Friends, in this essay writer Shefali Tripathi Mehta holds forth on the idea of resistance and how it is becoming more and more important to stand up and be counted in these adverse times.
She quotes me too:
I ask Amandeep Sandhu, writer and novelist, who engages with and is followed by many on Facebook, how he decides which cause is just; which he must support. He tells me that while working on his current book on Punjab, he travelled, saw and experienced the real issues facing the farmers. While it devastated him, it also gave him a grounding in not just the farmer issues, but through this experience to chaff through the real and fake with regard to other social, religious and political issues. It reconfirmed his belief that there is power hegemony and that most often than not, the poor and the marginalised are on the side of truth. On when he stood at his street corner holding a poster in support of a young rape and murder victim, I asked if it matters who or how many are in it with him. Or why some are complacent and silent. His answer was an emphatic no, he does not look for support. Interestingly, he says he does not do anything expecting action or change, “Nothing changes – but resistance is important. Speaking up is a primary right.” He believes that there can never be “true” reporting but, “Democracy is eternal vigilance. Even if it is flawed. And so, we shouldn’t stop trying.”
Tags: counted, MeToo, murder, rape, resistance, Shefali Tripathi Mehta, stand up, violence
My friend Sreemoyee Piu Kundu has opened a whole discourse on sexuality in Indian literature. I love her writings on issues to do with women. This time she turned her gaze on the unspoken but terrible horrors of violence in the male sexual world. She decided to interview some of her male friends, including me. I feel honoured.
Thank you Piu, a much needed intervention. For until this is addressed we do not deal fully with feminism.
Seeta called me up one evening when I was in Bangalore. She had been watching Maachis, the movie on Punjab terrorism by Gulzar, and thinking about something that made a lot of sense to me. Seeta has worked with children all over the world, promoting ‘protection’ among them. It is a theme close to her heart. Equipping children to protect themselves acquires its deepest meaning when she works with them in Africa and Kashmir, places torn by war and terrorism. What follows here is her thoughts in retrospect about her work in Kashmir.
She was asking herself why is it that, even after two decades of violence, Kashmir does not heal. She was comparing it to the Bombay terrorist attacks (26/11). She noticed that India started healing even when Bombay was going on and attributed it partly to the fact that in Bombay we already had a number of heroes as the battle was on. The media beamed images of the ATS head, the NSG commandoes, the rescue operations, the Taj staff, and ordinary folks who had saved lived. But there is nothing like that from Kashmir, or the NorthEast, or those strife torn parts of the world where violence continues unabated.
This, she says, is because places that heal find their heroes, but sites of violence which do not heal partly simmer because they find no heroes. What do you tell a Kashmiri child? That your father was a terrorist?
Her argument made sense to me because I am writing Roll of Honour which deals with the terrorism years in Punjab and have been trying with various points of views, time lines, characters, and so on but have failed to present the story. I realise it is because I am unable to create a hero. My story may deal with terrorism but it seeks to heal, how can I do it without creating a character that rises above the tragedy? If I do not do that I do not give the reader a peg. If I do not win my reader, draw him in, how can I expect to make a story? Thank you Seeta for showing me this fundamental truth: healing needs heroes. No heroes, no healing.