"Manreet Sodhi Someshwar is a gifted writer of great promise. I have a gut feeling we have a new star rising in Punjab's literary horizon. She has an excellent command of English and a sly sense of humour."
With BJP-led NDA sweeping the elections and having swept the Congress into the dumpster of history likely, people (such as myself) who are labelled “sickular”, “libtard” and other such delectably deranged slurs, are declaring the death of the republic, bemoaning the end of the idea of India, questioning the existence of secular-liberal ideology in India. Moot points, all. Here’s what I think.
Secularism/liberalism are not foreign to India. Instead of the neat ideals that these two words conjure, a vast majority of Indians have traditionally lived in harmony with others, always smug and snug in the belief that their faith/religion/way of life is superior but they have to coexist with the neighbour whose way of life is different (read ‘inferior’). It was a cheerful disdain for the other, which worked quite well for us for a long enough time period.
What has changed?
The playbook of identity politics, which Indira Gandhi finessed, has now been taken by the BJP and updated for contemporary hi-tech times. The general public (read majority Hindus) believe that Congress encourages the basest in the minority groups to use as a wedge against the majority. (I have seen this at close quarters growing up in Punjab when Mrs G’s sponsorship of Bhindranwale threatened another Partition.) Let’s just say the chickens have come home to roost.
Meanwhile, for all those crowing about Congress-Mukt Bharat. Let’s just be clear that Indians have voted for passion over reason - a primal response when tribalism is invoked. It is bigotry, plain and simple, the othering of those who are in a minority. Be it Brexit, Trump or Modi. We can hope that this mandate will be used to deliver development and not frittered over make-believe battles with our neighbours.
Baaki, the journey is long, and there is a shayr for every season (and reason).
Dil na summed to nahin nakaam hi to hai
Lambi hai gham ki shaam magar shaam hi to hai. Faiz
What India needs? Another Gandhi, not in terms of what he preached, but a person who can sell us a story of India we can all believe in and run with. Maha - atma. Hai koi?
I woke up today determined to be normal. To prepare tea with which I wake up my daughter daily, ready her breakfast, change into exercise gear, walk her to school, go to Central Park for a run. But overnight the definition of ‘normal’ had changed. A man who grabbed every conceivable prejudice against every available minority - women, Blacks, Muslims, Jews, gays, differently-abled - had hurled it to such astonishing effect as to win the presidency of the United States! A sexist, racist, misogynist hypocrite was voted to power and all prejudices had been rendered normal.
Meanwhile, my daughter, had one question, her eyes wide as chrysanthemums: What is going to happen?
I maintained a semblance of normalcy as I tried not to squint at the New York Times, lit the morning diya, we did our puja and wrapped our arms in a family hug - extra tight today as we huddled for something usual, familiar, normal - before heading out on our respective paths. All the while, the question - What is going to happen? - ran ticker tape through my mind. I remember asking that same question of my parents in the 80s when school days were regularly punctuated by curfew days, when hit lists interfered with my reading lists and people evoked 1947 as if it was a relative who’d gone missing had returned.
What is going to happen?
My parents kept their chins up, heads down, as they determinedly plowed their way through the morass of that time. They were Punjabis and Punjabis know a thing or two about the way life can abruptly upend itself, when all you have can be snatched away in one stroke, be it in the wake of Abdali’s rampage or the whirlwind of Partition. If you’ve seen the earth crack beneath your feet, if you’ve fled with your young children straddling your waist and shoulders, if you’ve deposited the dead by the roadside because the kafila cannot wait to cremate the countless falling off like flies, then when the question arises -What is going to happen? - you tell your child either of two things. You look your child in the eye and say: You’re my sher puttar. And the child knows, you don’t get to be a tiger cub for nothing. And then you bless them. In a land where calamity can arrive with the unpredictability of a dust storm, the exhortation-as-blessing always is: Keep living. And the child learns, you can determine to live.
As M and I walked down to her school, that is what I tried to tell her.
Then I went to the park, a book in my hand. And I sat on a bench and watched a pin oak leaf spiral its way down in the light breeze. The mellow sun lit a gentle fire in the auburn tupelo and I feasted my eyes on it. I watched a sparrow dip its feathers in a puddle, shake them, dip them again, the wet flutter of its wings informing me of its joy. I watched a black poodle pup sit on its haunches as a woman instructed him. She arced a red ball in the air, his body shivered with excitement, but he had to wait until her command: Go! Then he shot like an arrow.
There is joy in the world, abundant joy and beauty in small things, and I wanted to feast my senses on them to rid my body of its gloom.
The book I am reading is ‘Auschwitz and After’. A holocaust memoir by a French resistance fighter called Charlotte Delbo who survived Auschwitz but lived with it all her life. The book is assigned reading for a course I am taking: Representing Trauma in Literature. When I started college this Fall and chose this course, I returned from my first class and told hubby that there were only three men out of a total class size of 25.
He laughingly remarked: Why do you women have such trauma in your lives?
Today, November 9, 2016, the world has awoken or is going to bed with the knowledge that a man accused of sexual assault by a dozen or more women has been elected President of the world’s foremost democracy. Do we need any more evidence that the world is principally skewed against one-half of its population? That we live in a world that is sexist and openly demeaning of women’s quest to be treated as equal citizens? That a superbly qualified woman with a 30-year record of public service will be sidelined for a bullying blustering blob of orange?
That trauma - in one form or another - is a woman’s legacy?
And yet, there will be November 10, and 11 and the days will unfold in the unceasing march of time. What is going to happen? The Bhagavad Gita says that at each juncture in life we have a choice. From that choice follow consequences. The doing of one’s duty is the path of the karma yogi. The reward of one’s life doesn’t hang like a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. The living of a good life is itself life’s reward.
So, this is what’s going to happen. We are going to Keep Living, and Keep Being Tigers, and Keep Raising Tiger Cubs. And the consequences of our karma will right the world, one day at a time, one choice at a time.
A fine headline to be greeted with this morning, on October 2, the day of Gandhi Jayanti. Made me check my calendar to confirm it wasn’t 30th January.
To all those bandying their jingoism the past few days, jung mubarak, you’re welcome to your war. How comforting it must be to thump your chests as you listen to Ornob and approve ‘surgical strikes’. Us folks who live on the border - 553 Kms of Ferozepur, Fazilka, Amritsar, Tarn Taran, Gurdaspur, Pathankot - teetering forever on Radcliffe’s line, are fleeing; leaving behind, yet again, our homes, our land, our crops, our selves.
But, I digress. Happee budday, Bapu! (that’s how we say it in Punjab). If you don’t feel like partying with the chest thumpers, join us as we hastily evacuate and scramble away from the border, sweat lining our sweaters in the autumnal chill, a thousand questions on our minds. Who will harvest the rice? Feed the buffalos? Where will we find shelter? How far before we can rest? Will Pakistan also do surgical strikes? Or will its tanks roll across the border like in ’71? Will we have a home to return to? We have no plan - we were ordered to ‘Evacuate at once!’ - but once we find shelter, in a gurdwaras perhaps, we can swap stories.
You can tell us about the Purana Qila of Delhi, the same Old Fort where in 1947 you found Muslim refugees huddling from the tyranny of their Hindu brothers, much as the Pandavas had sought refuge from the Kauravas as the Mahabharata says. And I can tell you about fleeing from home astride my father’s shoulders, ducking into bushes as sirens sounded, crying when my embroidered jutti slipped off my foot and my father paused in flight as he searched for that one shoe even as the PAF fighter planes threatened to incinerate us any moment …
When the war passed and we returned home to ‘normalcy’, we exchanged stories with friends and neighbors as we recalled our flights. We have so many stories, Bapu, the night will pass before you can blink an eye. For a people used to evacuating upon a crisp command, stories are all we can carry. And in an amnesiac nation (not a single memorial to Partition), stories are all we have.
On the 39th death anniversary of Shiv Kumar Batalvi, am sharing an earlier post.
It was Amrita Pritam who coined that particular epithet for Shiv Kumar Batalvi. Birha is a Punjabi word that connotes the grief of separation from a beloved, and it was Baba Farid who declared birha a crowning emotion with his verse, birha, birha aakhiye, birha toon sultan.
Batalvi, widely regarded as a peerless modern Punjabi poet, trawled through the landscape of romance and its adscititious angst, his lyrical verse exploring unrequited love, premonitions of death, and the inviolable bond between an artist and his creativity. Such is his oeuvre that growing up in Punjab, it is common to confuse his verses with folk songs – such is their popularity with the masses. Thus along with lathe di chaadar, and jugni, and Heer, I heard maye ni maye and got introduced to Batalvi, subliminally, which is the gift of culture. It was only in my teens that I became aware that there were actual poets, with specific names and bios, behind the songs that I took for granted and hummed and heard being hummed around me all the time. The de rigueur rendition of Heer at weddings was copyright a certain Waris Shah, aka the Shakespeare of Punjabi! During my teenage years, confounded by hormones and the separatist movement of Khalistan, I debated with my extended family on questions of identity and often, the discussion was rounded off with a final quip ‘Bullah ki jaana main kaun’ This Bullah, I discovered, was Baba Bullah Shah, a revered 18th-century Sufi poet whose humanist verses are woven into the fabric of Punjabi. It was inevitable then that I would eventually discover Batalvi.
My mother, practical and no-nonsense at best of times, was dreamy-eyed when she first told me about the poet behind the familiar maye ni maye main ik shikra yaar banaya. He was the Byron of Punjab, she said, on what sounded suspiciously like a sigh, and I understood. Like a typical convent-school child I was familiar with the poetry and romance around George Gordon Lord Byron, the handsome poet with a limp and a penchant for romantic poetry, who allegedly left women swooning behind curtained windows when they glimpsed him walking down the street. Unh-hunh! a Punjabi Byron, I thought, what a poser. But I was young and had much to learn.
When I started exploring the ‘myth’ of this Punjabi Byron – for what else could it be, thought my cocky/read ignorant/ self – I came across comparisons with Keats as well. Shiv Kumar Batalvi was widely viewed through the prism of English romantic poets by people educated in English; for the semi-literate average Punjabi he was the empathetic poet who spoke to them directly with his down-to-earth metaphors, his soaring lyricism and his aching poignancy.
Batalvi was born in 1936 in West Punjab and his family moved to Indian Punjab after partition. That severing of the state into half was not the final tribulation for Punjab, which was to go through further subdivisions on the basis of language. In the fifties and sixties, the linguistic basis used for the division of India’s states was employed by the political parties in Punjab to further their respective agendas. In the ensuing imbroglio between the Akalis and Jan Sangh, Punjabi was hijacked as a language of the Sikhs, and consequently not of Punjabi Hindus who took to aligning with Hindi. In such an environment, Batalvi, a Punjabi Hindu, wrote poetry in his mother tongue Punjabi. Aided by his handsome looks, and his powerful voice, he recited his verses to packed audiences in Kavi Darbars across the states. He touched a chord with people and his popularity boomed. He gave the state back its language, free of the burden of caste or class. It was a parallel with his own life where he had been unable to marry the woman he loved because of caste and class differences. All that angst went into his poetry and no wonder the common Punjabi responded to it with a deep sense of empathy.
Batalvi himself was not very well-educated. He flitted across several educational institutions before settling down to work as a Patwari, a job that his frustrated father had arranged for him. The work of a land-record clerk had him visiting fields and farms. This kept him in close contact with the flora and fauna of Punjab and the illiterate peasantry of the countryside, and provided him with the visual imagery and earthy metaphors that propelled his haunting lyrics.
As I discovered, in the case of Shiv Kumar Batalvi, the myth was reality, phoenix-like. The man was seen as a modern-day Ranjha, the fabled lovelorn hero of Punjabi poetic legend, who sang his own compositions. He published his first collection of poetry at the age of 24, is the youngest writer to be feted with India’s highest literary award, the Sahitya Akademy, at the age of 28, became a legend in his lifetime, and was dead at the age of 35.
Personally, I re-discovered Batalvi in the mid-nineties when I was working in Mumbai. The physical distance from home, the palpable ache that came from not witnessing green fields, the bland spinach disguised as saag served in restaurants, made me yearn for home. It was then that I chanced upon Jagjit Singh’s rendition of ‘Birha the Sultan’. Hearing Batalvi transported me. I did not understand the lyrics completely but it was okay, I was in my comfort zone.
The remarkable thing about any great piece of art is that it reveals itself progressively. Which means that it is possible to discover new facets of the same composition/article/sculpture years onward. It happened with me when I started to write myself. I had never envisaged a writing career, and the thought that I would one day write a historical novel that would deal with the 20th century history of Punjab was a definite mirage. And yet, I did. I spent hours poring over history books and fiction and listening to interviews and talking to people who had been witness to that history to write my book. Writing found me, it led me to that particular project and I followed. And it was during that phase that I connected with Batalvi again.
In his poem, Eh mera geet kise na gaana, Batalvi talks about the bond between the artiste and his art, the gift and gift’s burden, one that is forged from beyond the time of birth. And consequently, the extent to which the link is permanent and inviolable. Witness:
Eh mera geet dharat ton maila
Sooraj jed puraana,
Kot janam ton piya asaahnu
Is da bol handaahna.
This song of mine is more soiled than the earth
older than the sun,
for several births I have had to live
with the weight of its words.
The psychologist Steven Pinker in The Blank Slate, his path-breaking book that explores the nurture versus nature debate expounds that human beings are not born ‘clean’. Instead our genetic baggage is a large determinant of the lives we lead. It might be new to the world of science but intuitively ‘genetic baggage’ is something writers have tussled with as part of their trade. What a writer writes springs from who they inherently are. It’s as simple as that. Of course, how a writer then leverages that raw material is entirely determined by the individual, but the wellspring, the fountain is all within.
Over my decade-long writing career the veracity of that has come to me, often. When I completed the manuscript of my first novel (published second), The Long Walk Home, the writing of which took me seven years, the theme of the book finally became apparent to me. It is a historical novel that uses 20th-century Punjab to tell the story of the life of one man, a layering of the epic with the intimate. The book explores how a man’s life is inextricably linked with the coordinates of his birth: place, family, religion, caste. In the prologue to the novel, which details the protagonist Harbaksh Singh Bhalla, is a passage as follows:
He died in the same town he was born, just short of his seventy-first birthday.
One could say that Harbaksh Singh Bhalla had not travelled far in life, literally and figuratively. A lifetime in one place can imply many things: a lack of wanderlust, an inordinate attachment to one’s roots, risk-aversion. Or inferences more practical can be made: lack of opportunity, ancestral property, family matters. Then there exist tenuous notions like the air of a place and how the spirit resonates to it, the smell of the earth and its connection with something deep and primitive within us, the songs of home and their dance in our veins.
It could well be a concoction of all the above – a heady mix of conflicting elements that gives rise to an equation at once complex and elementary. But equations, however tortuous, can never sum up a person. The best way to know a man may still be the only way: to walk in his shoes and live his life.
Genetic baggage can, and does, trip the best-laid plans and the noblest intentions. Welcome, Mr. Pinker, to our world! And while you are at it, listen to Jagjit Singh’s soulful rendition of ‘Eh mera geet’ or Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s haunting ‘Maye ni maye’. You might not understand the lyrics but the poetry will seep into you.
For those of you looking for a more contemporary rendition of Batalvi check ‘Ik kudi jeeda naam mohabbat’ from Rabbi or ‘Aj din chadya tere rang warga’ from the film Love Aaj Kal.
Happy Lohri folks! On the occasion of my bestest most favourite festival, am reposting an old Lohri post - enjoy with some nutty gachak :)
There are few pleasures in life that can compare with huddling around a bonfire on a chilly winter’s evening, munching on sesame seed-coated jaggery sweets, singing hoary songs, warming hands above the flames and testing how close the toe can really get to the burning logs without singeing one's socks!
That was how it seemed to me as a child, and now, twice-removed in time and space, the remembered pleasure still holds.
It arrived yearly on Lohri and now that I live outside Punjab its one festival I miss sorely. Lohri is all about bonfire bonhomie, gachak and gup, mungfali and mazaak. The day would start with a round of the neighbours for gathering out trove of treats for which we would lustily render Dullah Bhatti. Most of us kids knew the tune and some garbled lyrics and yet we delivered a virtuoso rendition for we ended up with full bags! The evening’s bonfire was followed by saag and makki roti – a meal I have always been partial to, unlike my brother with his unavoury comparisons of mustard greens with offal. Now that I am a mother I realize it is also a practical device for bringing children, high on all those sweets, down to earth.
The best Lohri was one where we were celebrating a new wedding or a first-born since such an occasion would warrant some serious singers in the gathering. Jugni was a perennial favourite, especially as it lends itself to raucous chorus from those in the gathering who don’t possess a blessed set of vocal chords. I remember one Lohri where an uncle gifted with a silvery voice and reputed for his rendition of Heer got so carried away that he would not stop singing the high pitched mournful song that is usually reserved for occasions other than Lohri. In time the gathering was in tears, the men weeping into their drinks and it took a forceful grand aunt to hustle the teary men into shape when she rapped the dholi and got the Bhangra beat going. It was after all a celebration of a new bride’s first pregnancy and what were the men getting soulful about?
Lohri marks the end of winter and the harvest of Rabi crop in Punjab. When we grow up in one place we take our traditions and customs for granted. I saw the harvested fields, the yards with blazing bonfires, the gathering of family and friends and I assimilated that it was a time of celebration, of being thankful, of Agni and Dullah Bhatti, and having a jolly good time in good ole Punjabi style.
But I have been out of Des long enough for my daughter to have grown up in Hong Kong – how then do I convey to her what Lohri is? Forced to articulate what is in my bones I turned to introspection, recollection, and meditation at that fount of omniscience, Google.
As I cohered my thoughts I learnt that Dullah Bhatti, that ubiquitous hero of our Lohri songs was quite a Robin Hood figure. I also gleaned a lesson on the secular fabric of Punjab. Bhatti was a Muslim who rescued a Hindu girl, adopted her and married her to a Hindu boy. Since there was no priest around to chant the hymns required to solemnize the marriage, Dullah lit a fire and composed an impromptu song. Sunder mundriye, tera kaun vichara, Dullah Bhatti wala oye, Dulleh ne teeh viahi oye, ser shakar payi! The bride and groom took the mandatory rounds of the fire as Dullah rendered his self-composition where he spoke of marrying his daughter and gifting her a kilo of sugar!
I love the story. Of course there are several versions of this tale – take your pick – but what is integral to each telling is the secular, chivalrous and joyful character of its hero, an archetype the average Punjabi lionizes.
The reason we light the bonfire is not only because it kills the chill on a winter’s evening – practical! – but also on 13 January the sun begins its northward journey – uttarayan – and winter officially ends. The worship of Sun is intrinsically linked to the Indus Valley, a custom more ancient than the Rig Veda from which comes the Gayatri mantra, the revered verse in praise of the Sun.
Armed with a compelling narrative, I initiate my daughter into the varied charms of Lohri. I tell her about my experience of Lohri as a child, of Dullah Bhatti, the Indian Robin Hood, our Halloweeny tradition of gathering sweets minus the scary masks, the offering and subsequent sharing of gachak with the blazing Agni. Blithely I render Jugni as well in my not so melodious voice, and teach her the chorus. And since Lohri is a good day to ask for blessings, on our way back from my daughter’s horse riding lesson, we stop at the Gurudwara.
She tucks into the pershad greedily, has a question about the keertan – is it always sung or can it be recited – and we walk back home, she skipping ahead of me, helped no doubt by the rich sweet she has relished. I walk behind, her school bag on my shoulder as a crisp Hong Kong winter day is morphing into evening. I see the bonfire in my mind and smile, happy with our singular celebration of Lohri.
Recently I received the sort of summons you dread when you live away from home. We are a typical expat family that has lived in rented apartments for all the years we’ve been working - home, therefore, is still the place I grew up in, the house my parents built, the four walls within which are ensconced the conspiracies of childhood, the place I have left behind so I can move ahead ...
My mother was abruptly hospitalized but due to the marvel of modern travel, I was by her hospital bedside within 12 hours. My mother is a force of nature, a person with tremendous will power, determination, capacity for hard work and that good ole Punjabi jigra. In my moments of deepest doubt, when I’ve needed to shore up my courage, I’ve closed my eyes and summoned her - and I know: with a mother like that, I’ve no business being a wuss.
And yet, parents, not even seemingly indomitable ones, are immune to the cycle of life. That day she was frail and I felt the baton pass as I realized that I had to, however inadequately, fill those shoes and mimic a courage I didn’t possess. I spent a week in the hospital arranging blood donors, tailing nurses, navigating hospital bureaucracy, procuring medicines, handling bedpans, feeding my mum - food, medicine, tonic, food - and as I zipped in-out of the hospital I encountered Salman Khan.
His brawny self draped in a tight-fitting suit, he was plastered against side walls, as the Bodyguard. The crumbling edifice of the Frances Newton Hospital, a venerable institution started by the American missionaries more than a century back, was in stark contrast to the glossy poster. FNH is the place where my siblings and I got our assorted childhood vaccinations, where my father convalesced after a heart attack, in whose chapel I prayed for his recovery, whose verdant lawns and brick walls were adjacent to my school, whose doctors saved my mother. And yet, the place is falling apart. Like the rest of Punjab.
It swarms with people - needy folks who travel from villages and the town itself because ‘Mishn Aspatal’ is a saviour. But their foreign aid has been cut, the government offers little assistance and, much like my mother, it echoes its former self. But, never mind, Salman Khan is there, the bouncer who is the new saviour of Punjab.
Lest anybody be in doubt, the aforesaid Bollywood film - in a general reflection on the state of us Indians - did exceedingly well at the BO and grossed gross revenues in the state of Punjab. While all Indians seem to be in need of escapist fare, the Punjabis seem to require it like oxygen.
Which is not surprising - the state is going down the drain. But since the deteriorating infrastructure means hardly any functioning drains, perhaps an accurate metaphor would be ‘getting polluted, filthy and stricken like the dying rivers which gave it its name’?
In my home town the pavements have disappeared. We have done the incredible - brought moon to Punjab as its residents navigate lunar surfaces to get from point A to B.
That Punjab isn’t the prosperous state it once was isn’t news any more. Mounting state debt (which has set the ruling SAD and the Opposition snarling at each other), falling agricultural incomes, mounting farmer suicides, rapidly poisoning water supply because of excessive use of pesticides, growing unemployment, degrading soil, and a declining sex ratio, are amongst its litany of woes.
No wonder the consumption of drugs has increased to a point where sociologists are labelling drug-addiction an epidemic in the state.
What do you do if you are a Punjabi youth, educated, with no job on hand? You escape reality - either through drugs or through Bollywood crap. And contend yourself with the tropes that Bollywood churns out for us: Singh is King! Really? Where?
As the state with the most precipitous decline in prosperity? Yes.
As the state with one of the worst gender ratios? Yes
Does Bollywood address the above issues? No. It is happy singing Singh is king and having the Singhs swallow it whole.
No wonder Bollywood heroine Kareena Kapoor has quipped: “My fans love me in a desi avatar, in a traditional salwar kameez look.” Does she know that in the state of the traditional salwar kameez, her fans also like to kill their girls? According to Census 2011, the Child sex ratio of Punjab is 846 females per 1000 males.
Since we, the Punjabis and the nation alike, are so besotted with Bollywood, let’s turn to Rockstar, the movie which released recently. Its music has been well received and a song, Sadda Haq, has got some enthusiastic nods.
‘Sadda Haq’ is a traditional rousing cry of the embattled Punjabi. I remember when my sister and her classmates in Medical College went on strike and ‘Sadda Haq’ was their constant refrain. It is time for Punjabis to raise that refrain again.
Our political leaders - be it SAD, congress or any other bad politico - are choking us with their self-serving greed and rampant corruption. They learnt from the British how to divide and rule and they haven’t stopped since. During Partition, they drove the Muslims out; during Khalistan movement, it was the Hindu-Sikh divide. The sad Akali Dal wants to to be the party of the Sikhs and yet, for all their flowing whiskers, they don’t understand the principal tenet of Sikhism - Ek Onkar, the oneness of God. The Congress only wants to oppose the sad Akalis and stay afloat by keeping a foot each in the Hindu and Sikh boat.
Gulzar saab says he cannot forget the sight of bloody corpses being scraped off the tarmac in the aftermath of Partition. I grew up during the Khalistan movement and, like others who witnessed those times, came away scarred. Which is why I wrote The Long Walk Home - lest we forget. And yet, in Shining India and Declining Punjab, we seem to have merrily shrugged off our history as we careen in a downward spiral.
Enough!
The way I see it, we have a choice: we can choose to escape or we can complete the refrain.
Sadda Haq, Aithe Rakh.
It’s time we looked beyond the political play and demanded our right - the right to good governance.
One of the blood transfusions my mother received was from my husband - I sat by her bedside and watched his good South Indian Brahmin blood course drop by drop through her proud Punjabi Jat Sikh veins. When she recovered, my mother proclaimed that my husband had saved her. Very dramatic, but very Punjabi too.
The state of Punjab needs new blood too - its time we cast our prejudices aside and demand the same of our leaders. Whether we are Hindu or Sikh, we need good governance, political propaganda isn’t going to save us.
Summer was an extended break, two months of idyll and then some more :) Getting back to the blinking cursor is that much harder, sigh! Following the news over the last month has been overwhelming - I am not sure I should encourage li'l M to read the headlines, they're terribly depressing: the mudslides in China, the floods in Pakistan, the Chilean miners, the hostage crisis in Manila...
Fin de siecle, the philosopher within would opine but Mirza Ghalib has something else to say. Read on to find out...
Identifying our victims
I remember the upturned boats strewn like boulders in the dusty yard of the Sessions Court in my hometown. They appeared to be an anomaly in the hot and dry plain where monsoon arrived in August after having mostly spent itself. Perplexed, I questioned my mother. For times of flood, she replied. Flood? I was eight years old and completely baffled by the prospect of water surging through our arid city, converting roads to canals. And yet, floods are integral to the story of Punjab – literally, the land of five rivers. Fed by Himalayan glaciers the rivers course through the plains, swelling in monsoon months and diminishing in winter. The ancient civilization of Indus Valley owes its origins to the fertile basin created by these rivers in the western part of the Indian subcontinent.
During the partition of British-ruled India into Muslim Pakistan and secular India, the five rivers of Punjab were apportioned between the two new nations – in a newly communal land even water was religiously denominated. Partition saw one of the largest migrations in history as nearly 15 million people moved borders for the relative safety of their religious majority. Punjab accounted for a bulk of the population exchange. I grew up in a border town in Indian East Punjab, whose boundary with Pakistani West Punjab was marked by the Sutlej river, the longest of the five rivers. Expectedly, I was acquainted with stories of Partition and the communal riots that followed in its wake. As people trudged east and west through the sunbaked plains of Punjab in summer, the monsoon failed. Water level fell so low that in places the dry riverbed became a road of sorts. Historians estimate that in the violence that occurred across borders nearly one million lives were lost. Partition chronicles talk about dried blood that streaked deserted fields and dusty trails. And then, inexplicably, the rivers swelled and flooded the plains across Punjab, heedless of borders. It added to the misery of a ravaged people but the sins of the land had to be washed off, my grandmother maintained.
In my years of growing up I never witnessed a flood, and the boats lay in disuse as grass grew around them. In 1988 the town was deluged but I was in the safety of a hostel in a distant city. When I called home the house was filled with the chatter of relatives and friends who had sought refuge – apparently we were lucky to be situated on a relatively higher plain.
Now with the floods in Pakistan Punjab I have been following up with my mother from Hong Kong on the situation in our town. The low-lying villages have been evacuated, paddy and cotton fields have been swamped but the town center is safe, thus far.
Recently we were discussing current news with friends when I mentioned the Pakistan flood situation. One of them grinned, and teasingly said, “Your country”. This is an old buddy and I know what he is alluding to – scientists call it ‘the identifiable victim effect’. According to Paul Slovic our sympathy is directly linked to the extent to which we identify with the victim. Figures leave us cold, and thinking statistically about a disaster – number of dead, extent of damage, cubic meters of floodwater – diminishes our sympathy. However, people often become entranced by specific, identifiable victims – the plight of Ali Abbas, a boy wounded in the Iraq conflict, captivated the European media resulting in 275000 GBP raised for his medical care.
We live in a global world. In the past week I have followed the plight of the Chilean miners, the Hong Kong tourists taken hostage in Manila, the mudslides in China, the floods in Pakistan. In an interconnected world we find ourselves aware and yet disconnected. Perhaps it is the surfeit of news, or the overwhelming numbers or the lack of rootedness, but this is not the malaise of a new century. Mirza Ghalib, the great Urdu poet of the nineteenth century, commented on the nature of humanity: it is difficult for things to be easy, to be human is not a presumption to being a man.
Daily charities ask for our donations – for the welfare of third world children, for victims of natural disasters, for the war-affected, for fighting disease. How are we to respond? With less thought. Research shows that deliberation in such cases leads to callousness. The mighty rivers do not ruminate over borders and boundaries, nor does the earth when it is quaking or sliding. Go with the specific victim that appeals to your sense of humanity, and give.
The Long Walk Home is now part of the Indian Parliament Library! Ahem!
I am delighted - but of course - and also kinda dazed... this is not an everyday occurrence in the routine of being a scribe :)
As hubby joked, the librarian - with plateglass lenses and rheumy eyes - will say, you have to wait 4 weeks to borrow the book; the Turkish Prime Minister is reading it presently, and after that Kalam is next in line!
Wonderful, eh? Now, back to the writing - shuffle-limp, shuffle-limp, perch, settle in, and tie my ass down until the next 1000 words are done. Ah, the demented pleasures of a writerly life.
April 9, 2010. Today, my opinion piece - A Peculiarly Punjabi Quarrel - appeared in the Views pages of the International Herald Tribune, the global edition of The New York Times. The IHT is a newspaper whose views are in good sync with mine - on most days, and reading folks like Roger Cohen, Nicholas D. Kristof and Paul Krugman is invariably worthwhile and wholly satisfying. To be granted a window seat next to them is a privilege - I am blown! Read on, and enjoy! http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/09/opinion/09iht-edsomeshwar.html?ref=global
The Man Hong Kong International Literary Festival runs from March 11-19, 2010. The fun part about this event is that despite having grown in size since its inception ten years back, it is still an intimate affair. Most venues can seat 60-70 people, which allows for a close interaction between writers and the audience. And since most venues are located within a small radius, it allows for kangaroo-hops to several events :)
There is an exciting line-up of authors, among them, yours truly!
My programme - titled 'Playing with Postcolonialism' - is on Sunday 14 March 201, 15:00-16:00, at Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre, 7A Kennedy Road. Tash Aw and I will be in conversation with Chris Wood of The Asia Literary Review.
If you are in town, grab your ticket, and I shall see you there!
Jacaranda in association with Olive Beach is pleased to invite you to meet Manreet Sodhi Someshwar, the critically acclaimed and award winning author of THE LONG WALK HOME, published by HarperCollins India.
Manreet has been hailed as the new literary star on the horizon by Khushwant Singh. Manreet lives in Hong Kong with her husband and daughter and is currently on a book tour for The Long Walk Home.
The event is scheduled for July 20, 2009 between 7 and 9 pm at the Olive Beach, 16 Wood Street, Ashok Nagar, Bangalore 560025, contact: 080 41128400 or +91 9945565483. Manreet’s book will be available for signing at this event.
About the book Set against the backdrop of twentieth-century India, The Long Walk Home illuminates history — partition, two Indo-Pak wars, the rise of religious fundamentalism — through the life of one man. A story of faith and fundamentalism, misguided passions and accidental heroism, it is woven through a narrative of love, murder, vendetta, and greed. In the gathering extremism — the city is put under curfew; Hit Lists are drawn; his wife subscribes to a rabid preacher; his Hindu friend flees — the protagonist makes a terrible error. As he nears the end of his life, he wonders: will there be a chance for redemption?
Urvashi Butalia is the author of the award-winning oral history of Partition, The Other Side of Silence:Voices from the Partition of India. It is a book I read as part of my research into understanding the 20th century history of Punjab. It is particularly gratifying therefore to have her review the book, and like it :-)
Harbaksh Singh Bhalla, Advocate, Punjab and Haryana High Court—Baksh to his parents and siblings, Bhallasaab to colleagues and others. At five feet-ten, ninety kilos, with a forty-five-inch waist, Mr Bhalla was heavy-set. His younger daughter Noor measured his ample girth every time they met by ringing her arms around his belly. Of course, they never closed in a loop. Even when her father sucked in his stomach and insisted questioningly: ‘Some weight I must have lost?’ Mr Bhalla’s fondness for sweets and his evening tipple contributed to the flab. To rectify matters, he ate raw garlic flakes in the morning, only egg whites at breakfast—to the delight of the dog who got the ball of yolk—and rukha roti, thin and puffed like a poori but minus the oil, at mealtimes. He religiously underlined health-related articles in his morning newspaper, The Tribune, and scrupulously followed the prescription—‘a glass of warm lime water first thing in the morning helps break down fatty deposits’—until such time that he decided to favour a new one. On those ‘health drive’ days he wore his slimming belt—the one that promised weight loss without exercise; it just needed to be worn, for three hours in the morning—consulted Webster’s Dictionary for the meanings of words he had jotted down on the paper’s margin as he read, and had the general cheer of one embarking on a new and wholesome venture. The ‘health drive’ days, however, were erratic. What was regular was the morning walk—exercise, though, was only an ancillary benefit. He woke up early because he slept early because his tippling started early. In the initial days, walking was a way to while away time. But as alcohol strengthened its hold on him, the morning air became essential to clear his mind. At some point of time, the walk became a friend. In a world of broken dreams, lost chances and corroded love, walking became a reassuring fixture that didn’t cost anything, didn’t change loyalties, and always listened. A diabetic and a heart patient, he got his blood pressure checked frequently. He took the prescribed tablets of Disprin and Sorbitrate daily. He also took his drink daily: Bagpiper Whisky of Mohan Breweries, on the rocks, at times with water, accompanied by salty fried chana, or chicken tikka on the days he stopped by at the Green Hotel on the way home. Husband of one, brother to two, father of three, he succumbed to a much-prognosticated heart attack—having suffered two prior angina attacks—witnessed by one brother, one servant and a rickshaw puller. He died in the same town he was born, just short of his seventy-first birthday. One could say that Harbaksh Singh Bhalla hadn’t travelled far in life, literally and figuratively. A lifetime in one place can imply many things: a lack of wanderlust, an inordinate attachment to one’s roots, risk-aversion. Or inferences more practical can be made: lack of opportunity, ancestral property, family matters. Then there exist tenuous notions like the air of a place and how the spirit resonates to it, the smell of the earth and its connection with something deep and primitive within us, the songs of home and their dance in our veins. It could well be a concoction of all the above—a heady mix of conflicting elements that gives rise to an equation at once complex and elementary. But equations, however tortuous, can never sum up a person. The best way to know a man may still be the only way: to walk in his shoes and live his life.
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