Kashmir, Beef and the Calcutta Bubble
The incidents of being persecuted for one's food habits recently got a friend very angry. Not only at what's happening to the country but also for my rather insipid response to the entire episode. I, like many from my journalistic brethren, have perhaps been desensitized. A decade of reporting and discussing barbaric killings tends to do that to you. Life becomes mechanical; the shock and awe effect rarely happen. You're jaded.
To my feeble protests about 'selective outrage' on social media that disregards incidents of Dalits being regularly killed over cases of being butchered over beef, my friend ticked me off saying, "Living in Calcutta, you know nothing about persecution". Friend's anger, though misdirected, spouted from tragic childhood memories. A Kashmiri Pandit, he along with scores of others left behind his home, friends, and life in the Srinagar of late 1989. This loss went unnoticed for many of us growing up in peaceful Calcutta.
The phrase, "living in Calcutta" got me thinking. Was my childhood spent in a bubble? I remember happily spending my school life with pals who were Hindus, Sikhs, Anglo-Indians, and Muslims. Religion, leave alone food habits, never featured. We'd start the day by singing praises to Jesus (being a Christian school), chomp down mutton galactic kebabs at lunch and peck at Maggi and ketchup sandwiches from staunch vegetarian friends. Never did our eating habits, attire or religious views get in the way. Some friends wore the burqa to school, took it off during school hours and would wear it again on the way back home. It seemed like the most normal thing to do.
So was there no strife in Calcutta? Daily life could be a struggle though. Long hours were spent in darkness in the early 90s. Regular power cuts were routine. Playing antakshari in the pitch blackness of the night, listening to a neighbor's rendition of a popular Hindi song, 'para' kids announcing the end of power cuts (and many times mischievously so even when we were still plunged in darkness...cheap thrills!).
We became so used to the darkness that no one complained of bumping into furniture. I run into immovable objects more in broad daylight today than I did that many years ago. My father would be away at work till late evening. Some times in hushed voices I'd hear him complain to my mother when he returned, "there is no work in this city, no growth". "Living in Calcutta" it's true that I was never persecuted. The only fleeing I did was to leave the city in quest of better job opportunities. So in a way, migrant labor like me also leaves homes behind. It's not persecution but it does trouble many of us.
Surely power cuts cannot be compared to a loss of lives. Of being systematically ousted from one's homes; being asked to convert to another religion or lose life; to find friends and family being hacked to death. But the mind is a funny animal, it forges correlations. When I was 5 years old, I had a habit of falling asleep on the couch. My poor Bengali mother had the harrowing task of waking up and feeding dinner to this sleepy child. On one such evening, the power went off as predicted. I was asleep and in no mood to listen to my mother and wake up. Mom was wearing a beautiful silk kaftan, it was silver with black designs on it. I wanted one just like that when I grew older, I thought. But no, I won't wake up just yet.
Exasperated, she gave up momentarily and went to the toilet aided by candlelight. In a hurry to wake me up, she accidentally clutched the candle to her body. Hearing her screams I jumped up. Some family members rushed and pounded on the toilet door. After a few agonizing minutes, my mother opened the door. She was aflame, I couldn't see her face, her torso was on fire.
My brother and another relative showed presence of mind and doused the flames. My father came home and so did the electricity. Mom was taken to the hospital. I have never felt as helpless and scared as I was that night. Under the harsh tube light I gripped a window railing and prayed and cried for my mother to come home alive. I believed it to be my fault that she had had the accident. If only I had listened to her and woken up, she wouldn't have rushed, the accident wouldn't have happened. It was my fault.
It was providence that my mother survived the incident. It could have been far worse had she not unlocked the toilet door in time. When you're 5 years old, guilt is a terrible companion, one that I have been carrying along to this day. Power cuts remind me of this incident ever so often. "Living in Calcutta" wasn't so bad but we all carry our scars and mostly they lie carefully hidden.
