Random Reality

It has been a rather beautifully horrible day. I am sitting by myself in my room in front of a very dirtily arranged desk. My old desktop screen flickers as the voltage in the room dips momentarily, threatening diabolically of another imminent power cut. The hoarse croaking sound of my neighbor’s 40 year old radio continues to rattle my nerves as my jobless reverie suffers jolt after jolt from its harsh static. I wonder why I’m still not used to it. This radio has been my 90 year old neighbor’s main occupation from the time he retired. Stripped down to its barest of workings, the days of man and machine are spent in violating the known axioms of durability, as the shaky hands of the old man caresses the insides of the radio with the care of a passionate lover.

A dying fire glowed in the bluish haze of the room. A few of its haggard occupants gave unintentional shivers. The crass voices of the vultures frequenting the graveyard all around them cut through the silence of the night. The continuous creaking of crickets blends with the gentle rustling of the dry leaves of the burnt forest nearby. As he looks around, despair and defeat stares back at him. Tired faces branded with the jaded looks that comes with continuous fights for years. And at the first ray of the sun, in a few hours, the first battle-horns will ring out, putting an end to all of it.

All of it.

He stands up.

The old man, Mr. Mitra, was very active even at this age. In spite of the several ailments, age related and otherwise, he would wake up at 4 A.M. everyday notwithstanding the season or temperature. He maintained one of the most beautiful gardens in the neighborhood. He would then meticulously make his way to the milk shop, standing first in line with the happy excitement of a child less than tenth his age. I would often meet him as I was shepherded towards my school by my mother, rubbing my eyes with all my might. He would always be ready with a tooth-less smile and an endearing word of encouragement.

A hush descends on the room as he stands up. The moans come to a gentle and steady end. The floorboards creak as he steps forward. All the eyes in the room follow each of his movements. His black cape swishes as he stands in the middle of the room. He looks around.

‘They have us. Our Armies have been eradicated in the North. The help promised will not come. The firebirds of the enemy have scared the clan chiefs into hiding or submission.’

He looks around again.

‘Tomorrow’s the last day. You can either go and surrender and plead to the better sense of the enemy. Or you can charge alongside me for one last time. It was an honor serving alongside you gentlemen. ’

Since I was very small, I had just seen him and his equally ancient and wrinkled wife, going about their work. I often used to wonder what happened to their children. I knew of a married daughter who lived not-so-far-off. Her appearances at the home were at best seldom, a rather eventful occurrence that the old couple used to look forward with much enthusiasm. But the visits hardly ever ended on a happy note. We could often hear a broken down Mrs.Mitra groaning in between sobs. After a particularly bad argument, the daughter announced that she wanted nothing to do with her parents anymore. Mrs.Mitra never really recovered from that shock. She spent the rest of her days as a delusional wreck muttering something like, “If only he was alive, he wouldn’t have let her…” …

She died within a year.

The first rays of an orange sun shone on the red battle fields. The once green fields, now ravaged by the terrible firebirds of the enemy bore a parched look, sadistically thirsting for the blood of them who had fought for her well-being and independence. The sweet notes of a parakeet singing on the lone burnt tree in the middle of the battle-field wafted through the sleepy minds on both sides of the field. A drummer was rudely nudged. Grumbling he made his way to the front of the ranks. Thankfully, it was all ending soon.

A disciplined band of men made their way out of the wooden mansion. Their leader kneeled once. ‘For you, mother’, he muttered.

I had often wanted to know who the old lady had been referring to. She had been quite close to us. And her small eccentricities made her very close to the children of the locality. She was obsessed with cartoons and adventure movies. A rather chatty lady, I remember spending hours as a toddler arguing about Tom and Jerry and Dragonball-Z. The latter was her favorite.

As the enemy formations became visible at the other side, the paltry group of fighters halted for once. The leader looked at them. A steady set of eyes looked back at him.

It was time. The remnants of the Royal Army broke into a run. A volley of shots rang out. The leader felt a shearing pain in his arm. He kept on running. Several shots were fired at will. He felt his whole body going numb. Falling…

And that was how Mr.Mitra’s ten year old sleep-walking son had fallen to his death while enacting the last show of Rana Pratap that he had heard in the radio the day before.

‘For you, mother’, he muttered…

Rainy Day Stories

I always loved the rains. May be it had something to do with the fact that I lived in one of the hottest and most humid parts of the country. But notwithstanding the relief of a sudden dip in the temperature on a hot day, perhaps my friendship with the rains lay somewhere else.

A small child walking back from school, expertly escaping the umbrella that his persevering grandfather tries to keep on his head. Shaking the trees for a bit of an extra drench, jumping on every small puddle that has collected in the crevices on the broken road…

As both my parents used to stay away for long periods for their work when I was growing up, most of my early childhood was spent under the watchful eyes of my grandparents. Dear souls as they were, they were more a bit paranoid about me going out, even to the immediate neighborhood. That part of my life was spent in a virtual curfew. I remember going up to the terrace when the first showers would come. And then the sky and I would shed tears together…

‘Rain, feel it on my finger tips
Hear it on my window pane
Your love’s coming down like
Rain, wash away my sorrow
Take away my pain
Your love’s coming down like rain…’

My curfew ended as I grew older, but my affair with the rain never did. The neighbors soon got used to yours truly bounding out at the first crack of thunder and doing a rather unseemly rain-dance on the road on or on the terrace. I never really cared for their disapproving glances, and was still doing it when my initial comrades had joined their parents on the balconies, giving me dirty looks…

Crazy football in the rain… sloshing around to find the ball in the mud pools… paper boats on the flooded streets… shuffling in quietly with a trail of mud, trying to escape mom’s wrathful glance… freshly made Pakoras with steaming tea…

I was very much a nerd and a loner in High School. Branded with the fire-stamp of mediocrity by my very own friends, I was never really a popular person. I often used to hide inside a shell of dreams and fake happiness that I had built around myself from getting hurt. I remember having lengthy conversations with the rains at that point. I would tell everything to it, everything that I wanted to tell to that very special friend that I didn’t have. I liked to think that it was responding to it, as the gentle rumblings of thunder comforted me… I would talk and talk till the rains had long stopped, and I would be sitting there, shivering terribly, muttering little insignificant tit-bits…

‘I guess it’s time I run far, far away; find comfort in pain,
All pleasure’s the same; it just keeps me from trouble.
Hides my true shape, like Dorian Grey.
I’ve heard what they say, but I’m not here for trouble.
It’s more than just words: it’s just tears and rain…’


But then again, may be the rain wasn’t satisfied with the passive role it was playing. One day, as I was returning to my home, it started in torrents. As I rushed into a broken shed for shelter, a quick shy glance around told me that it had another very washed up, very special occupant. A brilliant smile of recognition flashed on both sides. People say that the following minutes belong to a sun-kissed day and a brilliant weather. But the magical moments that followed were still the happiest of my life… A few minutes a rain-kissed ebullient couple ran out into the road to the Golgappa-wallah on the opposite side… That week heard the first and hoarsest voiced sweet nothings that I have ever uttered…


Living raindrops playing on your bare skin. Ecstasy.

1942, A 10 Paisa Coin and Other Stories

It started off like so many stories do, in that shady little place beside the fountain of light where the memories of generations and the experiences of a lifetime time blend to produce a singular moment, the moment of a lifetime.

Running. Through the dried up paddy fields and the burnt down villages. Two lonely souls. Running. Running from their past and from the ones that they held dearest to their heart. Running.

When I was small, I had this strange fascination with coins. No, I was not a collector; I never had the patience to be one. I was more interested in amassing this huge number of coins. May be it was just Uncle Scrooge cartoons rubbing off on me, but making tiny buildings out of columns of coins was a very favorite past-time of mine.

There’s no light for miles around. Only the moonlight plays around the foggy path, like wisps of luminosity trapped in a magical mesh. Suddenly the girl sits down. She can’t run anymore… The boy stops too. Their eyes meet, and a silent plea is conveyed. The boy comes up to her and takes the sack she is carrying. The girl quietly brushes aside a teardrop. Weakness has never been a luxury that she could afford.

The smallest coin still well in circulation when I was that age was the 10 paisa coin. Quite naturally, scant changes that used to find its way into my hands at that point of time would invariably end up with the nearest grocer in exchange for the equal amount in 10 paisa coins. This being the least troublesome of my eccentricities (pyromania being the other one (:-)) my family humored me.

A Japanese plane flies overhead, for a moment drowning the sound of the crickets eerily resounding through the area, as it hurries to wreck havoc. The couple keeps on crouching many minutes after the plane has left. They finally muster up enough courage to move. The deathly still of the night rustles in protest as they run through it into the villages that come in sight. But its all in vain, most of the villages have been burnt down by the bombings or are graves after the deadly famine of the ’42 summer…

Not that this habit of mine of mine did not come with its share of hazards. Anyone and everyone in need of loose change would often just grab a handful of my precious collection. A 3 year old cousin of mine even got one of them stuck up his nose, something that had to be operated on to make right. My little hobby lost lots of patrons that day…

They slowly trudge out from the last forest into a clearing. A sharp gasp escapes them. In front of them is the magnificent Ganga, sparkling like a magical carpet, as millions of narcissistic stars gaze down on it and admire their own beauty.

The end of the journey is near…

The couple starts on one last tired trot on the river bank…

The final nail on the coffin for my hobby was however when the government decided to stop minting anything lower than 50 paisa. Soon, it was very hard to find abundant 10 paisa coins in the market. And pocket money being on the few things unaffected by inflation, I could not change to 50 paisa coins either. My columns of coins soon disappeared, with chocolates and chips being the most favored investments…

They near a enormous structure, a steel grey structure shining dully in the moonlight, giving a glum proud reminder to the world around it of its superiority and strength as if reaches for the skies. The couple stand staring at the steel arches stretching from one side to the other, binding the mighty Ganga in man’s steel grasps. They see a ghat at a distance, one that in later times would be known as the Howrah Bridge Ghat. The holy threads on the trees around the ghat tell them that the place is holy. The girl goes down to the water and puts some of the holy water on her head. At a distance thousands of coins are spread all over the riverbed by pilgrims… The boy keeps on staring at them…

A couple of weeks ago, I was coming back from Howrah, when this apologetic auto-driver suddenly handed me a handful of 10 paisa coins to make up for the remaining change. Cliché as it might sound; I suddenly felt a sad tinge for those funny little habits of old. Not complaining, I pocketed it.

There is this place on the bridge, from which the religious people throw down coins to the river below. For the first time, I felt this over-powering urge to join them.

Rushing to the thronging footpath, I threw down one of the 10 paisa coins…

On the other side of the river is their future home, the Land of Dreams and Shadows, the City. They will start their life afresh, together. They walked up from the Ghat and started walking along the bridge. When they were halfway there the boy stopped. He removed a small bag from his back and opened it. A solitary coin shone back at him…

And at that point, for the first and last time in his life, my grandfather had taken out the coin and thrown it into the river praying for good luck…

And the magnificent rivers of time and water kept on flowing silently into eternity …

Remembering a True People’s Uprising – Tiananmen Square

This June marked the rather unceremonious 20th Anniversary of one of the most singular uprisings against a totalitarian regime that the world has ever seen. In this month of June in 1989, a peaceful protest to demand for greater democracy in China became one of the most enduring symbols of human courage in the face of fire.

Tiananmen Square. The very name had become associated with the most brutal repressions of a populist movement for a whole generation. In a year that saw the end of Communist regimes throughout the world, the intellectuals and students of China started organizing protests against the authoritarianism and market policies of the Communist Government. The death of Hu Yaobang, a liberal voice who was forced to resign from his post of Secretary General because of his pro-democracy stand, acted as a catalyst. Something that started off as a peaceful collection of students from Peking and Tsinghua Universities soon elevated. The officials refused to meet the students, even ordering the police to form cordons and keep students out of official institutions. This led to minor clashes. The state-run Chinese media however reported a distorted version of the nature of activities, something that backfired and ended up giving much-needed momentum to the protesters.



Police Brutalities on the protesters

The day before Hu Yaobang’s funeral, on 21st April, nearly 1,00,0000 students marched into Tiananmen Square. The authorities claimed that it was just ‘a segment of opportunists’, creating trouble. The next day a 50,000 strong assembly of students demanded that the statement be retracted. A complete strike in all universities was started and all communist associations in colleges were removed, with new associations setup in their place. Their next demand was the formalization of these associations and free media. The government rejected the proposed dialogue, only agreeing to talk to members of appointed student organizations. On 13 May, two days prior to the highly-publicized state visit by the reform-minded Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, huge groups of students occupied Tiananmen Square and started a hunger strike, insisting the government withdraw the accusation made in the People's Daily editorial and begin talks with the designated student representatives. Nearly a 1000 students went on hunger strike during these protests.

There was a large presence of foreign media due the visit of Gorbachev. Their coverage of the protests was extensive and generally favorable towards the protesters, but pessimistic that they would attain their goals. Toward the end of the demonstration, on 30 May, a statue of the Goddess of Democracy was erected in the Square. General Secretary Zhao Ziyang was ousted from his posts for his open support to the protesters.

On June 1st, soldiers from the 27th and 28th Regiments of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) were sent to suppress the protesters. There was widespread support for the protesters in PLA ranks as well, but these regiments had brought in from outside provinces.

As word spread that hundreds of thousands of troops were approaching from all four corners of the city, Beijingers flooded the streets to block them. People set up barricades at every major intersection. Protesters burned public buses and used them as roadblocks to stop the military's progress.



Carnage in the roads of Beijing

The battle continued on the streets surrounding the Square, with protesters repeatedly advancing toward the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and constructing barricades with vehicles, while the PLA attempted to clear the streets using tear gas, rifles, and tanks. In a couple of cases, officers were pulled from tanks, beaten and killed by protesters.

Meanwhile, the PLA had been given till 6:00 A.M. to clear the Square. They gave the protesters till 4:00 A.M. to clear it. While the protesters were debating on the further course of action, three armored cars rolled into the Square and opened fire on the protesters. Around 4:00 AM several tanks crashed into the square, crushing vehicles and humans under their treads.

On the morning of 5 June protesters tried to enter the blocked square but were shot at by the soldiers. The soldiers shot them in the back when they were running away.
The Chinese Red Cross put the estimate of people killed at 2,600 and the number of people wounded at 7000-10000. Other estimates on the number of people killed range from 3700 (by a PLA defector) to 10000 (Russian Intelligence).


Dead bodies lying around near Tiananmen Square

The Chinese Government categorically denied the firing of a single shot and in an official statement said that there were no mortalities.

The suppression of the protests were immortalized by the video and photographs of a lone man in a white shirt standing in front of a column of tanks attempting to drive out of Tiananmen Square. The pictures depicted the unarmed man standing in the center of the street, halting the tanks' progress. As the tank driver attempted to go around him, the "Tank Man" moved into the tank's path. He continued to stand defiantly in front of the tanks for some time, finally climbing up onto the turret of the lead tank to speak to the soldiers inside.


The 'Tank Man' stopping the Tanks - It is said he was killed soon after

Tiananmen Square effectively spelt the end of the pro-Democracy Movement in China. The controls over media were strengthened with sympathizers of the protesters removed from public life. All written records of Tiananmen Square were removed.
Despite early expectations in the West that PRC government would soon collapse and be replaced by the Chinese democracy movement, by the early 21st century the Communist Party of China remained in firm control of the People's Republic of China, and the student movement which started at Tiananmen was in complete disarray after the death of most of its leaders.

This month marks the 20th Anniversary of this gruesome turn of events. The new generation of Chinese students being mostly unaware of them, there was hardly anything to commemorate it.

There has been a lot of talk about how India should follow the Chinese system. Twenty years ago, in this very month, the Chinese showed us their system. Are we sure we want to follow it?