pain...

perhaps that's the only emotion that i can feel now..

as i skimmed through the news papers i had been so avoiding since the 28th, there was no way the tears so carefully stored somewhere for some happy occasion could refuse to come.

long time since my grandfather died, i howled. i howled for all those people in all those pictures who were caught in the photographers' cameras in muted despair. yet, and yet their screams seemed to be reaching out to me, blaring at my ears, causing the uncomfortable vibrations in my heart. i howled for sabina, whose last msg to her husband 'I still love you' seemed to me like the truest truth in the world today, something her husband would live with for the rest of his life. i howled for those husbands who never received their wives'  last word, or could send one. i howled for those who died hand in the hand. i howled for khusboo who would have married her love this week in a lavish wedding. i howled for the those wives who refused the money colored with their husbands' blood from the hands of politicians nowhere less responsible for them. i howled for those not lucky enough to be re-united. i howled for those who took away their beloveds in pieces. i howled for the 20 cremations at charni road. i howled for all those who died.

waqt ke sitam kam haseen nahi
aaj hai yaha, kal kahi nahi

those who were there till yesterday, are no more for some today. i howled for them.

and i howled for myself. because i was confused. i had always believed that terror has no religion. it is not islam who is responsible for all the deaths in the name of terror today. but suddenly, all my cultured belief on the goodness of man, and 'islamic terror' as just a concept structured by the west to make the oil producing countries their 'target enemy' was falling apart. for a few hours after the magnanimity of the situation in Taj, Oberoi and others at Mumbai hit me, i was frantically wishing for all of Islam to be dead and gone.

i am sorry.

then suddenly, i realised, if my wall of faith for 'faith' and knowledge of how the state functions to keep its ruling class intact could fall apart so easily with one gory incident, what about those who either never thought about it, or were even a single percent fanatic? if i who could see through the fact that there was no way 20 odd people carrying open ammunition (not hidden i mean) enough to kill 5000 people could rent a boat from gujarat fisheries, come to mumbai through the sea near the Taj (an area of high security because of the research center at sea right there) carry the ammunition all the way inside the Taj and hold up entire Mumbai for more than 60 hours without state help, could panic and blame a religion just because the terrorists were named ajmal and abdul instead of ajay and abhay, what would happen to those children whose parents barred them from playing with the ajmal and abdul in their compound? if i who have a muslim for a roommate and one of my best friends, who has read the poetry of love, revolution and beauty that faiz writes and realizes that terror is an old state-tool to keep the ruled under the illusion that they need the ruling class to rule them and protect them could hate the moment Islam was conceived, what would come of those who didn't cross a street that had a masjid, or wouldn't talk to someone for he had a beard, wore a skull cap and said assalam-walaikum as a greeting? couldn't the country be thrown in chaos by the same feeling that i had a few moments ago? wouldn't there be murders and kills just because of this one feeling that muslims all over the world are terrorists?

yes. and that is the pity of the entire human kind. feelings are contagious, more so if they are murderous.

i have said i am sorry for the feeling i had. i am sorry for letting it stay the long it did. i curbed it immediately from my heart the moment i realized its nature. i am sorry for i fear that what one of my fanatic friends said would come true, 'when you will lose someone in one such terrorist attacks, you will stop your shit about terror has no religion'. i am sorry for not being able to do anything about the same feeling in him, in thousands of my brothers and somewhere, dormant inside me. i do not want what he said to be true. i do not want chaos in my life. i do not want to hate god, or allah, or for that matter whoever he may be. for things like this, let my already slipping faith in religion and god die all over again. i need help.

we all need help. lets help each other. lets give each other the belief that the survival of the ruled is in staying united and not let schemes, of the monstrosity as this shake our faith in each other. lets help each other to believe in the good that man has within his heart. lets help each other to cry in the other's sorrow and laugh in his happiness. lets help each other to bury the dead and cremate them. lets help each other for the very fact that now, it is not god who will come to our rescue. it is us.

the bigger the obstacle the greater the glory in achieving it.

let's go ahead rid each other of the pain we all feel. the pain of disbelief, the pain of confusion and the pain of a failed faith in the existence of god. lets go ahead.

second consecutive day in the JNU library...

well well... i am sitting on the computer adjacent to the one i had hijacked yesterday...
but there is something else that drives me to write this now...
i can see the same neem tree where the little bird sat yesterday, and the same sun trying to cast shadows...
but the tree reminded me of something else today...
a train of thought had followed when i looked at it. they worship the need tree somewhere in this country. i guess, it's not the neem, but the banyan or the peepul..i was confused when the thought really occured, but this fact took me to the day when i had seen the story of the world's origin in a serial called Jai Ma Vaishno Devi.
Not that i am an ardent fan of the serial, but the actress who plays the goddess if BEAUTIFUL! Anyways, coming back to the scene when the goddess is looking for someone to start the world with, in short do 'shrishti rachna' and decides do so with the man created out of the 'tama gun' in herself after the men created out of 'sat gun' and 'raj gun' refused to indulge in procreative activities with their 'mother', I realised discrimination against women had begun much before life became so difficult for an ordinary woman in this world.
Shakti surrendered all her powers to the man she created, 'Shiva'. Shiva became 'ardhanarishwar'. I do not know if it actually happened. I do not hold any authority over these topics. i don't know if she actually did it, or made to do it by the man who told this story for the first time. but the story of the Goddess who had to surrender all her powers before wanting to start a family to a man she herself created seemed like 'oh i have heard that before!' doesn't that happen to women all over the world?
i know, i might be talking of a past. 'come on, women are empowered today', 'they are educated' they know what's good for them, 'they rate their career as their priority' etc etc. but this happens to a rare community of those women who have been lucky enough to get education and understand what Bouvoire said a long time back, 'one is not born a woman, one is made a woman'.
Even today, as a survey done by my friend Imran from the center of Law and Governance will tell you, women face discrimination. harrassment is another truth many happily, unfortunately and deliberately ignore. market places, colleges, cinemas, etc have stories of women being discriminated against on the basis of gender, caste, region etc. I believe i heard a saying once, 'if you have sinned for 7 incarnations, you are born a woman, and if you have sinned for 14, you are born a women of the lower caste'. My heart weeps to say that there are many generations in this country and many in the world who have taken this seriously, whether they have heard it or not, and indulged in centuries of oppression of a class that if free, could have made much better of the world than it is today.

in the JNU library...

drooling from the right corner of my mouth, as i was looking out of the windows of the cyber library, through the beautiful beige sun shields put up there with the afternoon sun trying to get past them and reach us to create unfinished, abstract and somewhat beautiful shadows near the uninterrupted power supply box for the computers, at the tiny silhouette of the bird sitting on one of the branches of the huge neem tree right outside the window, i was thinking of one of my friends who by now, had become one of the prominet literary figures of young indian literature. he is my age, and somehow that is something my ma cannot seem to digest...she loves me and thinks i have the 'potential' to win awards nobody of my age has ever received. i was thinking about how lately, i have lost my touch...not the touch, but the 'touch' that transforms something mundane done by me into a miracle. not that it is not giving me some peace of mind. I was happy at, presently having no hopes from myself the unfulfillment of which would cause pain. Suddenly when i was basking in the happiness of being 'hopeless', i thought of the hundreds of students that studied here. i craned my neck to look at some of them who were sitting with their minds thinking of nothing else but what to write in the flat computer screen glowing in front of them, for the next term paper, the next research topic and the next seminar presentation. Working 25 hours a day, these students want to make a mark in the scholarly sky of JNU...some of them have political ambitions, some social and some intellectual. Take our president Sandeep. One of the most politically sound people I have met, who eats, drinks and breathes his brand of ideologies. One who sincerely, in the heart of heart believes that the world can be made rid of discrimation. he has hopes, for himself, for his people and for his ideologies...and he is happy that he is relentlessly working for them. take my friend pamir, he has hopes that he will find love before he turns 31 (that's what is the age that his kundali says when he will get married) and he is on the look out for it...take my room mate khadeeja, she hopes that she will read 5 books in one day and finish a term paper for one of the most kharoos teachers we have and impress him to get at least an A-...take the 199 students sitting in front of 199 hi-tech latest computers (the 200th being hijacked by me to write this) who have hopes of clearing this years UPSC, JPSC, RPSC, PCS or some other such examination with a CS in the end, researching, reading, writing and submitting their synopsis in 10 days and yet, manage to pass it and work online for some organisation or the other which pays them while doing their MA or m.phil at the same time. They all have hopes. hopes keep them going. a hope to reach that stage when hopes will not be very scary. when hopes, yours, your parents', your peers won't hound you every night in your dreams and leave you awake with their weight pressing mercilessly down on your chest. when i look at the faces of the 199 intent people bent on their computers, and am now trying to pretend that i am the 200th one doign the same, wiping the drool that has dried up by now...a hope silently creeps ininto my mind as well...probably, i can hope to be 'hopeless' a year or so from now, if i start working for that...probably i can prove myself once and for all and be done with it. not a bad idea. but that calls for a year of work and research and all that JNU students sitting in the library do and i don't. but yes, for a 'hopeless' fun filled and no holds barred life...it's worth taking the risk!

BRING IT ON!