ශූන්‍යයට සමවැදීම - Meditating on Nothingness

නොරැදෙයි කිසිත් සිත්හි
පැමිණියත් අනන්ත සිතුවිලි
නොදන්නා අන්තයන්ගෙන්,
සවිඥානයෙත් අවිඥානයෙත්;

නෑසෙයි දෙසවනට වදනක්වත්
පැතිරගියත් අවකාශයේ
නිම නොවන දෝංකාර
සංගීතයේ, සංවාදයේ,
අල්ලාප සල්ලාපයේ;

නොදැනෙයි පහස ස්පර්ශයේ
වෙළාගත්තද ගත මදනල
අනන්ත වර;
දිගහැරුනත් නෙක දසුන්
අවට සැම තැන
ගැටෙන්නේ නෙත්
සේයාවක් පමණි අනියතාකාර
අතීතයෙන්
තත්කාලයෙන්
අනාගතයෙන්
විනිර්මුක්ත වූ.

සමවැදීම ශූන්‍යයට
අවතරණයක්ද නිවනට
නොපැතුවත් කිසිවිට?
හිස්වීම මනස
ඇරයුමක්ද උමතුවට
පැතූ සේ ඇතැම් විට?

වසන්ත් කුන්ජ්, නව දිල්ලිය, 26 ඔක්තෝබර් 2012

For Malala Yousafzai and Beyond

As everybody on the planet who can read and understand one human language or another would know by now, a Taliban gunman shot 14 year old Pakistani teenager Malala Yousafzai on 9th October 2012 on her way home from school in Swat Valley. Her crime: wanting to go to school and talking about the difficulties she experienced under the Taliban who had already banned girls from going to school which had seen a drastic drop in school attendance of girls in areas under its influence. In other words, she was shot for her thirst for knowledge and being truthful about her life. In this sense, as many of us also aspire for the same things as Malala, we also deserve similarly gruesome punishment. If this is to be considered mainstream thinking in any society, that moment would clearly mark the perversion of the human spirit and common sense.

Coming from a war zone myself, having seen numerous deaths of school friends, family and childhood neighbors in the prime of their lives, I thought that brutalization of my own backyard had also taken its emotional toll on me; I assumed in the often clinical sense that I sometimes see the world, heavily critiqued by friends, that senseless death and destruction will not have the same affect it had on me long time ago, which I used to call the ‘dark ages.’ But the attempted killing of Malala Yousafzai, if nothing else has shown me that ‘dark ages’ facilitated by a monumental lack of wisdom and vision around us, is a not something of the past. It is of the present and perhaps the future of the land mass we call South Asia. Malala’s corner of this landmass is simply one of the many places where such cruelty and unpleasantness takes place on a routine basis and justice seem to have fled into exile, perhaps in another universe. Personally, the tragedy that befell her and the consequent thinking in my own mind indicated to me with a great degree of relief that my own experiences had not completely removed my capacity to feel anguish over other’s pain. It appears at least fragments of that former capacity still exist.

Writing an essay to the Express Tribune on 17^th October 2012, on what the shooting of  Malala Yousafzai means, Ayesha Sidiqa concluded her essay with the following words: “So, all I can tell Malala is to get well soon, piece her life together and get on with life somewhere else, as her homeland has no capacity to protect her and many like her” (http://tribune.com.pk/story/452920/get-well-malala-and-find-another-home-because-we-cant-protect-you/). This is not mere rhetoric, but a statement of fact that touches many people; it is very much part of the reality in many parts of Pakistan where continuity of life and the eternal shadow of sudden death are no longer within one’s own control. Such things are decided by people who think it is bad for girls to go to school and it is even worse to be truthful about one’s own life experiences; and Malala and many others have paid the price for trying to defy this logic. Responding to Siddiqa’s concluding comments in exasperation, someone called Sara made the following point: “You could have easily ended it with Malala, get well soon, we all promise to help Pakistan and make it a better place, where all citizens can lead good and safe life.” True, she could have said it, and yet, nothing would have happened as the unraveling of Pakistan over the last few years have clearly indicated. But this response is not unusual. The inability to see what is unpleasant and mixing it up with notions of patriotism in the context of which losing sight of larger and more poignant issues is precisely what happens to many people in these circumstances. It has also happened in Sri Lanka and continues to happen there; it happens in different degrees in many other parts of militarized ‘South Asia’ where freedom of expression is fast becoming a scarce resource.

It is precisely due to this sense of institutionalized uncertainty, anxiety and fear prevalent in Pakistan that some friends from Islamabad recently asked me if it would make sense for them to migrate to Sri Lanka, from one war zone to a former war zone where new dictatorial politics of oligarchic and familial sensibilities are steadily being implanted. But institutionalized politics of violence that have been allowed to grow simply cannot be wished away, be that in Pakistan or anywhere else. 

It is in such a context that defy logic, that defy rationality, that defy common sense and far away from the travails of Swat Valley and the tragedy of Pakistani nationhood that students of Ambedkar University Delhi and some of their teachers organized a solidarity march for Malala Yousafzai on October 18^th 2012 (https://www.facebook.com/events/408942092505482/410038035729221/?notif_t=plan_mall_activity). It did cross my mind that this event was not organized by the students of more established universities of Delhi which range from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi University, Indian Institute of Technology, Jamia Milia Islamia and so on.  But no matter; the world has many other things to do too, and it must go on. In any event, this was not a vociferous march through busy streets, shouting slogans and disrupting traffic. It was almost a silent prayer and a moment of hope in motion. About 100 students carrying hand-written placards simply walked through the AUD campus, and then around the university perimeter along some of the streets in the vicinity of Kashmiri Gate with a minimum disruption of traffic. Most motorists and rickshaw pullers watched the precession in patience; they browsed through the placards and asked a few questions. Some others blared their horns and yet again indicated Delhi’s characteristic lack of patience and warmth. Besides, perhaps they needed to get home for better things.

Contradictions in the overall scheme of reality within  which this event must be located could not escape even the untrained gaze of a layman. It seemed to me that more car and motorcycle horns blared inside the AUD campus trying to get the students assembled for the march in the narrow main street out of the way; it appeared that some individuals in the compound were in a mighty hurry to get out, only to be halted by the nasty traffic just outside the gate. But then, that was life and the march was perhaps not. Young women and men looked on with amusement as well as with boredom while the marchers walked through campus in silence; others played basket ball and cricket; yet others made snooty comments; and others touched up their makeup; others drank coffee and threw the paper cups on the ground adding to Delhi’s expanding collection of garbage. 

Nevertheless, all this also meant that life went on, and must necessarily go on beyond what happened to Malala Yousafzai, beyond the unhappiness of Pakistan and beyond the multiple tragedies routinely unfolding  in our region. But then, if human tragedies do not disturb our collective conscience at some point, if others’ pain does not touch our hearts at some level, if we are structurally blind to the calamities of our time, if we allow the convenience of amnesia to devour our memories of wrongs of the recent past, without our knowing, we will lose our affinity with ourselves, with what used to be called the human spirit.

In this scenario, my gratitude goes out to the students and colleagues at AUD who did a simple thing, to contemplate on larger issues, taking Malala Yousafzai’s misfortune as a point of departure, but providing space to think beyond her personal tragedy.  I thank them for discomforting my conscience and perhaps that of a few others.

Initiation

Discourse

For Malala

For Malala

For Malala

For Malala

For Malala

For Malala

Capturing

For Malala

For Malala

For Malala

For Malala

For Malala

Shadows of Marchers

Shadows of Marchers

On-lookers

On-lookers

Another Discourse/Negotiation

'Shrine'

'Shrine'

'Shrine'

Fleeting Moments from the Belly of an Aircraft

Image: http://www.toonpool.com/cartoons/birds%20in%20flight_90238

It was the 3^rd of October, deep in the steel belly of the Sri Lankan Airlines flight from Colombo to Delhi; still on the tarmac and was getting to be quite tedious. What was worse was thinking of the usually uneventful three and half hour flight that had not even commenced yet. The whole aircraft was full of seemingly middle class Indian tourists exchanging views about the highlights of their recent holiday in Lanka at the top of their voices in the best of Hinglish. So I understood at last 30 percent of what was shrieked in English and a bit more through the recognizable bits of Sanskrit still embedded in Hindi. The holidays of everyone I could here seem to have been ‘good,’ whatever that meant. 

Suddenly, all this collective, animated and loud pow wow ended and a aloud mummer went through the aircraft and a chant-like clapping began with the mantra, “well played boys.”  I looked up and could not immediately see the reasons for the excitement. There were no politicians around; no singers or actors that I could recognize. Just a bunch of youngsters wading through the excitable crowd into the belly of the economy section of the aircraft. They looked like the rest of the youngsters among the returning tourists. “Who are those young people,” I asked the elderly passenger sitting next to me, violating a long-term rule against conversing with ‘neighbors’ in air travel consequent to an experience with a Russian drunkard ten years ago whose personality metamorphosed into a Stalinist thug thanks to the free booze from Sri Lankan cabin crew. “That is the Indian cricket team” the bewildered man said. And his wife stared at me. “Stupid me”, I thought to myself. It’s about time I learn to keep in mind the names of at least few famous people and do some work on the skills of face recognition. Or else, this kind of thing could become marginally embarrassing in times to come. 

The man remained bewildered: my kurtha and silver bracelet would not have helped; he would have assumed: “here is an anti-national element who does not even recognize the country’s cricket team.” “Are you from Delhi” he asked followed by something in Hindi. “Yes and no” I murmured not interested in getting into a conversation. He looked more blank than before and his unsmiling wife seemed unimpressed with my reply. There goes all my ‘sociological’ humor. “I am originally from Colombo, but live in Delhi these days,” I tried to explain my ignorance of Indian national icons. He would not have believed if I said my knowledge of the cricketing personalities from Lanka would be as bad except for those old cricketers who were in school with me way back in the Ice Age. But then, some of them are unpleasant politicians now. 

I was impressed with one thing though: the cricketers were going home after losing some match and getting out of contention from the recently concluded T20 matches in Lanka. But they were flying economy class. Very good, sensible and frugal thinking by the Indian Cricket Board. After all, the three and half hour flight would not have given any cramps to these physically fit youngsters and would have saved Indian tax payers quite a few bucks. Very different I thought from the senseless pampering of Lankan cricketers, entertainers, politicians, politicians’ wives, sons, daughters, aunties  and pet dogs and fish that we have got accustomed to. 

Impressive,  I thought. Some of them sat right behind me and they were flying back home among their fans. It is a different matter that the fans were a damn nuisance taking a zillion photos from their I-phones, demanding autographs on everything from notebooks to airline napkins. Some of them were violating my own limited airspace in trying to reach out over my head towards stardom in the very brief moment of glory. And some of them had used terrible perfume. And there was a veritable traffic jam in the isle. Some were quite obnoxious too. There was some delay in taking off and the food was late too due to all this excitement. But all in all, most were well contended with this surprising flirtation with the bold, the beautiful, the heroic and the famous. And they flew economy class all the way to Delhi though I still don't know their names.