Ken Saro-Wiwa
Jobless as I sometimes am , i felt like adding a new post to today's archives . You know , for some reason , I keep on remembering a story I read , Ken Saro-Wiwa's ' Africa kills her Sun ' . Nice abstract title , huh ?Written in the form of a condemned man's last letter to his former girlfriend, “Africa Kills Her Sun” constitutes a dark satire on the effects of corruption and in Nigerian society and Africa in general. Democracy came too late to save the author. Saro-Wiwa was imprisoned first in 1993 and again in 1994 for his political activism on behalf of his native Ogoni people ... He was executed by the Nigerian Millitary in 1995, his death provoking international outrage . The story is based in a prison in Nigeria as three men on death row go through their final moments . One of the very poignant moments of the story is perhaps when the protagonist justifies his becoming a bandit by citing the example of an Italian prostitute who looked at prostitution as just another profession . Fed up with the corruption in the system , he also claims to have turned into a bandit , which according to him is just another occupation in the land of the unjust . He made a choice , just as he makes a choice in the end when he stands up to the biased judge and demands death penalty . Standing in the swirling whirlpool of the mundane life that one finds in pilani , it is rather strange that I refer to a story in war-torn Nigeria . It is just that , as far-fetched to the context the characters might be , it is their ability to stand apart from the crowd and make their own choices , that makes them special . Today most of us are part of a framework of teeming billions - our soceity . We do what we are told , and any deviation is looked down upon . The fire in our hearts is constrained till one day it becimes ice and the person becomes a automaton - the ideal member of a soceity . Our life becomes more and more directionless as we continue in searches that we often don't even believe in . We end up in a controlled streamlined life that goes on in one direction . We become a digit in the infinite matrix of modern-day life . Just waiting to be erased with our physical demise .
Number deleted .
This process is continuous .
As we transform .
From human to hydrocarbon .
Was that your dream , gentlemen ?
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