vannoten Reno, a Belgian man, said. “I mean, he just visited.”
But for others, it was unusual like the policemen who reported for duty at 5 a.m. or the Rajghat staff that worked through the night decorating the samadhi, hanging the garlands, making the sun logo with white, red and yellow flower petals on the shrine.
From silence, a forced one, cacophony, almost a suppressed shriek that crackles at first, emerged. And then it was all honks, human voices, and usual sounds of life in a metro, and everyone in a hurry.
From behind a park, and underneath the parapets of store fronts near Delhi Gate, a group of men and women rushed to the street. They had been whisked behind the trees, and made to sit without talking, by the Delhi Police officers on duty who panicked about the security.
After all, it was Obama. The nation's promise and pride were at stake. Civilians walking around, scrambling to get to office and avoid the traffic blues, had to be restricted.
At 10:11 a.m. when the cavalcade moved along the deserted, silent streets of Daryaganj and Rajghat areas, a woman stood up.
“Wow, so many cars,” she shouted.
The policeman rattled his gun.
“No, you can't get up. Don't talk,” he said, his face tense.
“This is pandemonium,” Subhashini Rajan, who works at the nearby Oriental Insurance office, said. They say India is on the front page of the US nespapers but I wonder for how long. We have this colonial mentality.”
A harried policeman came running and shouted “shant raho”.
“In a free country, you can't do this,” Bharti Gupta, another woman who waited it out squatting on the sidewalk said. “We should move Rajghat out of Delhi or build a helipad so Obama can directly land there and not get us stranded here like this.”
This was their brush with the President of the United States. At least they walked through the same streets that he wad crisscrossed a few minutes earlier. They didn't need to see him. He was there, and they were witness to it, even though their gaze was interrupted by a rifle.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)