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.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
The road to justice for 1984 anti-Sikh riots
An edited version of the story appeared in the Indian Express on April 27, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, April 27, 2010
Outside the Karkardooma Court Complex, a group of Sikh men and women burnt the effigies of the two Congress leaders, one of who was let off by the court on Tuesday after it accepted Central Bureau of Investigations’ closure report in a case related to Jagdish Tytler’s alleged role in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. On each hearing, the group has collected outside the court complex, anticipating a verdict that would avenge their loss, and their frsutration. On Monday, after Tytler's clean chit was upheld, they said they had no hope in the courts and on Friday, they would march to the Supreme Court in their final bid to get justice.
An elderly Sikh man beat his chest, and pointed to the black charred mess on the street saying this is how the Sikhs were set on fire 26 years ago in a carnage that killed more than 3,000 members of the community. The outrage was expected. The court had just let off Jagdish Tytler saying there was not sufficient material to send the Congress leader to trial.
On one side, Lakhwinder Kaur, who had opposed the investigating agency’s closure report giving clean chit to Tytler in April last year, was trying to muster more strength to go on. Slain Badal Singh’s wife’s counsel Rebecca John said this was not a final order and they would either challenge it in the High Court or the sessions court.
She said the CBI had ignored Surinder Singh’s statement where he had named at least three more witnesses who were present at Gurudwara Pulbangash in north Delhi on the day of the murder of Badal Singh. One of them, Alam Singh, works at a gurudwara in California, she said.
“CBI almost became a cross-examiner. They picked on the two witnesses,” John said.
Vrinda Grover, a Delhi-based Human Rights lawyer, said this was not an honorable discharge of the case.
“In many situations, the agency is capable of manipulating investigation. CBI investigation in this case is extremely suspect. They have pitted witnesses against witnesses. They were acting as a defense counsel in this case,” she said. “They have protected them for 25 years. Surinder Singh was alive for 25 years but Tytler managed to drag the case.”
Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Rakesh Pandit said the statement of Jasbir Singh, who is in California, had no relevance to the case of killing of Badal Singh and those of witness Surinder Singh were “self-contradictory”. Last year, the CBI filed an affidavit signed by Surinder Singh two days before his death in the court that said Tytler is innocent and was not part of the mob that attacked the gurudwara where Badal Singh was killed. But Grover said the case was never heard in the court.
“That affidavit we can’t prove whether it is right or wrong. It provided no twist in the case. It was not examined by the court. It is not on record,” she said.
John had asked the court to order further investigations in the case related to 66-year-old Tytler’s involvement in the 1984 riots.
In its closure report, CBI had said the two witnesses’ statements were “false and concocted.”
Tytler's role in the case relating to the killing of three persons, including Badal Singh near Gurudwara Pulbangash in north Delhi was re-investigated by the CBI after a court had in December 2007 refused to accept a closure report filed by the agency.
“The CBI has examined two other persons who said these three people were not there and the agency accepted that statement. We wanted further evidence. There are other witnesses,” Grover said. “Nobody wants to pursue the leads. It shows they want to protect him. We know one of the three granthis that Surinder Singh named in his statement is alive and is in California. It is the job of the agency to trace the other two. They haven’t done it.”
The counsel also said the CBI didn’t examine Satto Singh, father of Jasbir Singh.
In an affidavit filed before the Nanavati Commission, Jasbir Singh had deposed that Tylter of November 3, 1984, had instigated the mobs to carry out the riots, while Surinder Singh had said that Tytler was responsible for inciting the riots where three people, including Badal Singh was killed.
For Lakhwinder Kaur, it is yet another disappointment on the way to justice.
“Twenty five years is not a short time. I was so angry. Today, I feel like I am losing strength. Thoda hausla tootne laga hai,” she said. “But I will not give up.”
Kaur had been married two years when her husband was killed at the gurudwara by the mob. She was pregnant with a girl child and had a five-months-old daughter. She moved to Tilak Vihar where many Sikh families were resettled in the aftermath of the riots and now works as a peon in the education sector.
While Tytler was yet again given a clean chit, another Congress leader Sajjan Kumar’s trial continued in the same court complex on Tuesday with the CBI arguing that the two cases in which Sajjan Kumar is an accused – the Delhi Cantonment case in which five people were killed and Sultanpuri case where at least seven people were murdered in the riots of 1984 – must be taken up separately by the court. Counsel for the Central Bureau of Investigation, R.S. Cheema also said they would press for sedition charges against the Congress leader and base it on the testimony of Nilpreet Kaur, a riot victim, who later joined the Khalistan movement after she lost her father in the carnage.
Sajjan Kumar, Khushal Singh, Girdhari Lal, Balwan Khokhar, Mahender Yadav, Maha Singh, Capt Bhagmal, Santosh Rani and Krishna Khokhar were named as accused in Delhi Cantonment case.
The CBI field the chargesheets against Sajjan Kumar in January in two cases for allegedly making provocative speeches that instigated the mobs and led to killings of Sikhs.
The five named in the chargesheet in the case relating to killings of seven people at Sultanpuri in north Delhi are Congress leader Kumar, Ved Prakash Pial, Peru, Khushal Singh and Brahma Nand Gupta.
The case that was transferred to Additional Sessions Judge Sunita Gupta’s court this month. The accused side will begin its arguments on Wednesday.
However, in both cases involving two Congress leaders, it is interesting to note CBI’s role and method. In Tytler’s case, as alleged, it didn’t examine witnesses and ignored many crucial leads. However, in Sajjan Kumar’s case, the agency has dug out FIRs filed 25 years ago and has traced four crucial witnesses so they could depose before the court, including Nilpreet Kaur.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, April 27, 2010
Outside the Karkardooma Court Complex, a group of Sikh men and women burnt the effigies of the two Congress leaders, one of who was let off by the court on Tuesday after it accepted Central Bureau of Investigations’ closure report in a case related to Jagdish Tytler’s alleged role in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. On each hearing, the group has collected outside the court complex, anticipating a verdict that would avenge their loss, and their frsutration. On Monday, after Tytler's clean chit was upheld, they said they had no hope in the courts and on Friday, they would march to the Supreme Court in their final bid to get justice.
An elderly Sikh man beat his chest, and pointed to the black charred mess on the street saying this is how the Sikhs were set on fire 26 years ago in a carnage that killed more than 3,000 members of the community. The outrage was expected. The court had just let off Jagdish Tytler saying there was not sufficient material to send the Congress leader to trial.
On one side, Lakhwinder Kaur, who had opposed the investigating agency’s closure report giving clean chit to Tytler in April last year, was trying to muster more strength to go on. Slain Badal Singh’s wife’s counsel Rebecca John said this was not a final order and they would either challenge it in the High Court or the sessions court.
She said the CBI had ignored Surinder Singh’s statement where he had named at least three more witnesses who were present at Gurudwara Pulbangash in north Delhi on the day of the murder of Badal Singh. One of them, Alam Singh, works at a gurudwara in California, she said.
“CBI almost became a cross-examiner. They picked on the two witnesses,” John said.
Vrinda Grover, a Delhi-based Human Rights lawyer, said this was not an honorable discharge of the case.
“In many situations, the agency is capable of manipulating investigation. CBI investigation in this case is extremely suspect. They have pitted witnesses against witnesses. They were acting as a defense counsel in this case,” she said. “They have protected them for 25 years. Surinder Singh was alive for 25 years but Tytler managed to drag the case.”
Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Rakesh Pandit said the statement of Jasbir Singh, who is in California, had no relevance to the case of killing of Badal Singh and those of witness Surinder Singh were “self-contradictory”. Last year, the CBI filed an affidavit signed by Surinder Singh two days before his death in the court that said Tytler is innocent and was not part of the mob that attacked the gurudwara where Badal Singh was killed. But Grover said the case was never heard in the court.
“That affidavit we can’t prove whether it is right or wrong. It provided no twist in the case. It was not examined by the court. It is not on record,” she said.
John had asked the court to order further investigations in the case related to 66-year-old Tytler’s involvement in the 1984 riots.
In its closure report, CBI had said the two witnesses’ statements were “false and concocted.”
Tytler's role in the case relating to the killing of three persons, including Badal Singh near Gurudwara Pulbangash in north Delhi was re-investigated by the CBI after a court had in December 2007 refused to accept a closure report filed by the agency.
“The CBI has examined two other persons who said these three people were not there and the agency accepted that statement. We wanted further evidence. There are other witnesses,” Grover said. “Nobody wants to pursue the leads. It shows they want to protect him. We know one of the three granthis that Surinder Singh named in his statement is alive and is in California. It is the job of the agency to trace the other two. They haven’t done it.”
The counsel also said the CBI didn’t examine Satto Singh, father of Jasbir Singh.
In an affidavit filed before the Nanavati Commission, Jasbir Singh had deposed that Tylter of November 3, 1984, had instigated the mobs to carry out the riots, while Surinder Singh had said that Tytler was responsible for inciting the riots where three people, including Badal Singh was killed.
For Lakhwinder Kaur, it is yet another disappointment on the way to justice.
“Twenty five years is not a short time. I was so angry. Today, I feel like I am losing strength. Thoda hausla tootne laga hai,” she said. “But I will not give up.”
Kaur had been married two years when her husband was killed at the gurudwara by the mob. She was pregnant with a girl child and had a five-months-old daughter. She moved to Tilak Vihar where many Sikh families were resettled in the aftermath of the riots and now works as a peon in the education sector.
While Tytler was yet again given a clean chit, another Congress leader Sajjan Kumar’s trial continued in the same court complex on Tuesday with the CBI arguing that the two cases in which Sajjan Kumar is an accused – the Delhi Cantonment case in which five people were killed and Sultanpuri case where at least seven people were murdered in the riots of 1984 – must be taken up separately by the court. Counsel for the Central Bureau of Investigation, R.S. Cheema also said they would press for sedition charges against the Congress leader and base it on the testimony of Nilpreet Kaur, a riot victim, who later joined the Khalistan movement after she lost her father in the carnage.
Sajjan Kumar, Khushal Singh, Girdhari Lal, Balwan Khokhar, Mahender Yadav, Maha Singh, Capt Bhagmal, Santosh Rani and Krishna Khokhar were named as accused in Delhi Cantonment case.
The CBI field the chargesheets against Sajjan Kumar in January in two cases for allegedly making provocative speeches that instigated the mobs and led to killings of Sikhs.
The five named in the chargesheet in the case relating to killings of seven people at Sultanpuri in north Delhi are Congress leader Kumar, Ved Prakash Pial, Peru, Khushal Singh and Brahma Nand Gupta.
The case that was transferred to Additional Sessions Judge Sunita Gupta’s court this month. The accused side will begin its arguments on Wednesday.
However, in both cases involving two Congress leaders, it is interesting to note CBI’s role and method. In Tytler’s case, as alleged, it didn’t examine witnesses and ignored many crucial leads. However, in Sajjan Kumar’s case, the agency has dug out FIRs filed 25 years ago and has traced four crucial witnesses so they could depose before the court, including Nilpreet Kaur.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
In the land of the forgotten, a place of memories
When we climbed up the stairs and they unlocked the gates, I was nervous. I didn't know if the women in the mental shelter would like my presence. Renuka Puri, our photographer, had been there before. She knew them. They had become used to her. But I was a stranger. They looked at me from behind the iron grill and they smiled. So, I knew I had nothing to fear. I wish I had spent more time with the women.
An edited version of the story was published in the Indian Express newspaper's Real Page 3 section on March 21, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, March 12, 2010
In the land of the forgotten, upstairs in an old government building, beyond three iron gates, 18 women have been resurrected, reclaimed, and renamed.
Because they didn’t remember their names. Names didn’t matter in the streets, in the dumps where they lived, their bodies full of maggots, their lips muttering incoherent tales of their lives.
In the corridors of their memory, no windows opened. They just couldn’t tell. Only their scars screamed about their damned lives.
So, in Sudinalaya, a shelter home for women who are abandoned and are mentally disabled, they started calling the woman with short cropped hair, but with large lucid eyes, the one who covered her face always, and who had mood swings “Imli”.
Imli never talks. She just raises her eyes, the sorts that are deep, and dark, and calm. But then when she is upset, the watery eyes flood, and the anger spills out. Then, she screams and shouts and cries.
“Imli is the soul of Sudinalaya. She is sweet and sour. She laughs and she cries,” Sreerupa Mitra Choudhary, founder and chairperson of the NGO, said. “All their names signify their behaviors.”
The large hall, bare except for a television mounted on the wall, and 25 iron beds, is full of stories, fantasies, outbursts of rage, longing, and love.
Anju insists that they call her “Janu”. That’s what her husband, her lover called her. She is old now. Her hair is peppered with gray and white. And wrinkles on her face are like little rivulets, each containing within its folds the many mysteries of her life.
She was found at a petrol pump near Okhla.
Anju never recovered fully. The shelter isn’t a destination but more like a passage where once the inmates are able to recall their addresses and other details about their lives, the staff tries to rehabilitate them.
“Where will I go from here,” Anju says. “Pankaj will come to pick me up. I know I will find him one day. One day I will meet him.”
So, she is waiting. Waiting for her lost lover – real or imaginary. He makes her blush. Anju is in love. She has always been in love. In her reborn state, where age doesn’t matter, this love and longing is her only bridge to the past.
Bano is longing, too. She wants to go home to her husband in Sitapur in Bihar. Her little children are waiting, she says.
Bano was rescued almost two and a half years ago from the streets. She was crawling, the staff recalled.
For months, she was on a wheelchair. And then, she held the walls of the large room, and learned to walk slowly. Her burns have healed, too.
She had a husband who worked in Delhi and she left her village to come here to see him. Now, she wants to see him again.
Then, almost in the same breath, she says he beat her up, and sold her.
But it is her children that call her home. And she pleads and begs the staff to send her home.
“Only when we find your house. We are trying to get reservations,” Inderjit, who looks after them, tells her.
“I am not mad,” she says. “I can walk now. Take me home.”
It’s not easy being here.
It a tough place, a place where memory is fragile, brittle. It requires patience, and lots of it. It also demands that you learn to believe, even though the stories transform overnight, and it demands that you remain unfazed even when they come at you, eyes full of rage, their teeth clattering.
Vimla ran away once. That night, Indira got wild. She beat up everyone, and she screamed. Vimla, one of the staff, locked herself in a room.
“At these times, you don’t know what to do,” she says.
But Asha, who stays overnight at the shelter, has over the years learned that the women, old, delicate, vulnerable, are like children.
“You don’t fear them,” she says.
So, when Asha cooks, she calls the women inside the kitchen and they cook together.
Where they live, somewhere in between memory and loss of it, the inmates have all learned to lean on each other.
Munni, who they named so because she is like a child, and laughs all the time, cries when someone is hurt. She will come to them, hold them by the hand, and cry and point to the person.
Sometimes, Munni sings, too. An old Bollywood song. She has been in the shelter for years. The shelter was established in 1989 by Choudhury who now runs 11 such shelters across the country. Three are in Delhi. One caters to about 50 men who are mentally disabled and two others to women. Choudhary who worked the crime beat in a city newspaper says she wanted to help the women she saw on the streets – abandoned, and vulnerable because they were mentally disabled.
It has been a tough road for her, too. It’s difficult to find committed volunteers. Her organization has sustained only on the basis of donations, and goodwill of others.
The women are referred to them by AIIMS, Safdarjung Hospital, Delhi police and citizens.
“There was an urge to support victims,” she says. “Then I started this initiative. These women were easy preys for organ dealers.”
In one of the corners, an elderly woman is muttering in English. Shikha was rescued from the INA market by Choudhury several years ago. When she saw Choudhaury, she asked her to sit and in an agitated state called out to “Pappu” to bring in sweets and fish curry, Choudhury recalls.
“She talked about mosaic and servants,” she says. “She is from an affluent family.”
But there is no way to tell. Because the shards of memory are not enough to fill in the gaps. So, they go back and forth, shuttling between memory and forgetfulness.
In yet another corner, Dhapu, named so because she said “Dhap, Dhap” all the time, is calling out for Rani, her daughter.
“Rani has gone to school. They should bring her here,” she says.
When they found her, she had a young child who she held close to her. Even at the shelter, she would not leave the child. Then, they took Rani away and put her in a school and a childcare center.
But the mother only remembers her lost child. And amid laughter, and songs, her wailing is hard to miss.
They have clung on to the past or whatever remains of it with a ferocity. After all, the new names are not all that they stand for.
An edited version of the story was published in the Indian Express newspaper's Real Page 3 section on March 21, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, March 12, 2010
In the land of the forgotten, upstairs in an old government building, beyond three iron gates, 18 women have been resurrected, reclaimed, and renamed.
Because they didn’t remember their names. Names didn’t matter in the streets, in the dumps where they lived, their bodies full of maggots, their lips muttering incoherent tales of their lives.
In the corridors of their memory, no windows opened. They just couldn’t tell. Only their scars screamed about their damned lives.
So, in Sudinalaya, a shelter home for women who are abandoned and are mentally disabled, they started calling the woman with short cropped hair, but with large lucid eyes, the one who covered her face always, and who had mood swings “Imli”.
Imli never talks. She just raises her eyes, the sorts that are deep, and dark, and calm. But then when she is upset, the watery eyes flood, and the anger spills out. Then, she screams and shouts and cries.
“Imli is the soul of Sudinalaya. She is sweet and sour. She laughs and she cries,” Sreerupa Mitra Choudhary, founder and chairperson of the NGO, said. “All their names signify their behaviors.”
The large hall, bare except for a television mounted on the wall, and 25 iron beds, is full of stories, fantasies, outbursts of rage, longing, and love.
Anju insists that they call her “Janu”. That’s what her husband, her lover called her. She is old now. Her hair is peppered with gray and white. And wrinkles on her face are like little rivulets, each containing within its folds the many mysteries of her life.
She was found at a petrol pump near Okhla.
Anju never recovered fully. The shelter isn’t a destination but more like a passage where once the inmates are able to recall their addresses and other details about their lives, the staff tries to rehabilitate them.
“Where will I go from here,” Anju says. “Pankaj will come to pick me up. I know I will find him one day. One day I will meet him.”
So, she is waiting. Waiting for her lost lover – real or imaginary. He makes her blush. Anju is in love. She has always been in love. In her reborn state, where age doesn’t matter, this love and longing is her only bridge to the past.
Bano is longing, too. She wants to go home to her husband in Sitapur in Bihar. Her little children are waiting, she says.
Bano was rescued almost two and a half years ago from the streets. She was crawling, the staff recalled.
For months, she was on a wheelchair. And then, she held the walls of the large room, and learned to walk slowly. Her burns have healed, too.
She had a husband who worked in Delhi and she left her village to come here to see him. Now, she wants to see him again.
Then, almost in the same breath, she says he beat her up, and sold her.
But it is her children that call her home. And she pleads and begs the staff to send her home.
“Only when we find your house. We are trying to get reservations,” Inderjit, who looks after them, tells her.
“I am not mad,” she says. “I can walk now. Take me home.”
It’s not easy being here.
It a tough place, a place where memory is fragile, brittle. It requires patience, and lots of it. It also demands that you learn to believe, even though the stories transform overnight, and it demands that you remain unfazed even when they come at you, eyes full of rage, their teeth clattering.
Vimla ran away once. That night, Indira got wild. She beat up everyone, and she screamed. Vimla, one of the staff, locked herself in a room.
“At these times, you don’t know what to do,” she says.
But Asha, who stays overnight at the shelter, has over the years learned that the women, old, delicate, vulnerable, are like children.
“You don’t fear them,” she says.
So, when Asha cooks, she calls the women inside the kitchen and they cook together.
Where they live, somewhere in between memory and loss of it, the inmates have all learned to lean on each other.
Munni, who they named so because she is like a child, and laughs all the time, cries when someone is hurt. She will come to them, hold them by the hand, and cry and point to the person.
Sometimes, Munni sings, too. An old Bollywood song. She has been in the shelter for years. The shelter was established in 1989 by Choudhury who now runs 11 such shelters across the country. Three are in Delhi. One caters to about 50 men who are mentally disabled and two others to women. Choudhary who worked the crime beat in a city newspaper says she wanted to help the women she saw on the streets – abandoned, and vulnerable because they were mentally disabled.
It has been a tough road for her, too. It’s difficult to find committed volunteers. Her organization has sustained only on the basis of donations, and goodwill of others.
The women are referred to them by AIIMS, Safdarjung Hospital, Delhi police and citizens.
“There was an urge to support victims,” she says. “Then I started this initiative. These women were easy preys for organ dealers.”
In one of the corners, an elderly woman is muttering in English. Shikha was rescued from the INA market by Choudhury several years ago. When she saw Choudhaury, she asked her to sit and in an agitated state called out to “Pappu” to bring in sweets and fish curry, Choudhury recalls.
“She talked about mosaic and servants,” she says. “She is from an affluent family.”
But there is no way to tell. Because the shards of memory are not enough to fill in the gaps. So, they go back and forth, shuttling between memory and forgetfulness.
In yet another corner, Dhapu, named so because she said “Dhap, Dhap” all the time, is calling out for Rani, her daughter.
“Rani has gone to school. They should bring her here,” she says.
When they found her, she had a young child who she held close to her. Even at the shelter, she would not leave the child. Then, they took Rani away and put her in a school and a childcare center.
But the mother only remembers her lost child. And amid laughter, and songs, her wailing is hard to miss.
They have clung on to the past or whatever remains of it with a ferocity. After all, the new names are not all that they stand for.
Monday, February 01, 2010
Inside the Afghan bakery
At a friend's place, we were offered Afghan bread and he suggested I should visit the bakery, which I did and I wrote its story.
An edited version of the article appeared in the Real Page 3 of the Indian Express on Sunday, January 31, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
January 28, 2010
New Delhi, January 27, 2010
Long ago in a little bakery in Kabul, Aqa Sayed learned to knead the dough, cut it into pieces, then weigh it on a scale, flatten it and gently put it inside a stone-lined fire pit.
An apprentice to his father, a baker, Sayed came to his father’s shop in the afternoons after school, to learn the art of making Afghani roti.
Many long years have gone by since.
Now, Sayed, 48, is reclaiming from memory the bread-making skills he learned as a child in a little rented shop where an Afghan bakery has recently opened in the crowded Bhogal market.
Outside the shop called Afghan Nanwaee (the bread maker), a queue of Afghani people has formed. Most of them came to India as refugees, fleeing the perpetual state of turmoil in their homeland where the smoke and splinters from a bomb blast, and soldiers wielding Kalashnikovs and marching in the streets and on to their lives, are part of everyday living.
But home is an idea and like time and place, is a keeper of sanity. Familiarity, a semblance of what was destroyed, left behind, is what the refugee seeks.
So, inside the bakery, the four Afghani men have recreated their homeland, lining its sooty walls with tapestries of a countryside village, a mosque in its background, and pewter plates with Koranic verses on them. A broken part of a bed that once belonged to someone in Kabul, and has pink roses carved on it, that a refugee packed with his meagre belongings so he could keep a piece of his former life with him always, hangs near the entrance.
The oven, the fire pit or Tandoor, was bought here in Bhogal, but the bread that comes out of it, is intrinsically Afghani with little designs made by poking tiny holes, the size of a dot.
At fifteen, Sayed, a Tajik, gave up on school because there was no hope of finding a job as one war bled into another one in his homeland, and he stopped counting how many bloody wars ravaged Afghanistan, its people, the schools, the hopes, and the bakeries, too.
“We never knew who was ruling us. It changed too often, it mattered too little,” he said, Ali Jan, a Hazara boy, interpreting for him.
His wife and two children died when a bomb exploded in one of those streets in Kabul. Bombs were forever exploding, and killing, and filling streets with blood of their children and women.
Sayed then came to India. In Kabul, his bakery shut down, too.
For a few weeks, he was barely making ends meet. The little money he brought with him lasted a few days only. Then he met Ainuddin, popularly known in the locality as Mullah Jan, who was running this bakery and needed men who could bake.
Sayed had been a bread maker. His hands knew the craft, the acrobatics of baking the perfect home bread.
He is a sad man, always brooding, they said.
Only when he plunges his hands into the flour and pulls and pushes, and leans into the fire pit to check on the bread, he smiles.
The bread that he pulls out is a connector of sorts, its smell transporting him to a life he loved, and his memory comes alive.
On a Wednesday morning, after they had baked the first batch of bread, the four men sat down for breakfast – rotis, fresh cream, and afghani chai. A woman stuck her face inside, and asked for bread. She was late but her daughter didn’t want anything but bread. Mullah Jan picked one from the stack of breads they’d eat for breakfast and gave it to her.
***
Mullah Jan, 36, came to India three months ago. At 10, he had left Afghanistan.
The wars were getting personal, he said.
He lived in Iran, and then in Pakistan for ten years. In Afghanistan, things only got worse in the meanwhile.
“When a child leaves home, the homeland becomes an alien city. It is difficult to reconstruct your life from the rubble,” he said.
Mullah Jan completed high school, and could have studied further had it not been for his refugee status in the world, and the limitations of it. When he returned to Afghanistan after Taliban left where his family still lives, he opened a restaurant in Khoust.
Then, one day a bomb went off.
“My restaurant was blown to pieces. A bomb had exploded in the market,” he said. “So, I came here. The Afghanis wanted someone to bake bread for them so I said I could do it.”
He paired with Mohd. Sarwar, another Afghan refugee.
Sarwar said the initial days were difficult. He came with a thousand dollars and after it was spent, he lived in the burial grounds near Nizamuddin for a week. When he figured that Afghani families needed a bread-maker here in Bhogal, he knew he could do it.
“I took out a loan from friends and set up the bakery with Mullah Bhai,” he said. “It’s doing well.”
At least three times in day, people queue come to the bakery to buy bread – morning, afternoon, and evening meals are not complete without the bread.
“We usually buy our bread and don’t bake at home. That’s our culture and tradition. Mostly men bake the bread in shops and women do it at home,” Mullah Jan said.
A few years ago, an Afghan refugee operated a little bakery in the back lanes of Bhogal. But when he opted for a third country resettlement in Canada, the bakery downed its shutters. Since then, the local families started getting their bread from an Afghan baker in Lajpat Nagar. In Tilak Nagar, where many Afghani refugees live, there are a few Afghan bakeries.
But Bhogal is the new Afghani ghetto. In its crowded alleys, rent is cheap, and in the evenings, an Afghan boy sells momos and soup outside the bakery and men smoke and chat as they had done in Kabul.
Mullah Jan will tell you the Afghanis are resilient people, and even if you left them in a jungle, they’d survive. Because they have suffered enough to know better.
For the Tajiks, India is home, and Delhi seems familar. They have grown up on a staple diet of Bollywood movies, lining the walls of their homes with posters of
Shahrukh Khan and Aishwarya Rai. The smattering of Hindi they speak was picked up from the films, and so assimilation was never so difficult.
There is no definitive number of Afghanis that live in Delhi. In Bhogal, there are upwards of 500 Afghani families, Mullah Jan said.
They rent out small rooms, most of them built in the fashion of a train corridor, one room leading into another dark room, and then to another. Most of them are unemployed, and short on money. Without the refugee status, they can’t find any jobs. And the waiting time to get the status stretches into months, years. So, they wait it out, pawning jewellery, working illegally in sweatshops, trying to get by.
Ali Jan is a Hazara boy with hazel brown and green eyes and rosy cheeks, who is learning English at an obscure school. In his free time, he doubles as a cashier at the bakery trying to earn his fees of Rs. 750.
“I hope I can get to college,” he said.
For Ali Jan and Sayed, the bakery is a relief, a means of getting somewhere.
Sarwar too has a plan. He wants to get married and that’s another reason he came to Delhi.
“The bride price is too high in our country and people like me can’t afford a bride. In India, we can marry because you don’t have to pay,” he said. “With the bakery money I can raise a family easily.”
For the families that have left their homeland, the bakery is a reminder of the happy times when life was normal in Afghanistan.
Ten years ago, at least 28 such bakeries dotted the city’s landscape. Then, people left for elsewhere and these bakeries were closed.
Now, as the war intensifies, and cars begin to blow up again and Taliban is once more active, more and more refugees are coming to India, and to Delhi.
Next to the bakery, there’s Kabul restaurant, which also opened recently. It sells Afghani food, and on most evenings, it is packed to capacity.
In the evenings, a steady stream of customers leave the bakery with rotis the size of snowshoes wrapped in newspapers.
Abdul Rehman was late. The bakery had shut for an hour. But he needed the bread because that’s what his mother-in-law wanted. She was sick and had peculiar demands.
“She just wants to eat the bread. Can I have one, please?”, he asked.
Mullah Jan obliged.
An edited version of the article appeared in the Real Page 3 of the Indian Express on Sunday, January 31, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
January 28, 2010
New Delhi, January 27, 2010
Long ago in a little bakery in Kabul, Aqa Sayed learned to knead the dough, cut it into pieces, then weigh it on a scale, flatten it and gently put it inside a stone-lined fire pit.
An apprentice to his father, a baker, Sayed came to his father’s shop in the afternoons after school, to learn the art of making Afghani roti.
Many long years have gone by since.
Now, Sayed, 48, is reclaiming from memory the bread-making skills he learned as a child in a little rented shop where an Afghan bakery has recently opened in the crowded Bhogal market.
Outside the shop called Afghan Nanwaee (the bread maker), a queue of Afghani people has formed. Most of them came to India as refugees, fleeing the perpetual state of turmoil in their homeland where the smoke and splinters from a bomb blast, and soldiers wielding Kalashnikovs and marching in the streets and on to their lives, are part of everyday living.
But home is an idea and like time and place, is a keeper of sanity. Familiarity, a semblance of what was destroyed, left behind, is what the refugee seeks.
So, inside the bakery, the four Afghani men have recreated their homeland, lining its sooty walls with tapestries of a countryside village, a mosque in its background, and pewter plates with Koranic verses on them. A broken part of a bed that once belonged to someone in Kabul, and has pink roses carved on it, that a refugee packed with his meagre belongings so he could keep a piece of his former life with him always, hangs near the entrance.
The oven, the fire pit or Tandoor, was bought here in Bhogal, but the bread that comes out of it, is intrinsically Afghani with little designs made by poking tiny holes, the size of a dot.
At fifteen, Sayed, a Tajik, gave up on school because there was no hope of finding a job as one war bled into another one in his homeland, and he stopped counting how many bloody wars ravaged Afghanistan, its people, the schools, the hopes, and the bakeries, too.
“We never knew who was ruling us. It changed too often, it mattered too little,” he said, Ali Jan, a Hazara boy, interpreting for him.
His wife and two children died when a bomb exploded in one of those streets in Kabul. Bombs were forever exploding, and killing, and filling streets with blood of their children and women.
Sayed then came to India. In Kabul, his bakery shut down, too.
For a few weeks, he was barely making ends meet. The little money he brought with him lasted a few days only. Then he met Ainuddin, popularly known in the locality as Mullah Jan, who was running this bakery and needed men who could bake.
Sayed had been a bread maker. His hands knew the craft, the acrobatics of baking the perfect home bread.
He is a sad man, always brooding, they said.
Only when he plunges his hands into the flour and pulls and pushes, and leans into the fire pit to check on the bread, he smiles.
The bread that he pulls out is a connector of sorts, its smell transporting him to a life he loved, and his memory comes alive.
On a Wednesday morning, after they had baked the first batch of bread, the four men sat down for breakfast – rotis, fresh cream, and afghani chai. A woman stuck her face inside, and asked for bread. She was late but her daughter didn’t want anything but bread. Mullah Jan picked one from the stack of breads they’d eat for breakfast and gave it to her.
***
Mullah Jan, 36, came to India three months ago. At 10, he had left Afghanistan.
The wars were getting personal, he said.
He lived in Iran, and then in Pakistan for ten years. In Afghanistan, things only got worse in the meanwhile.
“When a child leaves home, the homeland becomes an alien city. It is difficult to reconstruct your life from the rubble,” he said.
Mullah Jan completed high school, and could have studied further had it not been for his refugee status in the world, and the limitations of it. When he returned to Afghanistan after Taliban left where his family still lives, he opened a restaurant in Khoust.
Then, one day a bomb went off.
“My restaurant was blown to pieces. A bomb had exploded in the market,” he said. “So, I came here. The Afghanis wanted someone to bake bread for them so I said I could do it.”
He paired with Mohd. Sarwar, another Afghan refugee.
Sarwar said the initial days were difficult. He came with a thousand dollars and after it was spent, he lived in the burial grounds near Nizamuddin for a week. When he figured that Afghani families needed a bread-maker here in Bhogal, he knew he could do it.
“I took out a loan from friends and set up the bakery with Mullah Bhai,” he said. “It’s doing well.”
At least three times in day, people queue come to the bakery to buy bread – morning, afternoon, and evening meals are not complete without the bread.
“We usually buy our bread and don’t bake at home. That’s our culture and tradition. Mostly men bake the bread in shops and women do it at home,” Mullah Jan said.
A few years ago, an Afghan refugee operated a little bakery in the back lanes of Bhogal. But when he opted for a third country resettlement in Canada, the bakery downed its shutters. Since then, the local families started getting their bread from an Afghan baker in Lajpat Nagar. In Tilak Nagar, where many Afghani refugees live, there are a few Afghan bakeries.
But Bhogal is the new Afghani ghetto. In its crowded alleys, rent is cheap, and in the evenings, an Afghan boy sells momos and soup outside the bakery and men smoke and chat as they had done in Kabul.
Mullah Jan will tell you the Afghanis are resilient people, and even if you left them in a jungle, they’d survive. Because they have suffered enough to know better.
For the Tajiks, India is home, and Delhi seems familar. They have grown up on a staple diet of Bollywood movies, lining the walls of their homes with posters of
Shahrukh Khan and Aishwarya Rai. The smattering of Hindi they speak was picked up from the films, and so assimilation was never so difficult.
There is no definitive number of Afghanis that live in Delhi. In Bhogal, there are upwards of 500 Afghani families, Mullah Jan said.
They rent out small rooms, most of them built in the fashion of a train corridor, one room leading into another dark room, and then to another. Most of them are unemployed, and short on money. Without the refugee status, they can’t find any jobs. And the waiting time to get the status stretches into months, years. So, they wait it out, pawning jewellery, working illegally in sweatshops, trying to get by.
Ali Jan is a Hazara boy with hazel brown and green eyes and rosy cheeks, who is learning English at an obscure school. In his free time, he doubles as a cashier at the bakery trying to earn his fees of Rs. 750.
“I hope I can get to college,” he said.
For Ali Jan and Sayed, the bakery is a relief, a means of getting somewhere.
Sarwar too has a plan. He wants to get married and that’s another reason he came to Delhi.
“The bride price is too high in our country and people like me can’t afford a bride. In India, we can marry because you don’t have to pay,” he said. “With the bakery money I can raise a family easily.”
For the families that have left their homeland, the bakery is a reminder of the happy times when life was normal in Afghanistan.
Ten years ago, at least 28 such bakeries dotted the city’s landscape. Then, people left for elsewhere and these bakeries were closed.
Now, as the war intensifies, and cars begin to blow up again and Taliban is once more active, more and more refugees are coming to India, and to Delhi.
Next to the bakery, there’s Kabul restaurant, which also opened recently. It sells Afghani food, and on most evenings, it is packed to capacity.
In the evenings, a steady stream of customers leave the bakery with rotis the size of snowshoes wrapped in newspapers.
Abdul Rehman was late. The bakery had shut for an hour. But he needed the bread because that’s what his mother-in-law wanted. She was sick and had peculiar demands.
“She just wants to eat the bread. Can I have one, please?”, he asked.
Mullah Jan obliged.
The meaning of Moksha
An edited version of the article appeared in the Lifestyle section of the Financial Express on Sunday, January 31, 2010/
Meaning of Moksha
Chinki Sinha
Hardwar, January 25, 2010
Sonia went down the slippery steps, waded through the water, and stood a little off from the rest.
Half-submerged in water, she whispered in her distinctly male voice to the river that the water lapping against her feet should wash off the curse, the ambiguous gender that clung to her identity. And when she faced the sun, you could see she was earnest.
At Hardwar , during the Kumbh Mela that rotates between four cities, many pilgrims believe that the Ganges takes away the burgeoning humanity’s sin, transports all of the guilt, and those confessions to the vast sea, and purifies them.
For years, Sonia Kinner has been coming to Har-Ki-Pauri, the ghat where Vishnu himself walked once as mythology puts it, during Kumbh, praying to rid of her gender that lies nowhere, lingering in the middle of the sexes, reducing her to a being whose purpose is to provide comic relief to the universe, and its millions. At least that’s what Sonia thinks. Maybe she will find a place in next birth where she doesn’t have to deal with the “third sex” identity. Then she won’t have to fight for respect, and give up on love as she did once when she told her lover he needed to find someone else who could bear children.
She didn’t come at the crack of dawn like other pilgrims on the first day of the Maha Kumbh. Sonia waited at her house for others to arrive, and then she walked to the Brahm Kund, and slowly entered the water. Six of them mingled with the crowds. In a few moments, their sins and their hopes would, too.
Kumbh, a mega affair with millions coming to the temple town of Hardwar that has spent more than Rs. 550 crores on beautification projects and to create infrastructure for the Kumbh Mela that the town is hosting after 12 years, attracts visitors from all over the world. Hordes of foreign press personnel swoop down on the town to captures images, emotions for their audience. After all Kumbh is the largest religious congregation in the world. The projection for this year is that at least five crore visitors will come to Hardwar either to participate or to witness the event.
For the transgenders, the hijras that flocked to Hardwar from other states like Noori who came from Punjab for a holy dip in the Ganges during Kumbh, moksha or liberation would be in stages. They weren’t seeking a shortcut to Nirvana like the Naga Sadhus or the older people who didn’t want to be born again, as humans or as anything else because they had suffered enough, and wanted to put an end to the cycles of birth. Moksha to them meant liberation from the identity of a hijra, of someone who was unfinished, unfulfilled.
Sonia and Noori and Rama flirted with the men, pulled one young man by the collar to confirm if indeed it was true that a child was born and they could go for the collections, to sing and dance and to amuse.
Sonia is known figure in Hardwar . She was born here, and joined the group of hijras in her teens after she was kidnapped and castrated in a remote place in Uttar Pradesh. She returned as a hijra, who couldn’t ho home and must wander the streets to beg. Every Kumbh, she and others pray for the same thing because it is unbearable to be what they are.
“We are the real fakirs because when Sadhus want, they can return to their people, or wives, to their homes. Where do we go?,” she said. “I never left Hardwar because I know in this blessed town, gods can see my pain and I will attain Moksha one day.”
Security arrangements are unparalleled and around 16,000 police and army personnel are keeping a close watch to avert any untoward incident during the three-month long Kumbh Mela that culminates on April 28.
In 1998, in Hardwar during the last Kumbh, violence erupted between different Akharas or sects on the occasion of Royal Bath. Thousands of Naga Sadhus descend upon the town to take part in the festival, and hold their initiation ceremonies during Kumbh. This year, the Akhara Parishad will adhere to a timetable to avoid any friction. The Juna Akhara, which is the camping ground for Naga Sadhus, or the warrior Sadhus trained in war and use of arms, is the oldest. Around 5,000 young men will shave off their heads, smear ash, and walk naked to the river in a procession after they will be initialized into the Naga sect. For years, the Naga Sadhus have attracted media from all over the world. Now, they don’t want to be clicked at all. Because they are more than a bunch of chillum-smoking ascetics, they said.
If the need arises, they can pick up arms to protect the faith, Parshuram Giri, a Naga Sadhu, said.
At Jwalapur that is on the outskirts of Hardwar, where many of them were camping before they marched to the temple town in a grand procession on Jan. 30, the sadhus were preparing for the feats of magic they perform, and polishing their swords and spears.
For these ascetics, the appeal of Kumbh is in its promise of nirvana, freedom from the endless cycles of rebirths and enusing suffering. In their lifetime, they have managed to break free from the materialistic wrld, shunned its corrupting influnces choosing to stay naked and without possessions. But while they controlled their lives, the thought of afterlife bothered them, Giri said.
"So we come to take the holy dip. Because we want liberation," he said. "Kumbh is special for us. That's why we come. It's the promise of Kumbh. It unites us all."
The town swells to accommodate the sheer number of people during Kumbh, it is all decked, dressed in shimmering lights and fresh coat of paint. It becomes a tent town where tents loom in the horizon. There are luxury tents, too, for the rich and elite. There are affordable tents, too.
It is said that Hardwar rose out of a drop of nectar and the town is dotted with little temples where bells toll every evening.
Salvation, the quest for it, and Hardwar ’s promise, makes the town special for everyone that believes, doesn’t doubt. Here, in this town, salvation has many takers, and local economy gets a push during these festive times.
During this auspicious time, salvation is also smoking chillums with the Naga Sadhus for many. On the banks of the river, a Korean girl, sat with a Sadhu who claimed he was a Naga Baba who roamed in the Himalayas and only came out to face the world during Kumbh. They smoked, and talked about Nirvana.
These are the chillum seekers who come looking for a trip to heaven because they say sadhus have the best of the hash and are more than willing to pass around the peace pipe.
The Kumbh phenomenon is for anyone and everyone. Not just for the seekers of salvation but anyone who wants to experience the reach of faith, or the conviction of people who brave the icy waters and take a dip because they dare to believe.
After Kumbh ends, the town will take a break for another 12 years. But while it lasts, it will continue to enchant and convince that religion is a force and it doesn’t matter whether you dismiss its promises, you can’t challenge its appeal.
Meaning of Moksha
Chinki Sinha
Hardwar, January 25, 2010
Sonia went down the slippery steps, waded through the water, and stood a little off from the rest.
Half-submerged in water, she whispered in her distinctly male voice to the river that the water lapping against her feet should wash off the curse, the ambiguous gender that clung to her identity. And when she faced the sun, you could see she was earnest.
At Hardwar , during the Kumbh Mela that rotates between four cities, many pilgrims believe that the Ganges takes away the burgeoning humanity’s sin, transports all of the guilt, and those confessions to the vast sea, and purifies them.
For years, Sonia Kinner has been coming to Har-Ki-Pauri, the ghat where Vishnu himself walked once as mythology puts it, during Kumbh, praying to rid of her gender that lies nowhere, lingering in the middle of the sexes, reducing her to a being whose purpose is to provide comic relief to the universe, and its millions. At least that’s what Sonia thinks. Maybe she will find a place in next birth where she doesn’t have to deal with the “third sex” identity. Then she won’t have to fight for respect, and give up on love as she did once when she told her lover he needed to find someone else who could bear children.
She didn’t come at the crack of dawn like other pilgrims on the first day of the Maha Kumbh. Sonia waited at her house for others to arrive, and then she walked to the Brahm Kund, and slowly entered the water. Six of them mingled with the crowds. In a few moments, their sins and their hopes would, too.
Kumbh, a mega affair with millions coming to the temple town of Hardwar that has spent more than Rs. 550 crores on beautification projects and to create infrastructure for the Kumbh Mela that the town is hosting after 12 years, attracts visitors from all over the world. Hordes of foreign press personnel swoop down on the town to captures images, emotions for their audience. After all Kumbh is the largest religious congregation in the world. The projection for this year is that at least five crore visitors will come to Hardwar either to participate or to witness the event.
For the transgenders, the hijras that flocked to Hardwar from other states like Noori who came from Punjab for a holy dip in the Ganges during Kumbh, moksha or liberation would be in stages. They weren’t seeking a shortcut to Nirvana like the Naga Sadhus or the older people who didn’t want to be born again, as humans or as anything else because they had suffered enough, and wanted to put an end to the cycles of birth. Moksha to them meant liberation from the identity of a hijra, of someone who was unfinished, unfulfilled.
Sonia and Noori and Rama flirted with the men, pulled one young man by the collar to confirm if indeed it was true that a child was born and they could go for the collections, to sing and dance and to amuse.
Sonia is known figure in Hardwar . She was born here, and joined the group of hijras in her teens after she was kidnapped and castrated in a remote place in Uttar Pradesh. She returned as a hijra, who couldn’t ho home and must wander the streets to beg. Every Kumbh, she and others pray for the same thing because it is unbearable to be what they are.
“We are the real fakirs because when Sadhus want, they can return to their people, or wives, to their homes. Where do we go?,” she said. “I never left Hardwar because I know in this blessed town, gods can see my pain and I will attain Moksha one day.”
Security arrangements are unparalleled and around 16,000 police and army personnel are keeping a close watch to avert any untoward incident during the three-month long Kumbh Mela that culminates on April 28.
In 1998, in Hardwar during the last Kumbh, violence erupted between different Akharas or sects on the occasion of Royal Bath. Thousands of Naga Sadhus descend upon the town to take part in the festival, and hold their initiation ceremonies during Kumbh. This year, the Akhara Parishad will adhere to a timetable to avoid any friction. The Juna Akhara, which is the camping ground for Naga Sadhus, or the warrior Sadhus trained in war and use of arms, is the oldest. Around 5,000 young men will shave off their heads, smear ash, and walk naked to the river in a procession after they will be initialized into the Naga sect. For years, the Naga Sadhus have attracted media from all over the world. Now, they don’t want to be clicked at all. Because they are more than a bunch of chillum-smoking ascetics, they said.
If the need arises, they can pick up arms to protect the faith, Parshuram Giri, a Naga Sadhu, said.
At Jwalapur that is on the outskirts of Hardwar, where many of them were camping before they marched to the temple town in a grand procession on Jan. 30, the sadhus were preparing for the feats of magic they perform, and polishing their swords and spears.
For these ascetics, the appeal of Kumbh is in its promise of nirvana, freedom from the endless cycles of rebirths and enusing suffering. In their lifetime, they have managed to break free from the materialistic wrld, shunned its corrupting influnces choosing to stay naked and without possessions. But while they controlled their lives, the thought of afterlife bothered them, Giri said.
"So we come to take the holy dip. Because we want liberation," he said. "Kumbh is special for us. That's why we come. It's the promise of Kumbh. It unites us all."
The town swells to accommodate the sheer number of people during Kumbh, it is all decked, dressed in shimmering lights and fresh coat of paint. It becomes a tent town where tents loom in the horizon. There are luxury tents, too, for the rich and elite. There are affordable tents, too.
It is said that Hardwar rose out of a drop of nectar and the town is dotted with little temples where bells toll every evening.
Salvation, the quest for it, and Hardwar ’s promise, makes the town special for everyone that believes, doesn’t doubt. Here, in this town, salvation has many takers, and local economy gets a push during these festive times.
During this auspicious time, salvation is also smoking chillums with the Naga Sadhus for many. On the banks of the river, a Korean girl, sat with a Sadhu who claimed he was a Naga Baba who roamed in the Himalayas and only came out to face the world during Kumbh. They smoked, and talked about Nirvana.
These are the chillum seekers who come looking for a trip to heaven because they say sadhus have the best of the hash and are more than willing to pass around the peace pipe.
The Kumbh phenomenon is for anyone and everyone. Not just for the seekers of salvation but anyone who wants to experience the reach of faith, or the conviction of people who brave the icy waters and take a dip because they dare to believe.
After Kumbh ends, the town will take a break for another 12 years. But while it lasts, it will continue to enchant and convince that religion is a force and it doesn’t matter whether you dismiss its promises, you can’t challenge its appeal.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Becoming a Naga Sadhu
We had been at the Juna Akhara in Hardwar when Maha Kumbh began and we saw children who were preparing to become Naga Sadhus and we wanted to find out more. We met many and interviewed a few, including 11-year-old Manish Giri whose parents had donated him to the Akhara. He followed his Guru through the day and sat chewing toffee. Sagar Puri was another young boy who had shaved off his head and was excited about being called a Naga Baba. He had run away from home and found his Guru.
An edited version of the story appeared in the Sunday Indian Express on January 24, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
Hardwar, January 21, 2010
He staggered towards where we were sitting, his eyes wild, and remote. He was performing the part of a detached young man, a man who was about to renounce everything so he could pray for the world, and redeem it. Quite like Jesus, only that Sagar Puri, who is training to be a Naga Sadhu, would pick up arms and fight if his religion was threatened. After all, they are the warrior sadhus, he said.
Camping at the Juna Akhara in Hardwar, trying to impress his teachers, Sagar Puri, the 17-year-old boy, is preparing for the initiation ceremony where he will be taken in the order of the Naga Sadhus and henceforth, become a powerful man.
Leading up to the Royal Bath where thousands of Naga ascetics will march to Har-ki-Pauri for the holy dip in the Ganges, the akharas – 13 in the city – are busy with the preparations.
The band played in the distance, their garish uniforms the colour of Sadhus’ saffron as they played sample tunes for the grand procession on the Royal Bath of the Sadhus in Hardwar on Feb. 12, and 17-year-old Sagar Puri mingled with the old, most of who huddled together outside the Bhairon Mandir and smoked chillums, or read newspapers, and the young who looked a little dazed with so much going around. The preparations had already begun for the celebrations, and Puri wanted to belong, to rise up in the ranks of the akhara.
In a couple of weeks, his own initiation ceremony would begin, and he had networked enough, running errands for Sadhus.
But in Sagar Puri’s contrived demeanour, in his convoluted sentences that linger between his restlessness, his zeal to prove that he is indeed a true ascetic, and his yearning for powers that a Naga Sadhu has, you could make out he wanted to awe the world with his status. He carried a cell phone, posed for pictures with his chin up, and renunciation was the last thing on his mind.
Almost three years ago, Sagar Puri, who is one of the thousands of young boys who have come to the Juna Akhara in hopes of becoming a Naga Sadhu this Kumbh, ran away from his house in Chandigarh.
He wouldn’t say why he left home but he said he felt lost, didn’t identify with what everyone else was aspiring for because that didn’t lead anywhere, he said.
So, he found a Guru with dreadlocks who smeared his body with ash and talked about Nirvana, and he was enchanted with the glamour. It was also a way out of poverty and struggles to break it even in life.
He followed the Guru, gave up on the pants and shirts he wore, shaved off his head, and took on the saffron robes.
It’s dark outside. The fog, dense with the smoke from the fire and the chillums many sadhus smoke in order to focus and keep away numerous distractions the world throws in their way, seeps in through the chinks of the doors, from the windows and it’s like waking up in a dream, surrounded by the winter haze. He walks barefoot; the holes in his socks haven’t been darned. Because he is on own here.
During the initiation ceremony, he will do the pind daan, or perform funeral rites for his parents and self, a symbolic act implying he has now left the world he was born into, and crossed over to another one, a point of no return.
“I talk to my parents on the phone. They came to reclaim me once but later signed a letter saying that they had given me to the Juna Akhara. I am their only son but I was different,” he said. “You see we are lost in this world. We find our refuge. This is mine. I am happy here. I see my parents in my Guru.”
On most days he walks to the river to bathe in icy cold waters with others. Then sit in front of the Gurus and perform rituals for hours.
His time at the akhara is a test. They watch him, and he has to be careful. He has to prove his mettle so he can graduate to the second stage.
“He will become a Naga Sadhu at the Vijay Havan, and take on the samskara,” Girija Datt Giri, a Shri Mahant at the Juna Akhara, said.
More than 5,000 young boys and men will take the oath to become Naga Sadhus this Kumbh. It is only at a Maha Kumbh that initiation ceremonies can be held.
“It is tough. We don’t let them drink water for 24 hours before the ceremony. He sits in front of the ritual fire, and we also ask him if he wants to go home in case of those who ran away from home,” he added.
It is only after the long puja that Puri can eat. The akhara, the biggest in town, has its own cooks who prepare meals.
Post breakfast, Puri sits outside the temple, watching others, as they smoke their “peace pipes”. If they pass it on to him, he takes a drag.
From the rooms, the news from the television filters through the walls, and he runs inside to catch the telecast on Kumbh.
He returns and listens in to the sadhus,, whose matted dreadlocks fall below their knees. “The life of a Naga means a life of all possibilities,” a Sadhu said, and that’s what sent Sagar dreaming about all the possibilities – of people coming to him, praising him for his ultimate sacrifice, he walking the streets covered in ash, naked, in his Naga Baba avatar, shutterbugs clicking away at the speed of light, his photos appearing all over the world.
Over lunch at Jwalapur, a nearby kasba, where many Naga Sadhus who have come from different parts of the country, are camping before they march to Hardwar in a grand procession on Jan. 30, Sagar Puri wields a stick, calls out to a couple of foreign photographers and asks them to click his pictures.
At 17, he wants to be the star, and he speaks about soul and attachment, and the cycles of birth and how if one doesn’t try to be liberated, they could end up being born as dogs that’d be running in the streets licking garbage, or worse, as an insect who’d suffer an inglorious death on a wall.
Most afternoons, he watches National Geographic channle, and sits with his gurus, smoking, chatting, and giving interviews to the media.
There’s no routine here. Sometimes, like other young boys, he goes to the restaurants to eat sweets.
He won’t tell you his real name because he is forbidden to talk about his former life. This is his short cut to a comfortable life, to nirvana.
His father, a shopkeeper, wanted him back but then it meant school, entrance examinations, report cards, and a list of other responsibilities. So, he broke free long ago.
Sagar Puri is excited about the Kumbh, about the rituals, about his own part, importance.
In the room that he shares with others, they live a communal life. Everything is shared.
There’s no fixed time for bed.
“You sleep when nobody needs you,” h said. “You get up when they call you. Nothing is time-bound.”
An edited version of the story appeared in the Sunday Indian Express on January 24, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
Hardwar, January 21, 2010
He staggered towards where we were sitting, his eyes wild, and remote. He was performing the part of a detached young man, a man who was about to renounce everything so he could pray for the world, and redeem it. Quite like Jesus, only that Sagar Puri, who is training to be a Naga Sadhu, would pick up arms and fight if his religion was threatened. After all, they are the warrior sadhus, he said.
Camping at the Juna Akhara in Hardwar, trying to impress his teachers, Sagar Puri, the 17-year-old boy, is preparing for the initiation ceremony where he will be taken in the order of the Naga Sadhus and henceforth, become a powerful man.
Leading up to the Royal Bath where thousands of Naga ascetics will march to Har-ki-Pauri for the holy dip in the Ganges, the akharas – 13 in the city – are busy with the preparations.
The band played in the distance, their garish uniforms the colour of Sadhus’ saffron as they played sample tunes for the grand procession on the Royal Bath of the Sadhus in Hardwar on Feb. 12, and 17-year-old Sagar Puri mingled with the old, most of who huddled together outside the Bhairon Mandir and smoked chillums, or read newspapers, and the young who looked a little dazed with so much going around. The preparations had already begun for the celebrations, and Puri wanted to belong, to rise up in the ranks of the akhara.
In a couple of weeks, his own initiation ceremony would begin, and he had networked enough, running errands for Sadhus.
But in Sagar Puri’s contrived demeanour, in his convoluted sentences that linger between his restlessness, his zeal to prove that he is indeed a true ascetic, and his yearning for powers that a Naga Sadhu has, you could make out he wanted to awe the world with his status. He carried a cell phone, posed for pictures with his chin up, and renunciation was the last thing on his mind.
Almost three years ago, Sagar Puri, who is one of the thousands of young boys who have come to the Juna Akhara in hopes of becoming a Naga Sadhu this Kumbh, ran away from his house in Chandigarh.
He wouldn’t say why he left home but he said he felt lost, didn’t identify with what everyone else was aspiring for because that didn’t lead anywhere, he said.
So, he found a Guru with dreadlocks who smeared his body with ash and talked about Nirvana, and he was enchanted with the glamour. It was also a way out of poverty and struggles to break it even in life.
He followed the Guru, gave up on the pants and shirts he wore, shaved off his head, and took on the saffron robes.
It’s dark outside. The fog, dense with the smoke from the fire and the chillums many sadhus smoke in order to focus and keep away numerous distractions the world throws in their way, seeps in through the chinks of the doors, from the windows and it’s like waking up in a dream, surrounded by the winter haze. He walks barefoot; the holes in his socks haven’t been darned. Because he is on own here.
During the initiation ceremony, he will do the pind daan, or perform funeral rites for his parents and self, a symbolic act implying he has now left the world he was born into, and crossed over to another one, a point of no return.
“I talk to my parents on the phone. They came to reclaim me once but later signed a letter saying that they had given me to the Juna Akhara. I am their only son but I was different,” he said. “You see we are lost in this world. We find our refuge. This is mine. I am happy here. I see my parents in my Guru.”
On most days he walks to the river to bathe in icy cold waters with others. Then sit in front of the Gurus and perform rituals for hours.
His time at the akhara is a test. They watch him, and he has to be careful. He has to prove his mettle so he can graduate to the second stage.
“He will become a Naga Sadhu at the Vijay Havan, and take on the samskara,” Girija Datt Giri, a Shri Mahant at the Juna Akhara, said.
More than 5,000 young boys and men will take the oath to become Naga Sadhus this Kumbh. It is only at a Maha Kumbh that initiation ceremonies can be held.
“It is tough. We don’t let them drink water for 24 hours before the ceremony. He sits in front of the ritual fire, and we also ask him if he wants to go home in case of those who ran away from home,” he added.
It is only after the long puja that Puri can eat. The akhara, the biggest in town, has its own cooks who prepare meals.
Post breakfast, Puri sits outside the temple, watching others, as they smoke their “peace pipes”. If they pass it on to him, he takes a drag.
From the rooms, the news from the television filters through the walls, and he runs inside to catch the telecast on Kumbh.
He returns and listens in to the sadhus,, whose matted dreadlocks fall below their knees. “The life of a Naga means a life of all possibilities,” a Sadhu said, and that’s what sent Sagar dreaming about all the possibilities – of people coming to him, praising him for his ultimate sacrifice, he walking the streets covered in ash, naked, in his Naga Baba avatar, shutterbugs clicking away at the speed of light, his photos appearing all over the world.
Over lunch at Jwalapur, a nearby kasba, where many Naga Sadhus who have come from different parts of the country, are camping before they march to Hardwar in a grand procession on Jan. 30, Sagar Puri wields a stick, calls out to a couple of foreign photographers and asks them to click his pictures.
At 17, he wants to be the star, and he speaks about soul and attachment, and the cycles of birth and how if one doesn’t try to be liberated, they could end up being born as dogs that’d be running in the streets licking garbage, or worse, as an insect who’d suffer an inglorious death on a wall.
Most afternoons, he watches National Geographic channle, and sits with his gurus, smoking, chatting, and giving interviews to the media.
There’s no routine here. Sometimes, like other young boys, he goes to the restaurants to eat sweets.
He won’t tell you his real name because he is forbidden to talk about his former life. This is his short cut to a comfortable life, to nirvana.
His father, a shopkeeper, wanted him back but then it meant school, entrance examinations, report cards, and a list of other responsibilities. So, he broke free long ago.
Sagar Puri is excited about the Kumbh, about the rituals, about his own part, importance.
In the room that he shares with others, they live a communal life. Everything is shared.
There’s no fixed time for bed.
“You sleep when nobody needs you,” h said. “You get up when they call you. Nothing is time-bound.”
Love and longing at GB Road
When we walked through the city's infamous road, looking up at the windows, and at the women, I wanted to be able to talk to them about the young men who stood across from where they were and gazed at them. But they wouldn't talk to us. At first it was fear and we hesitated to walk up the dingy staircase. Then, when we finally did, they refused to let us in, let us have a glimpse, a piece of their lives. We were merely intruders, disturbing them, extracting stuff others had already got out of them. Weren't we after their sob stories? No, but all we wanted was to ask them about love. Then I saw this young man singing aloud. And that's where love was. In his songs. We hope to return again and we hope this time, they will let us in. Because I really want to know the ones who brighten the kothas and yet live miserable lives.
An edited version of the story appeared in the Indian Express Real Page 3 on January 24, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi , January 23, 2010
She stood in the window, her bleached streaked hair arresting the rays of the setting sun in its messed coiffure, and looked down at the street. There were pimps pacing up and down the corridors, smoking, and haggling for a higher rate for her body, there were women with bulging stomachs, wrinkled noses, at an age where a man’s face sort of empties as they met their gaze, and then there were pretty young things who stood in similar windows anticipating, and preying.
At Garstin Bastion Road, or Swami Shradhanand Marg, the name given to the famous red light district in city’s capital in 1965, the around 1,000 prostitutes were getting ready for business, a few hours before the auto parts shops lining the street downed their shutters. Then, it would be their domain, and only customers looking for their favorites would saunter in, gaze in the windows, up the narrow, dingy staircases and counted their money, deciding the limits of their bargain.
The girl, her cheap silver earrings dangling from her ears, and her lips painted loud pink, was searching, scanning the streets till her eyes rested on a young man, who wore a triped shirt, and jeans that had too many zip pockets, and sported longish hair, streaked like hers.
And he looked back at her from where he was standing, squeezed between cars, a little nala behind him, and started to sing, pausing to address her, and blow millions kisses her way.
He called her Preeti.
Preeti only smiled, and turned away, then looked at him again.
That’s love and longing at GB Road where according to those who live and work there in closet size rooms, where smell of sweat and flesh linger in the doorways, love is what they can’t let in. Because that corrupts, they said.
As we waited for Charsi Bai, one of the kotha malkeens, we looked up, dissecting the smell and all, at the landing of the staircase. A woman looked down at us. We were intruders, and we didn’t come looking for what they were offering.
She disappeared in the maze of rooms inside, and another one stuck her head outside. Her eyes, pumped with cheap mascara, and her eyelids smeared with bright bronze shadow, looked past us, tumbled upon the streets. At that hour, there weren’t many buyers around.
Because it is illegal to solicit, the women never came out. Their pimps, and there were plenty of them – young boys from Bihar , old paunchy men who chewed betel leaves and spat everywhere, moved around, eyeing the passersby.
One woman stood at the landing. She was annoyed. The business in GB Road is not booming anymore. The rates range from Rs. 100 to Rs. 500, but then the usual customers, the rickshaw pullers, the students, couldn’t pay them a ton.
Recession and its after effects – the beautiful up market prostitutes from Russia , Dubai and other countries – are on sale, too. Why spend on us – smelly, irritable, with no sophistication and always clamoring for a tip – when you can save and get the best, she said.
There are girls from Andhra Pradesh, who were rounded up by the state police and dragged and put in a van and deported to their villages last year and have come back since, there are the fair women from Nepal who are modern, wear fashionable clothes, and there are the Rajasthanis.
According to Suraj Singh, who has worked in one of the hundreds of shops that function in the 20 buildings of GB Road for 27 years, the place has remained unchanged. The women maintain their distance and shop owners respect them.
“They call us “bhaiya” and we don’t have any problems with them ever. But it is sad to see them being exploited sometimes,” he said. “The day the Andhra Police came and dragged 179 of those girls out, we felt bad. They had children with them, they were crying but they just put them in a van and drove away. Some people come and sell their wives and you hear the commotion, and the wailing. It’s sad.”
In one of the kothas, in what looked like a small reception area, more than a dozen women were waiting for their turn. The young ones, with their plunging necklines, and fluttering eyelashes, ran to the landing, whispering, adjusting their hair. This was their moment. They had to make the most of their youth before diseases claimed them. It will be a while before they paid off their debts to the naikas, the women who purchased them.
The air was abuzz with anticipation, and competition.
A middle-aged woman, with thick glasses, wrapped in a shawl, was waiting, too. Once, when she was in her prime, she had her lovers, her loyal customers, too.
“My life is spent now. All over the years I did the same thing. There’s no respite,” she said.
There were other women, too, who huddled under the parapets of the old buildings, begging. Their days are over. They were members of the kothas, then became housemaids to the younger queens, and then when they couldn’t do that, they descended those staircases and were out on the streets.
They won’t tell you their sad stories. There’s no time for that sort of nonsense because at the end of it, what’s the use of repeating it all.
There’s no time for love because love leads nowhere or here to the brothels, Rishi
Kant, an activist with Shakti Vahini, an NGO working for the sex workers’ rights, said.
“Every girl has a love story. Puja was a girl who fell in love with her customer, a young man of 25 years. It lasted for 6-7 months and then she realized he was abusing her, drinking off her earnings,” he said.
So, love in the air is an infection they guard against.
Preeti went inside. The young lover stood alone, waiting for her to reappear.
Like him, many young men, college students, others, come to the infamous road in the mornings, looking up at the windows, for their imagined lovers, and wait for the evening. If they have the money, they can go in and ask for her. She can’t turn back then. Or they will stand under the window, singing songs, and live under their lover’s glances.
An edited version of the story appeared in the Indian Express Real Page 3 on January 24, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi , January 23, 2010
She stood in the window, her bleached streaked hair arresting the rays of the setting sun in its messed coiffure, and looked down at the street. There were pimps pacing up and down the corridors, smoking, and haggling for a higher rate for her body, there were women with bulging stomachs, wrinkled noses, at an age where a man’s face sort of empties as they met their gaze, and then there were pretty young things who stood in similar windows anticipating, and preying.
At Garstin Bastion Road, or Swami Shradhanand Marg, the name given to the famous red light district in city’s capital in 1965, the around 1,000 prostitutes were getting ready for business, a few hours before the auto parts shops lining the street downed their shutters. Then, it would be their domain, and only customers looking for their favorites would saunter in, gaze in the windows, up the narrow, dingy staircases and counted their money, deciding the limits of their bargain.
The girl, her cheap silver earrings dangling from her ears, and her lips painted loud pink, was searching, scanning the streets till her eyes rested on a young man, who wore a triped shirt, and jeans that had too many zip pockets, and sported longish hair, streaked like hers.
And he looked back at her from where he was standing, squeezed between cars, a little nala behind him, and started to sing, pausing to address her, and blow millions kisses her way.
He called her Preeti.
Preeti only smiled, and turned away, then looked at him again.
That’s love and longing at GB Road where according to those who live and work there in closet size rooms, where smell of sweat and flesh linger in the doorways, love is what they can’t let in. Because that corrupts, they said.
As we waited for Charsi Bai, one of the kotha malkeens, we looked up, dissecting the smell and all, at the landing of the staircase. A woman looked down at us. We were intruders, and we didn’t come looking for what they were offering.
She disappeared in the maze of rooms inside, and another one stuck her head outside. Her eyes, pumped with cheap mascara, and her eyelids smeared with bright bronze shadow, looked past us, tumbled upon the streets. At that hour, there weren’t many buyers around.
Because it is illegal to solicit, the women never came out. Their pimps, and there were plenty of them – young boys from Bihar , old paunchy men who chewed betel leaves and spat everywhere, moved around, eyeing the passersby.
One woman stood at the landing. She was annoyed. The business in GB Road is not booming anymore. The rates range from Rs. 100 to Rs. 500, but then the usual customers, the rickshaw pullers, the students, couldn’t pay them a ton.
Recession and its after effects – the beautiful up market prostitutes from Russia , Dubai and other countries – are on sale, too. Why spend on us – smelly, irritable, with no sophistication and always clamoring for a tip – when you can save and get the best, she said.
There are girls from Andhra Pradesh, who were rounded up by the state police and dragged and put in a van and deported to their villages last year and have come back since, there are the fair women from Nepal who are modern, wear fashionable clothes, and there are the Rajasthanis.
According to Suraj Singh, who has worked in one of the hundreds of shops that function in the 20 buildings of GB Road for 27 years, the place has remained unchanged. The women maintain their distance and shop owners respect them.
“They call us “bhaiya” and we don’t have any problems with them ever. But it is sad to see them being exploited sometimes,” he said. “The day the Andhra Police came and dragged 179 of those girls out, we felt bad. They had children with them, they were crying but they just put them in a van and drove away. Some people come and sell their wives and you hear the commotion, and the wailing. It’s sad.”
In one of the kothas, in what looked like a small reception area, more than a dozen women were waiting for their turn. The young ones, with their plunging necklines, and fluttering eyelashes, ran to the landing, whispering, adjusting their hair. This was their moment. They had to make the most of their youth before diseases claimed them. It will be a while before they paid off their debts to the naikas, the women who purchased them.
The air was abuzz with anticipation, and competition.
A middle-aged woman, with thick glasses, wrapped in a shawl, was waiting, too. Once, when she was in her prime, she had her lovers, her loyal customers, too.
“My life is spent now. All over the years I did the same thing. There’s no respite,” she said.
There were other women, too, who huddled under the parapets of the old buildings, begging. Their days are over. They were members of the kothas, then became housemaids to the younger queens, and then when they couldn’t do that, they descended those staircases and were out on the streets.
They won’t tell you their sad stories. There’s no time for that sort of nonsense because at the end of it, what’s the use of repeating it all.
There’s no time for love because love leads nowhere or here to the brothels, Rishi
Kant, an activist with Shakti Vahini, an NGO working for the sex workers’ rights, said.
“Every girl has a love story. Puja was a girl who fell in love with her customer, a young man of 25 years. It lasted for 6-7 months and then she realized he was abusing her, drinking off her earnings,” he said.
So, love in the air is an infection they guard against.
Preeti went inside. The young lover stood alone, waiting for her to reappear.
Like him, many young men, college students, others, come to the infamous road in the mornings, looking up at the windows, for their imagined lovers, and wait for the evening. If they have the money, they can go in and ask for her. She can’t turn back then. Or they will stand under the window, singing songs, and live under their lover’s glances.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Maha Kumbh begins
So we took the train from Delhi to Haridwar to cover the Kumbh. We landed in a hotel on the ghats and walked the ghats soaking in religion, faith, colors and everything else that's Kumbh. The night was cold and from the chinks in the window, the fog seeped into the room, and it was surreal. The river gurgled past the window and looked bewitching.
Not many people were here. Perhaps thousands only for the Makar Sankriti snan.
An edited version of the story appeared in the Indian Express on Jan. 14, 2010.
We didn't find much yesterday but maybe today. We are hopeful.
Chinki Sinha
Haridwar, January 13, 2010
At his first ever Kumbh Mela in 1974, when he was a young man visiting his in-laws, ML Giri said the ghats weren’t so full of people. Nor were there so many police personnel wielding batons and guns patrolling the Har-ki-Pauri. Back then, it was all about faith, he said.
“Perhaps 100 cops in total. But look at it now. There are new roads, new ghats. Since 1986, we saw crowds, and it has never stopped,” Giri, a volunteer at the Seva Samiti, a charity organization that looks after the upkeep of the Har-ki-Pauri, said.
Thirty-six years later, Kumbh has become touristier, and more upmarket. The ghats have been renovated, bridges have been built, and more than ever before, there’s much more on the minds of men and women – environmental concerns, security, terrorism - going for the holy dip than just salvation and washing away of sins.
From a loudspeaker, a female voice urged the faithful to refrain from using soap as the mass of men and women, an estimated eight lakh visitors to Haridwar for the three-month-long festival, started to descend the steps on the ghats for the ritual snan on the eve of Makar Sankranti, the day that marks the decline of winter in the country, and one of the most auspicious days for the ritual bathing.
Tucked alongside of the loudspeakers that blared instructions and devotional songs as the time of the arati neared, the closed-circuit television captured the moments, and security personnel in the Mela Control Room watched closely for hints.
Security at the Kumbh is unprecedented with thousands of police personnel – state police, CRPF, RAF, CISF, SSB, and ITBP – standing guard at the 26 ghats.
Kumbh Mela rotates among four cities where the nectar that would give immortality fell during a war between the gods and the demons, as per the Hindu mythology. Of the four drops that fell when the tussle was going on, one fell in Haridwar.
Temperatures are expected to take a dip today when the first snan commences. It would be the coldest Kumbh since 1986 in Haridwar. In 1986 and 1988, the temperatures hovered around six degrees.
At a chai stall at Har-ki-Pauri, a group of RAF personnel sipped hot, piping tea as they took a small break before sundown when they anticipated the crowds to converge at the ghats. That’s when they would patrol up and down the 70 meters of the ghat, wielding their batons and guns.
The RAF personnel have been deployed for 15 days now and will remain in Haridwar for three months through the end of the Kumbh Mela.
Clocking in more than 10 hours of work every day, Sulochana Devi said they have been trained to deal with all sorts of issues that could arise – stampede, terror attack, fights, anything.
“Oh, we won’t let anything happen,” she said.
Perhaps, when she is off duty on Jan. 14 when the festival begins, she can come to the ghats to get rid of her sins, she said.
Security personnel in their blue, khaki and military green uniforms mingled with the crowds, watching, and on alert.
Further down the ghat, a bunch of rescue police sat facing the Ganges, ready to take a plunge. Life jackets were carelessly strewn beside them.
Around 250 rescue officers from the Uttaranchal police are deployed at the ghats to avoid any untoward incidents like drowning in the icy old waters.
"This is my first Kumbh and I am excited. This is like an adventure," Harish Kothari, 21, said. "It is not so deep but we are not taking chances."
Kumbh melas have had no history of terrorist attacks but they have been marred by fighting amongst sadhus, and stampedes that have killed hundreds.
But the Uttarakhand government is taking no chances. The ghats are decked up, and the town is all geared up for the millions of people – pilgrims, spectators, and hordes of media persons.
In its bid to promote the temple town of Haridwar as a seat of spiritual tourism in the country, the government has invested around Rs. 550 crores in a number of infrastructure projects including a foot bridges, multi-level modern car park, and a network of roads.
The government also gave approval to Prabhatam Aviation to fly chartered flights carrying five people from Dehradun and Delhi. A helipad near Har-ki-Pauri already exists and Prabhatam officials said they have the permission to operate from there.
While no bookings from Delhi have yet been confirmed, the first flight from Dehradun will take off at 12 in the afternoon. The fares from Delhi are Rs. 50,000 per person, and from Dehradun, it is around Rs. 11,000.
“We have been operating such helicopter services for other pilgrimages like Kedar Nath and Badri Nath but this is our first time for Kumbh,” Neelam Khanna, general manager of advertising, said. “There are flights everyday but for Delhi, we need a day’s notice.”
From a distance, the temple town looks as if it was freshly-painted. The pink mounds of the temples stand out against the lush mountains, and the new asphalt roads shine after the rains on Wednesday morning washed them.
Nearly 10 million pilgrims are expected to flock to the city in the next three months until April 28, when the mela ends.
Security arrangements also make it mandatory for sadhus to carry identity cards like other tourists.
The 130 square kilometres of the notified mela area from Bahadurabad to Neelkanth houses 250 hotels, 300 dharmashalas and around 400 ashramas. Besides, camps and tents set up by charity organizations and luxury tourism chains also exist.
Not many people were here. Perhaps thousands only for the Makar Sankriti snan.
An edited version of the story appeared in the Indian Express on Jan. 14, 2010.
We didn't find much yesterday but maybe today. We are hopeful.
Chinki Sinha
Haridwar, January 13, 2010
At his first ever Kumbh Mela in 1974, when he was a young man visiting his in-laws, ML Giri said the ghats weren’t so full of people. Nor were there so many police personnel wielding batons and guns patrolling the Har-ki-Pauri. Back then, it was all about faith, he said.
“Perhaps 100 cops in total. But look at it now. There are new roads, new ghats. Since 1986, we saw crowds, and it has never stopped,” Giri, a volunteer at the Seva Samiti, a charity organization that looks after the upkeep of the Har-ki-Pauri, said.
Thirty-six years later, Kumbh has become touristier, and more upmarket. The ghats have been renovated, bridges have been built, and more than ever before, there’s much more on the minds of men and women – environmental concerns, security, terrorism - going for the holy dip than just salvation and washing away of sins.
From a loudspeaker, a female voice urged the faithful to refrain from using soap as the mass of men and women, an estimated eight lakh visitors to Haridwar for the three-month-long festival, started to descend the steps on the ghats for the ritual snan on the eve of Makar Sankranti, the day that marks the decline of winter in the country, and one of the most auspicious days for the ritual bathing.
Tucked alongside of the loudspeakers that blared instructions and devotional songs as the time of the arati neared, the closed-circuit television captured the moments, and security personnel in the Mela Control Room watched closely for hints.
Security at the Kumbh is unprecedented with thousands of police personnel – state police, CRPF, RAF, CISF, SSB, and ITBP – standing guard at the 26 ghats.
Kumbh Mela rotates among four cities where the nectar that would give immortality fell during a war between the gods and the demons, as per the Hindu mythology. Of the four drops that fell when the tussle was going on, one fell in Haridwar.
Temperatures are expected to take a dip today when the first snan commences. It would be the coldest Kumbh since 1986 in Haridwar. In 1986 and 1988, the temperatures hovered around six degrees.
At a chai stall at Har-ki-Pauri, a group of RAF personnel sipped hot, piping tea as they took a small break before sundown when they anticipated the crowds to converge at the ghats. That’s when they would patrol up and down the 70 meters of the ghat, wielding their batons and guns.
The RAF personnel have been deployed for 15 days now and will remain in Haridwar for three months through the end of the Kumbh Mela.
Clocking in more than 10 hours of work every day, Sulochana Devi said they have been trained to deal with all sorts of issues that could arise – stampede, terror attack, fights, anything.
“Oh, we won’t let anything happen,” she said.
Perhaps, when she is off duty on Jan. 14 when the festival begins, she can come to the ghats to get rid of her sins, she said.
Security personnel in their blue, khaki and military green uniforms mingled with the crowds, watching, and on alert.
Further down the ghat, a bunch of rescue police sat facing the Ganges, ready to take a plunge. Life jackets were carelessly strewn beside them.
Around 250 rescue officers from the Uttaranchal police are deployed at the ghats to avoid any untoward incidents like drowning in the icy old waters.
"This is my first Kumbh and I am excited. This is like an adventure," Harish Kothari, 21, said. "It is not so deep but we are not taking chances."
Kumbh melas have had no history of terrorist attacks but they have been marred by fighting amongst sadhus, and stampedes that have killed hundreds.
But the Uttarakhand government is taking no chances. The ghats are decked up, and the town is all geared up for the millions of people – pilgrims, spectators, and hordes of media persons.
In its bid to promote the temple town of Haridwar as a seat of spiritual tourism in the country, the government has invested around Rs. 550 crores in a number of infrastructure projects including a foot bridges, multi-level modern car park, and a network of roads.
The government also gave approval to Prabhatam Aviation to fly chartered flights carrying five people from Dehradun and Delhi. A helipad near Har-ki-Pauri already exists and Prabhatam officials said they have the permission to operate from there.
While no bookings from Delhi have yet been confirmed, the first flight from Dehradun will take off at 12 in the afternoon. The fares from Delhi are Rs. 50,000 per person, and from Dehradun, it is around Rs. 11,000.
“We have been operating such helicopter services for other pilgrimages like Kedar Nath and Badri Nath but this is our first time for Kumbh,” Neelam Khanna, general manager of advertising, said. “There are flights everyday but for Delhi, we need a day’s notice.”
From a distance, the temple town looks as if it was freshly-painted. The pink mounds of the temples stand out against the lush mountains, and the new asphalt roads shine after the rains on Wednesday morning washed them.
Nearly 10 million pilgrims are expected to flock to the city in the next three months until April 28, when the mela ends.
Security arrangements also make it mandatory for sadhus to carry identity cards like other tourists.
The 130 square kilometres of the notified mela area from Bahadurabad to Neelkanth houses 250 hotels, 300 dharmashalas and around 400 ashramas. Besides, camps and tents set up by charity organizations and luxury tourism chains also exist.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Hope for Middle East in Wadi Nisnas
This little neighbourhood in Haifa gave us hope. Perhaps conflict in the region could end. An edited version of the piece appeared in the Sunday section of the Financial Express on Jan. 10, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, January 10, 2010
In Wadi Nisnas, hope screams silently from the walls, the terraces, and from the streets. In Haifa’s stronghold of coexistence, in Wadi Nisnas, artists saw what could have been if there had been no conflict, or wars, that have shaped Israel, its people, and their collective memory, or what could be if the people decided to move on and live together like they do in Wadi Nisnas.
In a country where the heroic Israeli narrative has not yet run its course, where forgetting their persecution over centuries is a sin and memorials built to remember the victims of the wars dot the landscape, where looking beyond the immediate has never been an alternative, in this small neighborhood where Jews, Christians and Muslims have lived together for years, stories of coexistence are everywhere painted, moulded and hung by the artists from all over the country on the walls ravaged by rockets.
From the blackened walls, from the balconies, they lead you to believe another way is out, that peace can be a possibility.
On such weary, grey walls, hope is the little white bird that some artist hung on a small balcony, peace is a graffiti on a crumbling building façade where an artist drew a safety pin in the shape of the Mediterranean Sea, bright blue, calm and beautiful. But the open ends of the safety pin speak of the Middle East’s dilemmas and tryst with elusive peace, the peace that exists in talks, in peoples’ dreams, in artists’ visions. It’s not closed, the region isn’t secure, and the loose ends need to be secured, that’s what the artist envisioned.
Sixteen years ago, the municipality of Haifa began the Holidays of Holidays celebration in December in the quaint neighbourhood of Wadi Nisnas, which in Arabic means Mongoose, an indigenous animal. Over the years, artists have created their pieces dictated by the different themes of the festival but much of the artwork revolves around personal stories of loss, and of hope like that of Haya Tuma, wife of Emil Tuma, a communist leader and one of the founders of Al-Ittihad, an Aradic newspaper, who also led the Haifa communist party with Emile Habibi. Emil was killed in the neighbourhood after he returned from Lebanon.
Haya’s marriage with Emil, an Arab Orthodox Christian, personified Jewish-Arab unity in a country torn apart by strife. Haya met Emil when she was 18 and married him a couple of years later. For the Jewish bride, her marriage also opened windows to the other side – the story of the Palestinian suffering - and she learned to mourn for the Palestinians, and hoped to leap over the chasm to the other side.
Haya, a ceramic artist, came to live in Wadi Nisnas with her husband. To the wife, her husband became her canvas, her story. In the narrow alleys, in cramped quarters, her artworks speak of her love, and her desperation, its deep sadness, too. They also speak of her hope that another way is possible, of peace that is not so elusive after all, and of countless lost opportunities for the Jewish and Arab people who could have buried the turmoil and the angst long ago.
So, on a wall in one of the alleys near the market, Haya Tuma nailed her vision, and her despair.
There’s a wooden door. Above the door, what seems like a framed wedding photograph of Haya Tuma and Emil Tuma, hangs. In its sepia shades, in its shredded edges, a smiling, coy Haya looks radiant. It’s the picture of their union, of an alternative.
Next to the wooden door, there’s a large key that hangs from the wall. But there’s no keyhole. In a way it symbolizes the Arab dilemma, of its refugee status, our guide explained.
“There’s space for all, for Arabs, too. But we have to find it. Just like how Haya saw it. There’s the key but there’s no keyhole. It’s a political artwork,” our guide said.
Haya made the artwork in 2001. She died in 2008. After her death, her son Michael Tuma, who is an artist in Germany, opened up her trunk and found the little pieces of ceramics she had made and stuck them on in the shape of a tree in the parking lot of the neighborhood across from where Haya’s artworks from the past hang in her memory and as a tribute to her vision.
This experiment in coexistence that started 16 years ago has now become one of the major celebrations in the city and many come to walk through the undulating lanes of the neighborhood including school children from nearby cities and tourists who want to see a different side of the conflict.
In this little space, in its alleys that lead nowhere in particular, people, it seems, have realized that life is too short for such a long conflict, it’s perhaps too short to even count the losses, too short to remain victims whichever side you belonged to. So, when they step out of their homes, and walk to the bus stop, or to their shops, they glance at the graffitis calling for change, for a solution to the division of people, of lovers, of humanity, depicting the horrors of the war like the graffiti next to the door that Haya put up that says “somebody live here in 1948” , and they feel emboldened, part of the courage in the artworks infecting them. For art, and love and peace, are contagious, and someday in future, they can look out across the sea, or the desert, across the grey security wall, and look at the warring countries where many of them have friends and families, and wave to them, or invite them for meals, or dinners.
But that hope for peace was once close to being buried under the debris of the building that the rockets from Lebanon struck killing at least two people.
At a shop, many locals sat drinking thick Turkish coffee and chatting in between the puffs of their cigarettes. Ever since, the municipality began the experiment, the neighborhood is full of people in December – tourists, school children, everyone. In December, at the culmination or the onset of three important festivals – Christmas, Hanukkah, and Muharram or Eid – of the three major faiths all of which lay claim on Jerusalem for it here that they were born and it is here that their prophets will descend, the festival begins.
Amir, a resident, said in Jerusalem the air is oppressive. It is heavy with history, religion, and conflict. Here, in Wadi Nisnas, breathing is much relaxed, he said.
“You can still feel the tension. But it is different from Jerusalem. We have lived together and we still do,” he said.
In 2006, this coexistence was threatened when rockets from Lebanon, the ones that Hezbollah fired from across the calm Mediterranean, struck the office of the newspaper that Tuma and Habibi edited. It killed at least two people. In those days, tension flared up again. Jews became suspicious of their Arab neighbours who didn’t criticize the Hezbollah leader and his organization, as one newspaper reported. It is then that Hassan Nasrallah managed to create a rift, it said.
But then, Wadi Nisnas managed to pick up the pieces from the doubt that raged in men’s minds and the festival once again showed them that there was a way out of this chaos and suspicion.
Artists got back to work, and the area was once again buzzing with tourists, and those seeking elusive peace. Wadi Nisnas to them became the oasis of peace. Similar projects were considered in other cities but never took off because tolerance is hard to find elsewhere, as one local put it.
“In Tel Aviv, there are mostly Jewish people. So, there’s no need. Jerusalem is the site of the conflict. Everyone wants a piece of it,” he said.
On the day we visited, school children from Hadera, a nearby city, filled the streets of the neighbourhood, chatting, and laughing.
It was a Wednesday, and the sun shone through the chinks in the parapets and on the huge graffiti infusing them with light, and energy. It was just before Christmas. Hanukkah had just concluded. An Arab Christian girl waited for customers at her house front. Her table was full of cookies and other Christmas sweets. In a shop window, Christmas decorations were displayed and red and green were the colors that stood out the most.
The festival today is the pride of Haifa.
“The experiment of Haifa was not repeated. This is a mixed city. The festival promotes coexistence of Arab and Jewish people,” our tour guide who belongs from Haifa said.
Built on the slope of Mount Carmel, and overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, Haifa, a mixed city, is the third largest city in Israel. Most of its Arab population is Christian and some of its Jewish people came from Russia. It also houses the Bahai Gardens, the pilgrimage site for the Bahais all over the world, and also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The terraced gardens that’s maintained by the followers of the Bahai faith is one of the most visited sites in Haifa.
While tourists walk down the northern slope, through the garden, the pilgrims walk up the mountain, stopping by its fountains to meditate.
When Israel claimed its statehood in 1948, it was at the Haifa port that Jewish immigrants landed. The city became the gateway for a new life in the Promised Land to the Jews who under the Right to Return, came to Israel, the land promised to them by God, in thousands. Most were fleeing persecution and displacement after the holocaust.
Elsewhere in Israel, in Jerusalem, or Tel Aviv, the stories of loss and war and identity accompanied us everywhere. In Jerusalem, it shouted from the Wailing Wall, from the Dome of the Rock, from the streets of the Old City, and in Tel Aviv, we listened to the narratives of death in the Holocaust Museum, in its party clubs where men and women drank away through the night to create an illusory world where who knows what tomorrow might bring.
But in Wadi Nisnas such stories were touched with a tinge of hope and optimism. In its unique walls, we saw that people wanted peace, they yearned for it.
In this neighborhood, we too became hopeful.
If there was ever a way out of conflict, Wadi Nisnas would be its first turn.
Chinki Sinha
Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, January 10, 2010
In Wadi Nisnas, hope screams silently from the walls, the terraces, and from the streets. In Haifa’s stronghold of coexistence, in Wadi Nisnas, artists saw what could have been if there had been no conflict, or wars, that have shaped Israel, its people, and their collective memory, or what could be if the people decided to move on and live together like they do in Wadi Nisnas.
In a country where the heroic Israeli narrative has not yet run its course, where forgetting their persecution over centuries is a sin and memorials built to remember the victims of the wars dot the landscape, where looking beyond the immediate has never been an alternative, in this small neighborhood where Jews, Christians and Muslims have lived together for years, stories of coexistence are everywhere painted, moulded and hung by the artists from all over the country on the walls ravaged by rockets.
From the blackened walls, from the balconies, they lead you to believe another way is out, that peace can be a possibility.
On such weary, grey walls, hope is the little white bird that some artist hung on a small balcony, peace is a graffiti on a crumbling building façade where an artist drew a safety pin in the shape of the Mediterranean Sea, bright blue, calm and beautiful. But the open ends of the safety pin speak of the Middle East’s dilemmas and tryst with elusive peace, the peace that exists in talks, in peoples’ dreams, in artists’ visions. It’s not closed, the region isn’t secure, and the loose ends need to be secured, that’s what the artist envisioned.
Sixteen years ago, the municipality of Haifa began the Holidays of Holidays celebration in December in the quaint neighbourhood of Wadi Nisnas, which in Arabic means Mongoose, an indigenous animal. Over the years, artists have created their pieces dictated by the different themes of the festival but much of the artwork revolves around personal stories of loss, and of hope like that of Haya Tuma, wife of Emil Tuma, a communist leader and one of the founders of Al-Ittihad, an Aradic newspaper, who also led the Haifa communist party with Emile Habibi. Emil was killed in the neighbourhood after he returned from Lebanon.
Haya’s marriage with Emil, an Arab Orthodox Christian, personified Jewish-Arab unity in a country torn apart by strife. Haya met Emil when she was 18 and married him a couple of years later. For the Jewish bride, her marriage also opened windows to the other side – the story of the Palestinian suffering - and she learned to mourn for the Palestinians, and hoped to leap over the chasm to the other side.
Haya, a ceramic artist, came to live in Wadi Nisnas with her husband. To the wife, her husband became her canvas, her story. In the narrow alleys, in cramped quarters, her artworks speak of her love, and her desperation, its deep sadness, too. They also speak of her hope that another way is possible, of peace that is not so elusive after all, and of countless lost opportunities for the Jewish and Arab people who could have buried the turmoil and the angst long ago.
So, on a wall in one of the alleys near the market, Haya Tuma nailed her vision, and her despair.
There’s a wooden door. Above the door, what seems like a framed wedding photograph of Haya Tuma and Emil Tuma, hangs. In its sepia shades, in its shredded edges, a smiling, coy Haya looks radiant. It’s the picture of their union, of an alternative.
Next to the wooden door, there’s a large key that hangs from the wall. But there’s no keyhole. In a way it symbolizes the Arab dilemma, of its refugee status, our guide explained.
“There’s space for all, for Arabs, too. But we have to find it. Just like how Haya saw it. There’s the key but there’s no keyhole. It’s a political artwork,” our guide said.
Haya made the artwork in 2001. She died in 2008. After her death, her son Michael Tuma, who is an artist in Germany, opened up her trunk and found the little pieces of ceramics she had made and stuck them on in the shape of a tree in the parking lot of the neighborhood across from where Haya’s artworks from the past hang in her memory and as a tribute to her vision.
This experiment in coexistence that started 16 years ago has now become one of the major celebrations in the city and many come to walk through the undulating lanes of the neighborhood including school children from nearby cities and tourists who want to see a different side of the conflict.
In this little space, in its alleys that lead nowhere in particular, people, it seems, have realized that life is too short for such a long conflict, it’s perhaps too short to even count the losses, too short to remain victims whichever side you belonged to. So, when they step out of their homes, and walk to the bus stop, or to their shops, they glance at the graffitis calling for change, for a solution to the division of people, of lovers, of humanity, depicting the horrors of the war like the graffiti next to the door that Haya put up that says “somebody live here in 1948” , and they feel emboldened, part of the courage in the artworks infecting them. For art, and love and peace, are contagious, and someday in future, they can look out across the sea, or the desert, across the grey security wall, and look at the warring countries where many of them have friends and families, and wave to them, or invite them for meals, or dinners.
But that hope for peace was once close to being buried under the debris of the building that the rockets from Lebanon struck killing at least two people.
At a shop, many locals sat drinking thick Turkish coffee and chatting in between the puffs of their cigarettes. Ever since, the municipality began the experiment, the neighborhood is full of people in December – tourists, school children, everyone. In December, at the culmination or the onset of three important festivals – Christmas, Hanukkah, and Muharram or Eid – of the three major faiths all of which lay claim on Jerusalem for it here that they were born and it is here that their prophets will descend, the festival begins.
Amir, a resident, said in Jerusalem the air is oppressive. It is heavy with history, religion, and conflict. Here, in Wadi Nisnas, breathing is much relaxed, he said.
“You can still feel the tension. But it is different from Jerusalem. We have lived together and we still do,” he said.
In 2006, this coexistence was threatened when rockets from Lebanon, the ones that Hezbollah fired from across the calm Mediterranean, struck the office of the newspaper that Tuma and Habibi edited. It killed at least two people. In those days, tension flared up again. Jews became suspicious of their Arab neighbours who didn’t criticize the Hezbollah leader and his organization, as one newspaper reported. It is then that Hassan Nasrallah managed to create a rift, it said.
But then, Wadi Nisnas managed to pick up the pieces from the doubt that raged in men’s minds and the festival once again showed them that there was a way out of this chaos and suspicion.
Artists got back to work, and the area was once again buzzing with tourists, and those seeking elusive peace. Wadi Nisnas to them became the oasis of peace. Similar projects were considered in other cities but never took off because tolerance is hard to find elsewhere, as one local put it.
“In Tel Aviv, there are mostly Jewish people. So, there’s no need. Jerusalem is the site of the conflict. Everyone wants a piece of it,” he said.
On the day we visited, school children from Hadera, a nearby city, filled the streets of the neighbourhood, chatting, and laughing.
It was a Wednesday, and the sun shone through the chinks in the parapets and on the huge graffiti infusing them with light, and energy. It was just before Christmas. Hanukkah had just concluded. An Arab Christian girl waited for customers at her house front. Her table was full of cookies and other Christmas sweets. In a shop window, Christmas decorations were displayed and red and green were the colors that stood out the most.
The festival today is the pride of Haifa.
“The experiment of Haifa was not repeated. This is a mixed city. The festival promotes coexistence of Arab and Jewish people,” our tour guide who belongs from Haifa said.
Built on the slope of Mount Carmel, and overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, Haifa, a mixed city, is the third largest city in Israel. Most of its Arab population is Christian and some of its Jewish people came from Russia. It also houses the Bahai Gardens, the pilgrimage site for the Bahais all over the world, and also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The terraced gardens that’s maintained by the followers of the Bahai faith is one of the most visited sites in Haifa.
While tourists walk down the northern slope, through the garden, the pilgrims walk up the mountain, stopping by its fountains to meditate.
When Israel claimed its statehood in 1948, it was at the Haifa port that Jewish immigrants landed. The city became the gateway for a new life in the Promised Land to the Jews who under the Right to Return, came to Israel, the land promised to them by God, in thousands. Most were fleeing persecution and displacement after the holocaust.
Elsewhere in Israel, in Jerusalem, or Tel Aviv, the stories of loss and war and identity accompanied us everywhere. In Jerusalem, it shouted from the Wailing Wall, from the Dome of the Rock, from the streets of the Old City, and in Tel Aviv, we listened to the narratives of death in the Holocaust Museum, in its party clubs where men and women drank away through the night to create an illusory world where who knows what tomorrow might bring.
But in Wadi Nisnas such stories were touched with a tinge of hope and optimism. In its unique walls, we saw that people wanted peace, they yearned for it.
In this neighborhood, we too became hopeful.
If there was ever a way out of conflict, Wadi Nisnas would be its first turn.
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