Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Monday, September 29, 2008
An Essay
There have been many recent events of violence in India. It has become very regular. This relatively peaceful land continues to experience terror at the hands of those who hate.
This story talks about the real violence that happened in 1947 in a place call Gurgaon, outside of Delhi. That place, now a major hub of the economic boom in India, was a place of bloodshed during the fighting of 1947, the year India achieved independence, and the year Pakistan was formed.
The characters and events are fictitious, and represent my imaginings on the subject of what happened in 1947.
This essay reiterates some of my ideas on how old India and new India are connected and different.
It is tragic subject matter, and I hope it makes you think.
The Khalid family gathered around the transistor, listening for anything that they could use to find out what was happening. Pandit Nehru was speaking, and it was being broadcast throughout the land. He was appealing to both Hindus and Muslims for peace. A dizzying set of events was occurring since the announcement that a new nation of India was being created due to the Britishers leaving. Then came the stories about how the Muslim peoples of this new India would live in a different land than the Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Jains. With a lengthy history in the area and a series of shops and a tiffin business in Gurgaon, the Khalid family did not want things to change like this. There was no need to alter the way of life that they had, and their neighbors were of different faiths – why leave?
In places remote from Gurgaon there had been violence between former neighbors. Muslim shops had been burned, Hindus and Sikhs were reported to have been attacked in other states by Muslim mobs, and there were reports that Islamic communities as far south as Hyderabad were rioting. It was unclear what was happening in these places that seemed so very distant from the Khalid family’s life on the plains of Gurgaon. What was happening in a place called Punjab seemed to have been the most serious. There were stories coming from surrounding villages that trains of Muslims had been stopped in the countryside of Punjab and everyone inside of it had been butchered. There were other reports of Hindu-filled trains coming from Sindh where almost everyone on the train had arrived into Amritsar covered in blood.
It was even hard for the Khalid family, all twelve of whom were huddled around the transistor trying to learn what was happening, to understand where these places were.
“Abba, are these trains coming here? Will those people kill us?” asked Mahmooda, only six years of age.
Moinuddin, her grandfather, pinched her cheek and whispered words of reassurance to her.
“No, little one. All is well with us,” he said softly.
She grabbed his hand and held onto it tightly. Despite his words of comfort, the look on his face had failed to comfort her. Or any of the others in the family. A few weeks prior Moinuddin had seen the Britishers leaving the areas around Delhi, large groups of white men and women leaving the military and government centers. This was greeted with a mixture cheering and significant uncertainty. A few older Indian cried in sadness, some danced with glee.
The violence had started not long after that.
And it spread.
The immediate area on the plains of Gurgaon was still relatively safe, but there was a bomb thrown into a masjid by a Sikh several miles away, and the rioting that followed was bloody. Two days ago there was a family that passed close to the Khalid home on foot, on a silent journey to nowhere.
There had been blood on their clothes.
“We appeal to all of the people of India to obey calm and to show peace to your neighbor. My countrymen, the events of the last few months have been profound. 1947 will forever be remembered as the year in which we gained our freedom as a people. I share the vision of Gandhiji, of an India where peace will flourish and the many people of this newly free land will live together as one community, one nation.
We stand together in our plea for peace. Now. And into the future.
I have been in close and perpetual contact with leaders of the Congress Party, as well as with my friend Mr. Jinnah and members of The Muslim League. We continue to discuss the exact way that our shared new nation will exist. Despite some differences, Mr. Jinnah and I stand together in common commitment to an India where Hindu and Muslim and Sikh and Jain and Christian can stand together in a secular democracy, a land in which all may practice their faith in peace and brotherhood……”
His words continued on for a time. The Khalid family listened to this man who all people knew to be a good man. Moinuddin remembered reading in a newspaper that this Nehru had been educated in England and that he stood on his head every morning. A Kashmiri pandit, he was a man that could talk equally to the Britishers, to the Muslims and to the Hindus of all castes.
He was a man in whom they could hope.
The announcer introduced Mr. Jinnah next. He spoke.
“Salaam E Alaikum to all of the Muslims in the Ummat of this land, I request peace from you. This time is important for us in many ways. We have been freed from the shackles of Britisher rule, and we are moving into a proud time when we may achieve nationhood of our own. I and the members of my Muslim League are demanding to achieve what is rightfully ours, if Allah wills it, a nation of the pure. If Allah wills it, a new Muslim nation, a Pakistan will arise at this time. Our universities are filled with dedicated young people who will gladly aid in the holy the movement of our Muslim community into a land of our own.
This time of freedom is a time in which we will make history by taking an important step toward an establishment of a caliphate in Asia unlike anything that has been seen in four centuries. But we must approach this nationhood from a position of peace. And of strength. I offer my appeal to stop all violence against those outside of our community. The blood must not flow in this way at this time. I appeal alongside Mr. Nehru for peace in this land. Inshallah.”
The words of each man had a different impact on the Khalid family. To hear the words of Nehru was a comfort. He had been one of the leaders who had helped the campaign against the Britishers become successful. He was a leader and was asking for calm, a request which the Khalid family welcomed. And one which told them that the stories that they had been hearing were true. Blood was flowing in this new India. Nehru had spoken to all the peoples of India.
When Jinnah spoke, they felt a hope of a different sort. Jinnah had addressed only India’s Muslims. To some degree, they felt that his words were for them specifically, as if he knew them. He spoke in the words and tones of the Muslims, and as such there was a connection with what he said that was profound and deep.
Historical.
Both men had appealed for the same thing – peace amongst the peoples of this new India, where blood letting had reached new levels of ghastliness in the events of the past days and weeks and months.
As the Khalid family sat in a circle and continued to get whatever news they could from the crackling transistor, Mahmooda turned from the circle and looked off into the distance.
“I hear drums,” she stated, innocently.
Moinuddin looked off into the distance, too.
When Moin looked out the window of the conference room he saw sparkling new buildings as far as the eye could see. Gurgaon was a place where the New India was emerging in a way that few other cities could claim. For each new building that gleamed in the sun, there was a new one going up somewhere else. Grand cranes mixed with the blue sky. On many of these cranes you could see the Indian flag fluttering in the wind. 2007 promised to be a year that grew the economy even more than the prior year, but less than the year to follow.
The meeting had started on time in the sense that Moin was sitting in the conference room alone for the first several minutes. It worked that way here, too often the start time of a meeting was when the glimmer of getting up from one's desk started, and one or two new tasks would start. Very often a meeting would start ten or fifteen minutes after the designated start time. On some days, that was best case.
It was an exceptional time, nonetheless.
The work that he had to do today was related to a new project coming from the home office in Seattle, in the US. Moin was the liaison between the offshore infrastructure team in Gurgaon and the project leadership in the US. His peer, Raj Kumar, was the similar. Raj Kumar was the liaison for the middleware application team. Both young men occupied a special position in the company. As liaisons between onshore and offshore leaders they had received special validation that their years of hard work were paying off – their command of English was seen as exceptional, their technical knowledge was among the strongest in the company, and their organizational and facilitation skills were such that even a manager from the US would find them to be dependable according to “US standards”. Moin and Raj Kumar’s next step would be to move to the US for a short period of time, completing their differentiation from the regular technicians in India.
Success.
As Moin sat there considering the special role that he played for his team and for the company, and how it was inextricably tied to the success of Raj Kumar and Raj Kumar’s team, he had a sense of satisfaction. A great deal of work had gone into getting here.
Still, he thought, smiling, when we are not talking to the US we don’t arrive to our own meetings on time. He clicked his teeth against the tardiness of Raj Kumar.
He continued to type an e.mail to the development leaders in the US. He left the key words blank, especially dates. They were replaced with **/**/**. The details of the project were the details of the meeting he and Raj Kumar were scheduled to have right now. They had set aside two hours for the discussion, now only one hour and fifty-three minutes were left.
He continued to wait.
Mr. Kumar was the patriarch of an extended family that had long been prominent in Gurgaon. He owned several shops in the shopping areas and his clan were almost entirely invested in the businesses that he ran. It was often said, If you throw a rock on any street and alleyway in Gurgaon, it would hit a shop run by a Kumar. When he had first heard this, Mr. Kumar laughed and stated to his family, “Then make sure you pick up the rock, clean it up, and sell it back to the one who threw it.”
The times were changing. A set of events had been unfolding that were both surprising and hard to make sense of. Mr. Kumar, as a wise shop owner, had worked arrangements with the Britishers to establish his access to goods and services that came from them only. In the new order that was emerging, the Britishers were leaving and so much of Mr. Kumar’s access and control would certainly go with them.
Mr. Kumar had worked hard to get whatever information was available. Newspapers and word of mouth were the primary means of gathering both facts and innuendo. It was hard to determine which was which. He had even gone into Delhi to see what he could learn about the events that were unfolding. A mix of jubilation and fear were simultaneously emerging from the peoples of this new India. As the Britishers left, crowds gathered to watch. Some cheered. Some gave pomp to the event with band music. A few in the crowd cried. It was a time in which everyone knew that life would never be the same.
He knew that after the tremendous events of the day, nation building lay before the varied peoples of India. He also knew that there were long standing, almost dormant, impulses which were beginning to rear their heads. The peoples of India were rubbing up against each other in the clamor of achieving dominance in the new nation. Sikh and Hindu fought Muslim, Muslims sought a new land of their own, masjids had been set fire, more than one mandir had its walls scarred by Muslim mobs.
There had recently been a family that was seen passing through Gurgaon. From where they were coming and to where they were going were unknown. As people asked them questions, they simply stared at the ground and walked onward. There was a good sense that they were walking away from something as opposed to walking to something. One woman in the group had been carrying a small child in her arms. One member of the Kumar clan who had described this family’s silent march said, “That child’s eyes were silently screaming.” It was a phrase that had haunted Mr. Kumar. It was at once poetic and horrible.
There had been blood on the wanderer's clothing.
Mr. Kumar knew that something new was on the horizon, something that was fundamentally dark in texture. He moved from his sitting chair on the porch of his home into the interior. He walked into the pooja room and faced the blue statue that was gleefully playing a flute. He lit incense and started to chant.
He offered prayer.
As the drums got closer, Moinuddin was gently saying words of offering to Allah. He was holding beads in his right hand and rubbing them in sequence as he appealed to the beneficence and mercy of his god. Something about the nature of the drumming was ominous. It did not have the cadence of celebration like the drums in Delhi had had as the Britishers walked in formation to the trains. Nor did the drumming have the celebratory rhythm of a wedding. It was another sound altogether.
A sound of anger.
When Mahmooda had first heard the drums, Moinuddin himself could not hear them. They had been far enough away that his aged ears were unable to make it out. Mahmooda’s young ears had heard what, at that point, was more than a half kilometer away. Hearing drums was not unusual in Gurgaon, or anywhere else in India, for that matter. It was entirely normal for the day or night skies to be filled with drumming. Because of this, Mahmooda’s announcement of drumming in the distance was met with very little response. Khadija, Moinuddin’s wife, had clicked her teeth about the drums and commented that it was going to make the transistor hard to hear.
But as time passed and the drumming became louder, the beats started to give the family cause for serious concern. These new events of the past few days, the stories that were coming out, and the drums had all coalesced into a small wave of fear within the members of the clan.
This fear was confirmed by every beat of the drum.
He reached into the hands of his daughter-in-law, Aisha, and turned the transistor off.
“We must go to our homes,” he stated simply, yet urgently. Everyone knew the meaning. Freed of the distraction of the transistor, the extended family heard the beating of the drums more loudly. Something about the sound of the drums and the urgency in Abba Moinuddin’s voice gave everyone a fear which spread through their bodies like chilled water. Something was very wrong with the drumming.
Aisha grabbed Mahmooda’s hand, and started to run off toward their homes. As an extended family, they lived in a collection of homes near one another. They all knew the direction, and the black veils of the women fluttered in the wind as they ran to their homes, a supposed place of safety. The men stayed behind to keep pace with Moinuddin and Aliya, the elder members of the family. But everyone was running to their homes. It was a small distance, but it seemed never to arrive.
Their worst fears were confirmed as the drumming got louder as they approached their homes.
There was pounding.
It was the knock on the door which made Moin look up from his laptop. Raj Kumar peeked his head into the conference room. He smiled hugely, another young professional who spent his days in a place doing work that he enjoyed. His enthusiasm was infectious, and he was quickly seen as top talent among the ‘offshore team’.
“Hey, man! Sorry I am late, so many things happening. Crazy, crazy,” he said, chuckling gently.
“Ah, it’s nothing. Me too. So many things. Crazy, crazy,” Moin responded, smiling. “Sit,” he said, gesturing to the seat across the table.
Kumar looked at his watch. He feigned a look of shock on his face and said, “Yeow! I am twenty minutes late. Sorry, let’s get to it, man,” he said.
As Moin sat down, Raj Kumar looked up from the laptop again and then underwent the harder task of thinking about something other than the e.mail he was just reading. He stretched his arms upward and let out a groan.
They focused.
“Ok, so……” Raj Kumar started, an invitation for Moin to start.
“Yeah, so we have the new monitoring team here. Good chance that we can take over the fifth shift from the monitoring teams in the Control Center in Texas. Phil back there has said that ‘This is India’s best chance to prove that her day and the US night can be joined in ways that will revolutionize Follow the Sun.’ Good stuff. Very good stuff.”
“Good, man, good,” said Raj Kumar, smiling widely. “Now, you are asking us to help develop some of the new solutions for this monitoring. We would be more than glad to do that, but I am not clear on what exactly you mean. The enterprise in the US has had monitoring solutions in place for years. I don’t claim to understand all of it, but I did check it up and found that Tavoli is widely used as the monitoring solution of choice for the company. You won’t have an issue from me and the team in terms of winning back some of the recent lag in utilization to help out your effort, but I can speak for the team – we are not so clear on what it is that you need.”
“Right, got that in your e.mail, and thus we are here,” said Moin, spreading his hands out across the conference room. “I want to have some of your development cycles pulled off of the onshore business unit’s work, with their concurrence or not is your business, and I want those guys to help develop some solutions that will position us in a positive way. It is a bit speculative, believe me, but I think if you find that we can move the company’s monitoring paradigms forward, we all win. Isn’t that at the bottom of the bottom of all of their e.mails – “’As a team, we will win!’, na?”
Raj Kumar pondered the words carefully. It was a nice offer. Just a small adjustment of the workload that he managed, the onshore partners would probably not notice or care so much. They would also benefit from the shifting of priorities. What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them and might even help them.
“Today in India, everything is possible, everything is possible,” Raj Kumar stated softly, smiling.
Mr. Kumar emerged from the pooja room with a sense of serenity. He had offered the circumstances of the day, the circumstances of his family, and the circumstances of this new nation to the gods. It was a feeling of peace that was undergirded by the belief that a transcendent realm moved the events of this world. From this belief extended an open feeling toward the fate that he and his family would encounter.
He went outside to his porch. Up to now, he had been alarmed and confused by what he was seeing of this new India. But now the tide had turned and he felt peace. The sun was shining above the awning that gave him shade. A warm gust went through the porch, a sign of the warmer time to come that day.
In the distance, the hum of humanity was starting up. On the plains of Gurgaon, the people all knew each other, and the sound of their mixing, celebrating, slogging, begging, selling, and buying all added up to a common din. Each day sounded like the other, although some days contained more celebrating, some contained more slogging, and every day the buying and selling fought each other in the most creative of ways. It was these common sounds of life that he hoped would proceed in precisely this way as this new India was born. It was a time to let the ugliness pass and the realm of possibility open wide.
Off on a connected street, over the rooftops across the pathway, a voice rose. It was a loud voice. A booming voice that yelled a protest, a request to stop.
“No.”
“Stop.”
“No!”
“Don’t!”
“NO!!”
This was not the first time Mr. Kumar had heard this. He knew that sometimes a beggar would be expelled from a store in a harsh way. He knew children would fight now and again. There were even times that a buyer of wheat would discover that his sack was only husks in the bottom half and would return to decry the vendor. But this had a more ominous tone. It also seemed to last longer. And now other voices were joining in.
Voices rose.
Mr. Kumar got up from his chair on the porch, walked down the crude steps and arrived onto the dirt street. He had become large in his old age, and his attempt to run down the street was a clumsy one.
As he turned the corner, a scene unlike anything he had ever seen presented itself.
The almost dream-like state that his chanting had produced turned immediately into a nightmare. Dipti, his daughter, was screaming at a crowd of men who were holding his grandson, Sunil, by the neck. The men were uniformly Muslims, and a crowd of both Hindu and Muslim had gathered to watch what was happening. The men holding Sunil by the neck were furious and the boy had a grimace of pain. Kumar’s heart leapt in agony. His daughter was screaming in a way he had never seen before. He ran forward toward the scene with his right hand raised. His slow gait turned fast as his whole mind was captured by the look of pain on his grandson’s face. The man was holding him too tightly. This was something different.
As he walked up he heard the words from the angry crowd of Muslim men. They were saying something about how the boy had come to steal from one of their shops. Ismail, a friend of Kumar’s since boyhood, was standing behind his nephew Rafik. Both men were wild in the eyes. Rafik held little Sunil’s neck, his knuckles white from the grip. The small boys face was contorted in agony. Dipti was still screaming, a combination of protests against the charges as well as demanding that they let go of the boy.
As Kumar stumbled into the middle of the melee, he was pushed and jostled. Instead of acting as a force of reconciliation, he was the final step in the escalation. The fighting started between the men in every direction, little discretion was given to where the blows landed, although within seconds the bloodlust organized itself into a Hindu-against-Muslim riot. Kumar saw his daughters hair grabbed as she was pushed to the ground. She was kicked. The world was spinning as men in every direction started to descend on each other, intent on killing.
From the middle of the violence, small Sunil, freed from the grip if Rafik, ran with every ounce of energy that could propel his little body. His simply purchase of daily bread had lead to the fighting. The shop owner had refused to give him the right change, Sunil had protested at this elder, and a crowd had formed. The events had escalated in mere seconds. A cauldron of fear and doubt had started to roil, former friends and neighbors converted into something different, something new.
New, inexplicable.
India on its first day.
Sunil ran away and turned back to where the violence was growing, where his mother was on the ground, where his grandfather being beaten by a crowd of younger men. He saw that blood came down from his grandfather Kumar’s head. He cried out in terror, but he turned around and ran away from the violence nonetheless. He ran to his uncle’s house on the next alleyway.
His uncle was already standing out in front of his home, a response to the yelling he also had heard. He had a look of alarm in his eyes as Sunil ran up.
“Grandfather, mami, everyone… Oh, help us, uncle!! All the men…. Grandfather will die…,” Sunil screamed incoherently, trying to get his uncle to understand that the violence was happening to the family, trying to make him understand that their former friends and neighbors were now attacking them. That he himself had not done anything wrong.
“I did not do it, Uncle… Mami is….. they are killing, killing her!!”
His uncle grabbed him by his small arm and gave it a strong shake. He snapped out of his screaming and stared his uncle in the eyes. The look in his eyes told his uncle the only thing he needed to know – the fury on the next pathway involved those in their family. He went into his home and pulled out a large knife. He ran down the pathway and turned left. Hs disappeared from Sunil’s sight.
The small boy stood there, shaking. His aunt quickly and silently emerged from the small home and pulled Sunil inside. She held the boy in her arms as he shook.
“Na mumkin hai, na mumkin hai,” he repeated over and over again at a whisper’s level.
It’s not possible, it’s not possible.
She held the boy as he shook and repeated this mantra of fear and incredulity over and over again. It’s not possible, it’s not possible.
As he pulled back from her arms, he noticed that she had tears in her eyes. It was not only fear, but also deep sadness that had produced these tears.
“Sunil, ajkal Bharat mein, sab kuch mumkin hai,” she whispered. A moan then came out of her mouth, flowing out from her heart.
Sunil, these days in India, everything is possible.
As the Khalid family ran back to their homes amidst the drumming, the sound had grown. It was deafening, yet they continued to run toward it. No option existed of turning their backs on their homes, everything that they had in this world was in those homes.
They continued to hurtle toward the drumming.
As they emerged from the wooded area into which they had gone to ascend up the hill for better transistor coverage, they saw that the area around their homes was already filled, but not with their family members. Instead, a crowd had gathered. Some drumming and others dancing. Hundreds of men. They stood still, unclear about what was happening, but they knew that their homes were in jeopardy. Moinuddin ambled to the front of this small group, his clan. He held his arms out at his side as if to tell everyone that they must stay behind him. They obeyed. They always obeyed the wise grandfather.
In the blink of an eye, Moinuddin started to walk toward the drumming crowd, his right hand raised up in a request to talk. He saw faces in the crowd that he knew, some of those faces he had known since he was a child. Faces he knew as friends. With no comprehension of the situation, he started to walk more quickly toward the crowd of drummers and dancers. His old frame struggled at times, but he now moved at a speed that he had not achieved in years.
As he got closer, he noticed the dancers and drummers, members of the Hindu castes and clans that he had known his whole life, had blood on their white clothing.
Behind the crowd, a torch was thrown into a home, the home of his sister. The place lit up with no delay.
Moinuddin stopped in his tracks and looked on in horror. His family’s neighborhood, his friends, his India - it had all been transformed in a matter of moments, hours and days into a place of horror.
He stood there looking on, mere feet away from the drumming and dancing crowd. All at once, the drumming stopped. The dancers stopped. They looked on in silence at Moinuddin and his clan standing behind him. In the background, a second whooshing sound broke the silence. A new torch had been thrown into the front door of a second home. It too burst into flames without a moment’s delay.
From the rear, the crowd of Hindus started to shift. Various men moved aside as something emerged from within their ranks. The thing broke to the front of the still-silent crowd. It was a man with eyes that shown wildly in the moonlit night. His tongue was pressed outward between his teeth. His chest heaved under rapid breathes. He carried a saber. His face was twisted into a horrid grimace. This killing machine then started to walk forward and the bloody crowd recommenced their drumming and dancing, renewed into their killing lust. Moinuddin fell first, his family members where then pulled down one by one.
Almost all of them fell.
Mahmooda and her mother turned and sprinted back into the woods from which they had emerged. They among the Khalids would uniquely survive this night.
India did emerge from the violence. The body of the nation was forever broken. A part of the nation would live in a place called Pakistan. The rest would stay in India. Hindu and Muslim would still carry a sadness in their hearts forever, and almost all of the Hindus that had lived within the confines of this new Pakistan lost everything they had ever had, expelled from the Land of the Pure.
The sad events of the nation-birthing continued until each side stood paralyzed in the presence of entire trains that were filled with the butchered. One train was filled with the dead except for one toddler, sitting silently and covered in dried blood. His eyes were empty. No one was sure which way the train had run, into or out of which country it had traveled. But that story helped the eventual end of the killing. Still, the anger never stopped completely. Certainly it would never stop permanently. India and Pakistan were twins who sought to steal each other’s birth right, a story from the dawn of time.
Mahmooda lived throughout that night in 1947. Sunil lived throughout that same night. They each lost most of their family members in 1947. In coming years, they both stood mostly silent on the pain that they both carried. They grew up in Gurgaon amongst family members. They married and had families. They had grandchildren. The rhythms of life forever were different, but the appearance of normalcy did return.
Neighbor became neighbor again.
As Sunil and Mahmooda grew into old people, they stood next to each other at the same time and in the same place, now separated by many years from the horror that had enveloped them and those that they loved on one fateful day nearly sixty years prior. It was the graduation of their grandsons from the same technical university. Both Sunil and Mahmooda had tears in their eyes that day, tears of pride and joy. Even some healing took place that day.
They did not know each other, but stood shoulder to should in common celebration. Their clans had mutually robbed each other of life and fullness and a normal future. Remnants to death that haunted each of their hearts forever.
A few short years later, the new members of the Khalid and Kumar families stood eye to eye and planned a common endeavor in a new India. Moin and Kumar had a mutual respect and a deep dependence on each other. They felt a connection around the common goals of production, engagement, moving abroad, nice girls and pretty girls, and growing a family. Moin and Kumar had grown up with mutual whispers of how it was important never to mention 1947 to their grandparents. Both boys remembered times when their grandparents had far-off stare in their eyes. Unsettling stares. Memory-filled stares.
The old India and the new India continue to tug on each other. A modern technologist would attend pooja as a way of acquiring nice weather for his team building event. Leaders would cut deals on human bandwidth as deal were cut on sheaves of wheat. The new India sat in a BMW next to the old Indian ox cart. India still smiled, and she still cried, and she still descended into blood letting now and again. But each day the sun rose across these borders that were born that fateful year of 1947, and the sun shined on all equally.
And tomorrow the sun shall rise again.
This story talks about the real violence that happened in 1947 in a place call Gurgaon, outside of Delhi. That place, now a major hub of the economic boom in India, was a place of bloodshed during the fighting of 1947, the year India achieved independence, and the year Pakistan was formed.
The characters and events are fictitious, and represent my imaginings on the subject of what happened in 1947.
This essay reiterates some of my ideas on how old India and new India are connected and different.
It is tragic subject matter, and I hope it makes you think.
The Khalid family gathered around the transistor, listening for anything that they could use to find out what was happening. Pandit Nehru was speaking, and it was being broadcast throughout the land. He was appealing to both Hindus and Muslims for peace. A dizzying set of events was occurring since the announcement that a new nation of India was being created due to the Britishers leaving. Then came the stories about how the Muslim peoples of this new India would live in a different land than the Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Jains. With a lengthy history in the area and a series of shops and a tiffin business in Gurgaon, the Khalid family did not want things to change like this. There was no need to alter the way of life that they had, and their neighbors were of different faiths – why leave?
In places remote from Gurgaon there had been violence between former neighbors. Muslim shops had been burned, Hindus and Sikhs were reported to have been attacked in other states by Muslim mobs, and there were reports that Islamic communities as far south as Hyderabad were rioting. It was unclear what was happening in these places that seemed so very distant from the Khalid family’s life on the plains of Gurgaon. What was happening in a place called Punjab seemed to have been the most serious. There were stories coming from surrounding villages that trains of Muslims had been stopped in the countryside of Punjab and everyone inside of it had been butchered. There were other reports of Hindu-filled trains coming from Sindh where almost everyone on the train had arrived into Amritsar covered in blood.
It was even hard for the Khalid family, all twelve of whom were huddled around the transistor trying to learn what was happening, to understand where these places were.
“Abba, are these trains coming here? Will those people kill us?” asked Mahmooda, only six years of age.
Moinuddin, her grandfather, pinched her cheek and whispered words of reassurance to her.
“No, little one. All is well with us,” he said softly.
She grabbed his hand and held onto it tightly. Despite his words of comfort, the look on his face had failed to comfort her. Or any of the others in the family. A few weeks prior Moinuddin had seen the Britishers leaving the areas around Delhi, large groups of white men and women leaving the military and government centers. This was greeted with a mixture cheering and significant uncertainty. A few older Indian cried in sadness, some danced with glee.
The violence had started not long after that.
And it spread.
The immediate area on the plains of Gurgaon was still relatively safe, but there was a bomb thrown into a masjid by a Sikh several miles away, and the rioting that followed was bloody. Two days ago there was a family that passed close to the Khalid home on foot, on a silent journey to nowhere.
There had been blood on their clothes.
“We appeal to all of the people of India to obey calm and to show peace to your neighbor. My countrymen, the events of the last few months have been profound. 1947 will forever be remembered as the year in which we gained our freedom as a people. I share the vision of Gandhiji, of an India where peace will flourish and the many people of this newly free land will live together as one community, one nation.
We stand together in our plea for peace. Now. And into the future.
I have been in close and perpetual contact with leaders of the Congress Party, as well as with my friend Mr. Jinnah and members of The Muslim League. We continue to discuss the exact way that our shared new nation will exist. Despite some differences, Mr. Jinnah and I stand together in common commitment to an India where Hindu and Muslim and Sikh and Jain and Christian can stand together in a secular democracy, a land in which all may practice their faith in peace and brotherhood……”
His words continued on for a time. The Khalid family listened to this man who all people knew to be a good man. Moinuddin remembered reading in a newspaper that this Nehru had been educated in England and that he stood on his head every morning. A Kashmiri pandit, he was a man that could talk equally to the Britishers, to the Muslims and to the Hindus of all castes.
He was a man in whom they could hope.
The announcer introduced Mr. Jinnah next. He spoke.
“Salaam E Alaikum to all of the Muslims in the Ummat of this land, I request peace from you. This time is important for us in many ways. We have been freed from the shackles of Britisher rule, and we are moving into a proud time when we may achieve nationhood of our own. I and the members of my Muslim League are demanding to achieve what is rightfully ours, if Allah wills it, a nation of the pure. If Allah wills it, a new Muslim nation, a Pakistan will arise at this time. Our universities are filled with dedicated young people who will gladly aid in the holy the movement of our Muslim community into a land of our own.
This time of freedom is a time in which we will make history by taking an important step toward an establishment of a caliphate in Asia unlike anything that has been seen in four centuries. But we must approach this nationhood from a position of peace. And of strength. I offer my appeal to stop all violence against those outside of our community. The blood must not flow in this way at this time. I appeal alongside Mr. Nehru for peace in this land. Inshallah.”
The words of each man had a different impact on the Khalid family. To hear the words of Nehru was a comfort. He had been one of the leaders who had helped the campaign against the Britishers become successful. He was a leader and was asking for calm, a request which the Khalid family welcomed. And one which told them that the stories that they had been hearing were true. Blood was flowing in this new India. Nehru had spoken to all the peoples of India.
When Jinnah spoke, they felt a hope of a different sort. Jinnah had addressed only India’s Muslims. To some degree, they felt that his words were for them specifically, as if he knew them. He spoke in the words and tones of the Muslims, and as such there was a connection with what he said that was profound and deep.
Historical.
Both men had appealed for the same thing – peace amongst the peoples of this new India, where blood letting had reached new levels of ghastliness in the events of the past days and weeks and months.
As the Khalid family sat in a circle and continued to get whatever news they could from the crackling transistor, Mahmooda turned from the circle and looked off into the distance.
“I hear drums,” she stated, innocently.
Moinuddin looked off into the distance, too.
When Moin looked out the window of the conference room he saw sparkling new buildings as far as the eye could see. Gurgaon was a place where the New India was emerging in a way that few other cities could claim. For each new building that gleamed in the sun, there was a new one going up somewhere else. Grand cranes mixed with the blue sky. On many of these cranes you could see the Indian flag fluttering in the wind. 2007 promised to be a year that grew the economy even more than the prior year, but less than the year to follow.
The meeting had started on time in the sense that Moin was sitting in the conference room alone for the first several minutes. It worked that way here, too often the start time of a meeting was when the glimmer of getting up from one's desk started, and one or two new tasks would start. Very often a meeting would start ten or fifteen minutes after the designated start time. On some days, that was best case.
It was an exceptional time, nonetheless.
The work that he had to do today was related to a new project coming from the home office in Seattle, in the US. Moin was the liaison between the offshore infrastructure team in Gurgaon and the project leadership in the US. His peer, Raj Kumar, was the similar. Raj Kumar was the liaison for the middleware application team. Both young men occupied a special position in the company. As liaisons between onshore and offshore leaders they had received special validation that their years of hard work were paying off – their command of English was seen as exceptional, their technical knowledge was among the strongest in the company, and their organizational and facilitation skills were such that even a manager from the US would find them to be dependable according to “US standards”. Moin and Raj Kumar’s next step would be to move to the US for a short period of time, completing their differentiation from the regular technicians in India.
Success.
As Moin sat there considering the special role that he played for his team and for the company, and how it was inextricably tied to the success of Raj Kumar and Raj Kumar’s team, he had a sense of satisfaction. A great deal of work had gone into getting here.
Still, he thought, smiling, when we are not talking to the US we don’t arrive to our own meetings on time. He clicked his teeth against the tardiness of Raj Kumar.
He continued to type an e.mail to the development leaders in the US. He left the key words blank, especially dates. They were replaced with **/**/**. The details of the project were the details of the meeting he and Raj Kumar were scheduled to have right now. They had set aside two hours for the discussion, now only one hour and fifty-three minutes were left.
He continued to wait.
Mr. Kumar was the patriarch of an extended family that had long been prominent in Gurgaon. He owned several shops in the shopping areas and his clan were almost entirely invested in the businesses that he ran. It was often said, If you throw a rock on any street and alleyway in Gurgaon, it would hit a shop run by a Kumar. When he had first heard this, Mr. Kumar laughed and stated to his family, “Then make sure you pick up the rock, clean it up, and sell it back to the one who threw it.”
The times were changing. A set of events had been unfolding that were both surprising and hard to make sense of. Mr. Kumar, as a wise shop owner, had worked arrangements with the Britishers to establish his access to goods and services that came from them only. In the new order that was emerging, the Britishers were leaving and so much of Mr. Kumar’s access and control would certainly go with them.
Mr. Kumar had worked hard to get whatever information was available. Newspapers and word of mouth were the primary means of gathering both facts and innuendo. It was hard to determine which was which. He had even gone into Delhi to see what he could learn about the events that were unfolding. A mix of jubilation and fear were simultaneously emerging from the peoples of this new India. As the Britishers left, crowds gathered to watch. Some cheered. Some gave pomp to the event with band music. A few in the crowd cried. It was a time in which everyone knew that life would never be the same.
He knew that after the tremendous events of the day, nation building lay before the varied peoples of India. He also knew that there were long standing, almost dormant, impulses which were beginning to rear their heads. The peoples of India were rubbing up against each other in the clamor of achieving dominance in the new nation. Sikh and Hindu fought Muslim, Muslims sought a new land of their own, masjids had been set fire, more than one mandir had its walls scarred by Muslim mobs.
There had recently been a family that was seen passing through Gurgaon. From where they were coming and to where they were going were unknown. As people asked them questions, they simply stared at the ground and walked onward. There was a good sense that they were walking away from something as opposed to walking to something. One woman in the group had been carrying a small child in her arms. One member of the Kumar clan who had described this family’s silent march said, “That child’s eyes were silently screaming.” It was a phrase that had haunted Mr. Kumar. It was at once poetic and horrible.
There had been blood on the wanderer's clothing.
Mr. Kumar knew that something new was on the horizon, something that was fundamentally dark in texture. He moved from his sitting chair on the porch of his home into the interior. He walked into the pooja room and faced the blue statue that was gleefully playing a flute. He lit incense and started to chant.
He offered prayer.
As the drums got closer, Moinuddin was gently saying words of offering to Allah. He was holding beads in his right hand and rubbing them in sequence as he appealed to the beneficence and mercy of his god. Something about the nature of the drumming was ominous. It did not have the cadence of celebration like the drums in Delhi had had as the Britishers walked in formation to the trains. Nor did the drumming have the celebratory rhythm of a wedding. It was another sound altogether.
A sound of anger.
When Mahmooda had first heard the drums, Moinuddin himself could not hear them. They had been far enough away that his aged ears were unable to make it out. Mahmooda’s young ears had heard what, at that point, was more than a half kilometer away. Hearing drums was not unusual in Gurgaon, or anywhere else in India, for that matter. It was entirely normal for the day or night skies to be filled with drumming. Because of this, Mahmooda’s announcement of drumming in the distance was met with very little response. Khadija, Moinuddin’s wife, had clicked her teeth about the drums and commented that it was going to make the transistor hard to hear.
But as time passed and the drumming became louder, the beats started to give the family cause for serious concern. These new events of the past few days, the stories that were coming out, and the drums had all coalesced into a small wave of fear within the members of the clan.
This fear was confirmed by every beat of the drum.
He reached into the hands of his daughter-in-law, Aisha, and turned the transistor off.
“We must go to our homes,” he stated simply, yet urgently. Everyone knew the meaning. Freed of the distraction of the transistor, the extended family heard the beating of the drums more loudly. Something about the sound of the drums and the urgency in Abba Moinuddin’s voice gave everyone a fear which spread through their bodies like chilled water. Something was very wrong with the drumming.
Aisha grabbed Mahmooda’s hand, and started to run off toward their homes. As an extended family, they lived in a collection of homes near one another. They all knew the direction, and the black veils of the women fluttered in the wind as they ran to their homes, a supposed place of safety. The men stayed behind to keep pace with Moinuddin and Aliya, the elder members of the family. But everyone was running to their homes. It was a small distance, but it seemed never to arrive.
Their worst fears were confirmed as the drumming got louder as they approached their homes.
There was pounding.
It was the knock on the door which made Moin look up from his laptop. Raj Kumar peeked his head into the conference room. He smiled hugely, another young professional who spent his days in a place doing work that he enjoyed. His enthusiasm was infectious, and he was quickly seen as top talent among the ‘offshore team’.
“Hey, man! Sorry I am late, so many things happening. Crazy, crazy,” he said, chuckling gently.
“Ah, it’s nothing. Me too. So many things. Crazy, crazy,” Moin responded, smiling. “Sit,” he said, gesturing to the seat across the table.
Kumar looked at his watch. He feigned a look of shock on his face and said, “Yeow! I am twenty minutes late. Sorry, let’s get to it, man,” he said.
As Moin sat down, Raj Kumar looked up from the laptop again and then underwent the harder task of thinking about something other than the e.mail he was just reading. He stretched his arms upward and let out a groan.
They focused.
“Ok, so……” Raj Kumar started, an invitation for Moin to start.
“Yeah, so we have the new monitoring team here. Good chance that we can take over the fifth shift from the monitoring teams in the Control Center in Texas. Phil back there has said that ‘This is India’s best chance to prove that her day and the US night can be joined in ways that will revolutionize Follow the Sun.’ Good stuff. Very good stuff.”
“Good, man, good,” said Raj Kumar, smiling widely. “Now, you are asking us to help develop some of the new solutions for this monitoring. We would be more than glad to do that, but I am not clear on what exactly you mean. The enterprise in the US has had monitoring solutions in place for years. I don’t claim to understand all of it, but I did check it up and found that Tavoli is widely used as the monitoring solution of choice for the company. You won’t have an issue from me and the team in terms of winning back some of the recent lag in utilization to help out your effort, but I can speak for the team – we are not so clear on what it is that you need.”
“Right, got that in your e.mail, and thus we are here,” said Moin, spreading his hands out across the conference room. “I want to have some of your development cycles pulled off of the onshore business unit’s work, with their concurrence or not is your business, and I want those guys to help develop some solutions that will position us in a positive way. It is a bit speculative, believe me, but I think if you find that we can move the company’s monitoring paradigms forward, we all win. Isn’t that at the bottom of the bottom of all of their e.mails – “’As a team, we will win!’, na?”
Raj Kumar pondered the words carefully. It was a nice offer. Just a small adjustment of the workload that he managed, the onshore partners would probably not notice or care so much. They would also benefit from the shifting of priorities. What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them and might even help them.
“Today in India, everything is possible, everything is possible,” Raj Kumar stated softly, smiling.
Mr. Kumar emerged from the pooja room with a sense of serenity. He had offered the circumstances of the day, the circumstances of his family, and the circumstances of this new nation to the gods. It was a feeling of peace that was undergirded by the belief that a transcendent realm moved the events of this world. From this belief extended an open feeling toward the fate that he and his family would encounter.
He went outside to his porch. Up to now, he had been alarmed and confused by what he was seeing of this new India. But now the tide had turned and he felt peace. The sun was shining above the awning that gave him shade. A warm gust went through the porch, a sign of the warmer time to come that day.
In the distance, the hum of humanity was starting up. On the plains of Gurgaon, the people all knew each other, and the sound of their mixing, celebrating, slogging, begging, selling, and buying all added up to a common din. Each day sounded like the other, although some days contained more celebrating, some contained more slogging, and every day the buying and selling fought each other in the most creative of ways. It was these common sounds of life that he hoped would proceed in precisely this way as this new India was born. It was a time to let the ugliness pass and the realm of possibility open wide.
Off on a connected street, over the rooftops across the pathway, a voice rose. It was a loud voice. A booming voice that yelled a protest, a request to stop.
“No.”
“Stop.”
“No!”
“Don’t!”
“NO!!”
This was not the first time Mr. Kumar had heard this. He knew that sometimes a beggar would be expelled from a store in a harsh way. He knew children would fight now and again. There were even times that a buyer of wheat would discover that his sack was only husks in the bottom half and would return to decry the vendor. But this had a more ominous tone. It also seemed to last longer. And now other voices were joining in.
Voices rose.
Mr. Kumar got up from his chair on the porch, walked down the crude steps and arrived onto the dirt street. He had become large in his old age, and his attempt to run down the street was a clumsy one.
As he turned the corner, a scene unlike anything he had ever seen presented itself.
The almost dream-like state that his chanting had produced turned immediately into a nightmare. Dipti, his daughter, was screaming at a crowd of men who were holding his grandson, Sunil, by the neck. The men were uniformly Muslims, and a crowd of both Hindu and Muslim had gathered to watch what was happening. The men holding Sunil by the neck were furious and the boy had a grimace of pain. Kumar’s heart leapt in agony. His daughter was screaming in a way he had never seen before. He ran forward toward the scene with his right hand raised. His slow gait turned fast as his whole mind was captured by the look of pain on his grandson’s face. The man was holding him too tightly. This was something different.
As he walked up he heard the words from the angry crowd of Muslim men. They were saying something about how the boy had come to steal from one of their shops. Ismail, a friend of Kumar’s since boyhood, was standing behind his nephew Rafik. Both men were wild in the eyes. Rafik held little Sunil’s neck, his knuckles white from the grip. The small boys face was contorted in agony. Dipti was still screaming, a combination of protests against the charges as well as demanding that they let go of the boy.
As Kumar stumbled into the middle of the melee, he was pushed and jostled. Instead of acting as a force of reconciliation, he was the final step in the escalation. The fighting started between the men in every direction, little discretion was given to where the blows landed, although within seconds the bloodlust organized itself into a Hindu-against-Muslim riot. Kumar saw his daughters hair grabbed as she was pushed to the ground. She was kicked. The world was spinning as men in every direction started to descend on each other, intent on killing.
From the middle of the violence, small Sunil, freed from the grip if Rafik, ran with every ounce of energy that could propel his little body. His simply purchase of daily bread had lead to the fighting. The shop owner had refused to give him the right change, Sunil had protested at this elder, and a crowd had formed. The events had escalated in mere seconds. A cauldron of fear and doubt had started to roil, former friends and neighbors converted into something different, something new.
New, inexplicable.
India on its first day.
Sunil ran away and turned back to where the violence was growing, where his mother was on the ground, where his grandfather being beaten by a crowd of younger men. He saw that blood came down from his grandfather Kumar’s head. He cried out in terror, but he turned around and ran away from the violence nonetheless. He ran to his uncle’s house on the next alleyway.
His uncle was already standing out in front of his home, a response to the yelling he also had heard. He had a look of alarm in his eyes as Sunil ran up.
“Grandfather, mami, everyone… Oh, help us, uncle!! All the men…. Grandfather will die…,” Sunil screamed incoherently, trying to get his uncle to understand that the violence was happening to the family, trying to make him understand that their former friends and neighbors were now attacking them. That he himself had not done anything wrong.
“I did not do it, Uncle… Mami is….. they are killing, killing her!!”
His uncle grabbed him by his small arm and gave it a strong shake. He snapped out of his screaming and stared his uncle in the eyes. The look in his eyes told his uncle the only thing he needed to know – the fury on the next pathway involved those in their family. He went into his home and pulled out a large knife. He ran down the pathway and turned left. Hs disappeared from Sunil’s sight.
The small boy stood there, shaking. His aunt quickly and silently emerged from the small home and pulled Sunil inside. She held the boy in her arms as he shook.
“Na mumkin hai, na mumkin hai,” he repeated over and over again at a whisper’s level.
It’s not possible, it’s not possible.
She held the boy as he shook and repeated this mantra of fear and incredulity over and over again. It’s not possible, it’s not possible.
As he pulled back from her arms, he noticed that she had tears in her eyes. It was not only fear, but also deep sadness that had produced these tears.
“Sunil, ajkal Bharat mein, sab kuch mumkin hai,” she whispered. A moan then came out of her mouth, flowing out from her heart.
Sunil, these days in India, everything is possible.
As the Khalid family ran back to their homes amidst the drumming, the sound had grown. It was deafening, yet they continued to run toward it. No option existed of turning their backs on their homes, everything that they had in this world was in those homes.
They continued to hurtle toward the drumming.
As they emerged from the wooded area into which they had gone to ascend up the hill for better transistor coverage, they saw that the area around their homes was already filled, but not with their family members. Instead, a crowd had gathered. Some drumming and others dancing. Hundreds of men. They stood still, unclear about what was happening, but they knew that their homes were in jeopardy. Moinuddin ambled to the front of this small group, his clan. He held his arms out at his side as if to tell everyone that they must stay behind him. They obeyed. They always obeyed the wise grandfather.
In the blink of an eye, Moinuddin started to walk toward the drumming crowd, his right hand raised up in a request to talk. He saw faces in the crowd that he knew, some of those faces he had known since he was a child. Faces he knew as friends. With no comprehension of the situation, he started to walk more quickly toward the crowd of drummers and dancers. His old frame struggled at times, but he now moved at a speed that he had not achieved in years.
As he got closer, he noticed the dancers and drummers, members of the Hindu castes and clans that he had known his whole life, had blood on their white clothing.
Behind the crowd, a torch was thrown into a home, the home of his sister. The place lit up with no delay.
Moinuddin stopped in his tracks and looked on in horror. His family’s neighborhood, his friends, his India - it had all been transformed in a matter of moments, hours and days into a place of horror.
He stood there looking on, mere feet away from the drumming and dancing crowd. All at once, the drumming stopped. The dancers stopped. They looked on in silence at Moinuddin and his clan standing behind him. In the background, a second whooshing sound broke the silence. A new torch had been thrown into the front door of a second home. It too burst into flames without a moment’s delay.
From the rear, the crowd of Hindus started to shift. Various men moved aside as something emerged from within their ranks. The thing broke to the front of the still-silent crowd. It was a man with eyes that shown wildly in the moonlit night. His tongue was pressed outward between his teeth. His chest heaved under rapid breathes. He carried a saber. His face was twisted into a horrid grimace. This killing machine then started to walk forward and the bloody crowd recommenced their drumming and dancing, renewed into their killing lust. Moinuddin fell first, his family members where then pulled down one by one.
Almost all of them fell.
Mahmooda and her mother turned and sprinted back into the woods from which they had emerged. They among the Khalids would uniquely survive this night.
India did emerge from the violence. The body of the nation was forever broken. A part of the nation would live in a place called Pakistan. The rest would stay in India. Hindu and Muslim would still carry a sadness in their hearts forever, and almost all of the Hindus that had lived within the confines of this new Pakistan lost everything they had ever had, expelled from the Land of the Pure.
The sad events of the nation-birthing continued until each side stood paralyzed in the presence of entire trains that were filled with the butchered. One train was filled with the dead except for one toddler, sitting silently and covered in dried blood. His eyes were empty. No one was sure which way the train had run, into or out of which country it had traveled. But that story helped the eventual end of the killing. Still, the anger never stopped completely. Certainly it would never stop permanently. India and Pakistan were twins who sought to steal each other’s birth right, a story from the dawn of time.
Mahmooda lived throughout that night in 1947. Sunil lived throughout that same night. They each lost most of their family members in 1947. In coming years, they both stood mostly silent on the pain that they both carried. They grew up in Gurgaon amongst family members. They married and had families. They had grandchildren. The rhythms of life forever were different, but the appearance of normalcy did return.
Neighbor became neighbor again.
As Sunil and Mahmooda grew into old people, they stood next to each other at the same time and in the same place, now separated by many years from the horror that had enveloped them and those that they loved on one fateful day nearly sixty years prior. It was the graduation of their grandsons from the same technical university. Both Sunil and Mahmooda had tears in their eyes that day, tears of pride and joy. Even some healing took place that day.
They did not know each other, but stood shoulder to should in common celebration. Their clans had mutually robbed each other of life and fullness and a normal future. Remnants to death that haunted each of their hearts forever.
A few short years later, the new members of the Khalid and Kumar families stood eye to eye and planned a common endeavor in a new India. Moin and Kumar had a mutual respect and a deep dependence on each other. They felt a connection around the common goals of production, engagement, moving abroad, nice girls and pretty girls, and growing a family. Moin and Kumar had grown up with mutual whispers of how it was important never to mention 1947 to their grandparents. Both boys remembered times when their grandparents had far-off stare in their eyes. Unsettling stares. Memory-filled stares.
The old India and the new India continue to tug on each other. A modern technologist would attend pooja as a way of acquiring nice weather for his team building event. Leaders would cut deals on human bandwidth as deal were cut on sheaves of wheat. The new India sat in a BMW next to the old Indian ox cart. India still smiled, and she still cried, and she still descended into blood letting now and again. But each day the sun rose across these borders that were born that fateful year of 1947, and the sun shined on all equally.
And tomorrow the sun shall rise again.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Tara's party
KING ASHOKA
_____________________
Tara's birthday - a great time for all. You'll notice Prakash and Vinod playing some ambient table and sitar. Absolutely wonderful sounds.
And so ends a week of celebration. She really enjoyed all of the time with friends and family this week. A vastly improved time over her 39th, which she spent bed-ridden.
A great night!
Anyone who has pictures of Tara, please send them on! I only have the one below of her back (blue top, white pants).
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Tara's surprise and all of our surprise
This is the word Tara in Hindi. On my heart forever. I figured her 40th was a monumental event, so I went all out. She was moved to tears.
It's the last one, I promise!
This little addition to our lives will either be named "Bad Idea" and/or "We Hate Robyn and She Will Dog Sit When We Vacation".
All in good fun.
This was a gift from an American family that is taking care of three puppies whose mother died. They, through another American friend, provided us the chance to get a puppy. Now we have one.
We are dedicated to making it the happiest dog ever. Tara and the kids are loving it.
Me, well..... it probably won't take long for me to warm up to the idea.
It's the last one, I promise!
This little addition to our lives will either be named "Bad Idea" and/or "We Hate Robyn and She Will Dog Sit When We Vacation".
All in good fun.
This was a gift from an American family that is taking care of three puppies whose mother died. They, through another American friend, provided us the chance to get a puppy. Now we have one.
We are dedicated to making it the happiest dog ever. Tara and the kids are loving it.
Me, well..... it probably won't take long for me to warm up to the idea.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Tara's cake
See, you can get the beautiful things in life here in India. In some ways, this is more beautiful than it would be in the US, due to its relative rarity.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Pictures
Click on the picture above to link the photo gallery from the TEA website. We are sprinkled throughout it, look for us. The picture above is one of us from Monsoon Mania.
Isn't Tara pretty?
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Happy birthday Tara
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TARA!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have a surprise for you!
Will update you, the blog readers, in a few days on what the surprise is.
This weekend is the party for Tara - I have employed my table teacher and his friend who plays the sitar for the party itself. And that is not the half of it. And that is not even the surprise!
I have a surprise for you!
Will update you, the blog readers, in a few days on what the surprise is.
This weekend is the party for Tara - I have employed my table teacher and his friend who plays the sitar for the party itself. And that is not the half of it. And that is not even the surprise!
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Monday, September 22, 2008
Our friends - Theo and Marga
Theo and Marga's blog.
Our South African friends have set up a virtual presence on the web. Always glad to share links to other people's blogs....
Enjoy!
Our South African friends have set up a virtual presence on the web. Always glad to share links to other people's blogs....
Enjoy!
Sunday, September 21, 2008
It's why Tara means "star" in Hindi
Tara had an amazing experience, I am sure the first of many like it.
Some background....
There is a woman here named Pat. She came here in the late 1970s with her husband to do work at ICRISAT. She never left. She has been in Hyderabad for the last 30 years. She and her husband are/were exceptionally big-hearted people. I say "are/were" because he passed away a few months back.
While she has been here, Ms. Pat has created a health outreach to the rural poor of Andhra Pradesh. Her group provides medical care for those who don't have the access or the means to get the attention that they need. It is The Institute for Rural Health Studies. Exceptional work.
Well, how does this connect to Tara? Well, she has started to participate. There is an arm of this health outreach that goes to the local bus station and sees who may have come to Hyderabad for medical care. Apparently, there is a daily influx of people who spend their last ruppee to get to Hyderabad from the countryside. And when they get here they have no idea what to do, as the big city seizes up the cognition of those who come from small villages. As a result, there are sick and stunned people just sitting in the Hyderabad bus station.
The rural health group finds the people and gets them to the appropriate hospital. Tara provided the car for seven sick Indians to get to the hospital one day last week.
While she was at the hospital, she encountered two girls who are conjoined twins. The tops of their heads are attached. They had been abandoned and are being raised in the hospital.
When I came home, Tara was exceptionally lit up by the day's events. She had hit on something that really resonated with her. She will almost certainly do more of it. She has already planned what to bring back to the twins in the way of toys.
I mention this not as a way of bragging about what she has done. In some way, it has me a bit ashamed, actually. I am a bit squeamish around medical anomalies and am a little freaked out by seeing pictures of conjoined twins, much less being in a room with them. I count these as shortcomings in myself.
But my love is an exceptional woman. If you know her, you already know that. It has served to remind me that she is inherently made of a different material than most of us.
It also reminds me that grace is disturbing, even shocking, in its pure form.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Friday, September 19, 2008
Still
Grrrrrr.....
If I were a dog, my hackles would be standing straight up on my back. Still no internet.
If I were a dog, my hackles would be standing straight up on my back. Still no internet.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Still
No internet at home.
They're probably going to fire me for doing this at my desk.
Back to work.....
They're probably going to fire me for doing this at my desk.
Back to work.....
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
I punched through the wall.....
...of safety and order that is Whisper Valley. I went for a walk to see the beginnings of the Ganesh festival.
^ A group of boys in the field outside the gate were playing cricket. And a woman in full bhurqa was testing driving a scotter. She nailed about 5 rocks and tottered off at least twice. Not sure why she did not use the road.
^ One of the tents with a statue in it.
^ Another.
^ Down a small side street.
^ And yet another, with kids all over it.
^ Sorry, but if we have to live with it - I just must share it with you. A refuse pile with a huge dead rat next to it. Just look at that fella. He lives in a nation that is a huge buffet for him and his ilk. A veritable hulk.
^ Glimpses of the dwelling up on the boulders and cliffs above us.
^ And down the trail and back into WV. Neat little adventure. Next...... what happened during the *real* festival itself. It was.... colorful, to say the least.
^ A group of boys in the field outside the gate were playing cricket. And a woman in full bhurqa was testing driving a scotter. She nailed about 5 rocks and tottered off at least twice. Not sure why she did not use the road.
^ One of the tents with a statue in it.
^ Another.
^ Down a small side street.
^ And yet another, with kids all over it.
^ Sorry, but if we have to live with it - I just must share it with you. A refuse pile with a huge dead rat next to it. Just look at that fella. He lives in a nation that is a huge buffet for him and his ilk. A veritable hulk.
^ Glimpses of the dwelling up on the boulders and cliffs above us.
^ And down the trail and back into WV. Neat little adventure. Next...... what happened during the *real* festival itself. It was.... colorful, to say the least.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
What is it like to live in India?
One of the main points of this blog is to give our perspectives on the above question.
Indeed, what is it like to live in India?
The above pictures say a great deal. These pictures were taken as I walked from one side of the neighborhood to the other. Note the nice tennis court with monsoon rain on it, as well as some purple flowers that have been blown off of their vine onto the same court. Charming. Seasonal. Timely.
Then notice the rough-hewn sticks on the edge of the court. They were just placed there. By whom, based upon what rationale and with what subsequent plan - anybody's guess. And these are not just regular sticks trimmed by a guy with gloves and plastic goggles and a chain saw. They show the signs of how the cutting was done.
This is the picture - A shockingly thin guy, probably working in the city temporarily from a rural village, wielded a dull ax with every ounce of his heart until it was half-hewn, then he fought it with his full body, twisting and battling it until it came off the tree. Or perhaps he was the cutting guy and had a twisting guy with him (and beneath him, be very clear about that) who waited until it was his function - finalizing the twig twisting. Actually, the picture is not complete unless there are about six guys doing the task, three or four of whom are watching and providing verbal support and guidance.
The sticks were gone in a day. That is one difference about living in a gated community. Our old pile of sticks on Road 23/A used to degraded at the speed of entropy - which for wood is quite long. And don't get me started on road kill degradation rate! It was nauseously slow.
Soon - internet! Within 48 hours.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Picture from Goa
Remember when I went to Goa? This is the picture of the attendees, in front of a section Fort Aguada. This is an old Portuguese fort.
See if you can find me.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Not the only game in town....
Another family in Hyderabad is blogging. Check their site out.
While we continue to await our own internet connection.
While we continue to await our own internet connection.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Again
There was a bombing in Delhi this evening. This has become very regular, with bombings in Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Jaipur and Delhi since we have moved here. To say nothing on the ongoing troubles in Kashmir and ongoing violence in Sri Lanka.
We feel so safe in India, as the general aggression amongst the people here is so low, less than in the US. But there is a bad element here.
I wrote a recent essay on the peace that can be enjoyed between people of different faiths, and I also wrote a note acknowledging the arrival of 9/11, and what a sad day that was. Then this happened and a bit of my good will faded, and some of the feelings I had on 9/11 resurfaced for a bit. The good feelings will be back, but Tara and I are troubled deeply by this. So very sad.
A jihad group claimed responsibility.
It's a tragic thing.
Pray for the lost, if you pray.
We feel so safe in India, as the general aggression amongst the people here is so low, less than in the US. But there is a bad element here.
I wrote a recent essay on the peace that can be enjoyed between people of different faiths, and I also wrote a note acknowledging the arrival of 9/11, and what a sad day that was. Then this happened and a bit of my good will faded, and some of the feelings I had on 9/11 resurfaced for a bit. The good feelings will be back, but Tara and I are troubled deeply by this. So very sad.
A jihad group claimed responsibility.
It's a tragic thing.
Pray for the lost, if you pray.
Friday, September 12, 2008
Virtually non-virtual
The Bank took back the data cards that we used for our laptops (something about a security hole), and we don't yet have our internet on at home..... so, that leaves us almost without internet access.
I am updating this via my BlackBerry.
Does anyone remember life before the internet? When did this new thing become a "necessity", anyway?
Well, I have put enough pictures out on the blog for now, anyway.
More soon. It's all in the hands of Tata Sky now.
I am updating this via my BlackBerry.
Does anyone remember life before the internet? When did this new thing become a "necessity", anyway?
Well, I have put enough pictures out on the blog for now, anyway.
More soon. It's all in the hands of Tata Sky now.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Ganesh Marches
So, the statues under the canopy were marched around the neighborhood today. Drums, people dancing, coconuts smashing, incense burning. It was colorful, deafening, chaotic - in short, a blast. There were a bunch of guys pounding drums, and one of the guys had a large saucepan that he was nailing with a stick. Fantastic.
The cosmic significance of the event in the Hindu myths was lost on me. I enjoyed it as a festival.
I am amazed by the kids who get these experiences when they are at a formative age. What an opportunity - to see the strange, exotic, foreign stuff that they are seeing while their minds are forming. Awesome!
I leaned over to LW during the event and said, "You know you're one of the luckiest kids in the world to be able to see these things like this. You'd never see this in Wales, would you?" He laughed.
Here are some pictures.
The cosmic significance of the event in the Hindu myths was lost on me. I enjoyed it as a festival.
I am amazed by the kids who get these experiences when they are at a formative age. What an opportunity - to see the strange, exotic, foreign stuff that they are seeing while their minds are forming. Awesome!
I leaned over to LW during the event and said, "You know you're one of the luckiest kids in the world to be able to see these things like this. You'd never see this in Wales, would you?" He laughed.
Here are some pictures.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
September 11 - tomorrow
That sad day that comes every year comes tomorrow.
May we remember those who died so horribly.
May we remember those who died so horribly.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Monday, September 8, 2008
Ramzan
It is Ramzan, the Indian observance of Ramadan. For those who don't know, this is a forty day period of fasting and religious observance on the part of the world's Muslims. They may eat before 5 am, and after a period of prayer that ends at 7 pm, but they may not have anything in between. No water, even. For the very faithful, they don't swallow their spit. India is already filled with spitting people, so it is hard to distinguish the faithful just by this. ;-)
I bring this up because my whole day was impacted by Islam, and I thought nothing of it. I'll explain....
First, I went with Tara to yoga. We ended up going to a later class than we thought, and when we got there, I was told it was a women-only class. I walked away, a bit disappointed. But it solidified my hunch that yoga is perhaps not for me. A few minutes later, they called me back and explained that this it was a women-only class because the Islamic attendees to the yoga studio had requested a daily class without men. But, they explained to me, they just remembered that it was Ramzan and none of the Muslims women would be there. So I could come. I left despite this and went to lift weights - over to the gym through the driving of Akbar - our driver who is a Muslim. I called him to zip over and pick me up so that I could go to the gym. His ringtone during Ramzan is the voice of the muezzin - the Islamic call to prayer.
Later in the day, I was coming back from a meeting around 6 pm, and I noticed that there were shoes all over the lobby of the front hall of my floor. Then I noticed that one side had male shoes and the other side had female shoes. I put it together - the Muslim programmers were going through the final prayer at the end of the day - after which they could eat. Mind you, this was in a Bank building here in Hyderabad. In the US, there is a fertile spiritual life within the Bank, overwhelmingly Christian, but you have to dig a bit to see it and take part in it. But in India, the boundary between vocation and religion is porous. Same with politics and religion in India....
It's just different here.
I am staying late these days because Akbar goes to masjid at 6, and cannot pick me up until about 7:15. I have made this accommodation out of respect for his belief. Akbar and I compared notes on our faiths, so we know where each other stands. But as long as he follows Islam, I will shift my schedule instead of demand that he stay out his prayer to drive me home an hour earlier.
Why do I mention this?
I mention it primarily because I came to India with a deep suspicion of Islam. As an American and Christian, I had ample grounds to see Islam as a threat to humanity and a generally negative community. To be honest, many of those opinions are intact in my mind. The data shows it - Islam tends to breed brutality like no other faith. I have done my homework to be prepared to state this. This statement is not made from a perspective of ignorance.
With that said, people of good heart for many years have been quick to point out during past spirited discussions on the subject - "There are millions of good Muslims." And I guess I am saying that I now know this to be absolutely true. People with whom I work, people that I buy mangoes from, people with whom I share smiles, the great guy from whom I learn Hindi, and the young man to whom I entrust my children's safety in a car - all Muslims. I have seen Muslim women joke with my wife as they applied mahendi to her hands and feet. I have cracked up heartily with my Islamic Hindi teacher. I have given money to pay for my Islamic driver's Islamic mother's medical bills.
Nothing in here is a philosophical or theological concession - I put my entire trust in the cross. I think Ravi Zacharias, one of my favorite apologists and an Indian, said it best, "Pluralism is a social reality, not a philosophical conclusion."
In the pluralistic setting of India, I am pleased to say that I have learned that there is a very large zone of peace that can be achieved between people of different faiths. Despite its occasional tendency to have sectarian violence, often ghastly, India is a nation of a billion devout people from every faith under the sun and they occupy a land in relatively peaceful way. The world could learn something from how India works.
I certainly have.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
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