Faith. It moves people in mysterious ways.
A surrendered Kashmiri militant says he crossed over the border in his 20s, driven by his faith. Faith, like a drug in his veins, penetrating bone and marrow and heart. While his gods wept, the twenty-two-year-old took aim. The gun became his confidante, his prayer wheel, his rosary.
He remembers the first man he killed, the blood on his chest, the last breath ebbing out of his crumpled body. He taught himself to not feel the pain of the dying. To numb his ears to their cries. He believed the blood he spilt was a votive offering to a greater cause. A sacrifice at its exalted altar.
Gun cradled on his shoulder, he travelled from village to village under cover of the night. Hid in orchards, camped in jungles. Ate what he could lay his hands on, his reflexes agile, his nerves on edge, always on the run like a hunted animal. "It wasn't faith in my god or religion that made me sound the first war cry," he says. "It was the mad rush of youth, blind to consequences…"
This he says in retrospect, his weather-beaten face pressed against the cold iron bars of his prison cell. He surrendered five years after the bloodbath began. The stench of gunpowder clogging his nostrils, the gun on his shoulder growing heavier with each passing day. He saw the bodies piling up. But the situation on the ground had nose-dived into utter despair. He had mistaken the gun for a miracle, a magic wand he could wave and turn things around in the blink of an eye. Even if it was too late, he saw the path of the gun for what it was: a curse, a disease, a perversion of faith. He regretted his mistake.
Diving deep into the pool of that regret, he surfaced with the true tenets of his faith. "I put my faith in the might of the gun. Not the power of peace and tolerance that my faith preaches. I thought I was a believer but I was just a fanatic."
Misplaced faith that drives you to the edge. Turns you from a living, breathing being into robotic killer. Makes you strap a bomb on to your body and walk into a crowded market place. One push of a button, one flick of your finger, lives blown to smithereens. A suicide bomber programmed to dream of a perfect afterlife, a place in paradise, by those who pervert the very foundation of faith.
********
Faith that saves you from the deepest abyss.
A Tibetan monk in Dharamsala, string of prayer beads in hand, maroon and yellow robes fluttering in the wind like a prayer. He takes a deep breath and breaks into a calm, knowing smile when he speaks of faith.
"Faith is …" he gestures at the hills covered with tall pines, the clear blue summer sky, the prayer flags dancing in the evening breeze. "Like air, water. It comes naturally to me. Like breathing."
To the Tibetan people scattered across the world, uprooted from their homeland, faith is the beacon that lights up the long night. A kind, benign, forgiving faith. Praying for peace and hope for all sentient beings.
For the exile, faith is the home where the heart is.
*********
Faith in a cause, even when the odds are stacked sky high. People brought together by nothing but the strength of their belief, inspired to take up impossible fights. One man and his faith in non-violence taking on the might of an arrogant empire. One nation's faith in freedom forcing the sun to set on an empire whose armies bullied the entire globe.
Faith moving mountains, birthing history at midnight.
Faith in the power of the powerless. Moving people to fight for dying lakes and rivers, tribals robbed of forests, miners left to rot in the bowels of the earth, farmers bulldozed into parting with their land. Win or lose, faith keeps you on an even keel. It's the fuel that feeds the fire and keeps it burning, even on nights when your tired eyes droop, and victory like a shimmering dream, seems way out of your reach.
********
Then there are those who twist faith into shapes that suit their convenience. Misuse it like a terrible weapon of mass destruction.
"God asked me to send my army to Iraq," famously declared the American president. As cluster bombs rain on Iraq and corpses pile up, Jesus weeps…
Closer home, the saffron brigade sets fire to theatres which screen films they think can upset Hindu gods. Rip apart canvases which portray Lakshmi or Saraswati through an artist's eye.
"My way or the highway" says the cowboy brigade that runs the free world.
"Our way or the highway" screeches the saffron brigade.
Taliban hordes smash centuries-old Bamiyan Budhhas in the name of faith. The Buddha smiles as their axes take wild swings at the statues.
*******
For those who have said goodbye to the binds of organized religion, faith is a constant search. We seek, we find, we falter.
A friend woke me up this morning. The shrill ring of the cell phone rudely penetrated the mist of sleep. I cursed him generously in the grey light of dawn for destroying my well-earned rest.
"It's five in the morning for us mortals. Call me after… say…eight?"
"No I need to talk," his voice sounded odd, eerily disjointed.
"Ok…talk."
"Do you think there is a god?"
My patience levels are at an all-time low before sunrise. "Whose number did you dial? Nietzsche?"
But sarcasm simply bounced off the seeker. He carried on.
"I am serious. What the hell is one supposed to believe in these days? The world is going to pieces. Iraq , Iran, Kashmir, the north east, Israel, Palestine…"
"So there is war everywhere. There have been wars since ever. There's no hope for us except to believe in the possibility of peace."
Silence for a long second. Then his reply.
"Keep the faith? That's such a romantic idea."
Scoff. Scoff. At the voice of reason he dragged out of bed!
"Ok, so what do you suggest? Let's all turn into insomniacs, nihilists. Stay up all night believing in nothing?"
"No. I mean, I don't know. That's why I called. If I knew, would I call?"
"Brilliant deduction, my dear Watson," I muttered.
"If there is a god, how can he or she not intervene? Stop all this madness. Set it right?"
"May be we are supposed to do it ourselves. Since we started the fire. Our job to put it out?"
"No divine intervention? No miracles? Then how the hell are we supposed to believe at all?"
The sun is spreading like a blob of white paint on the horizon. Back-lit clouds glow in its splendor.
"Faith is a mystery. Nobody can explain it. Not me, of all people." I rest my case.
"So you don't believe in god?"
"What is this? The Spanish inquisition?"
My friend is a bloodhound in human form. I suspect he was trained at his mother's knee to track answers down.
"Do you?"
"Oh…there are days I do. And then there are days…"
"So what do you believe in? I mean, no matter what day it is."
"Possibilities I guess…" A sunbeam streamed in through the living room window, motes of dust caught in its way, did a jig or two.
"The promise of tomorrow. That no matter how dark the night, there is always the hope of a new day."
The sun slowly grew into a shiny, sparkling, golden globe. The sky was bright and clean, gleaming like a freshly polished floor.
A new day at our feet, unraveling before us like a grand red carpet.
A new dawn, a new dream.
Amen.
Monday, May 21, 2007
Sunday, May 13, 2007
One More Life
MAY 2007
One more life
I am not an apologist for gunmen, serial killers or mass murderers. Not a fan of annoying television shows which dissect the killer’s psyche after he mows down innocent people. Anchors with patently fake earnestness quiz mental health professionals. A cliché fest. “Sir, do you think the movies he watched drove him to shoot people?” “Could a rock band have influenced his behavior?” “Was he nursing a broken heart, a stubbed toe?” “Did his mother love him enough?” Crazy is what crazy does, guys. So take these damn shows off air, will you? As Chris Rock once famously said while hosting an Academy Awards event: “we can’t call them crazy anymore…whatever happened to crazy?”
That being said, I have a tale to tell.
A real life story. It sounded stranger than fiction when I heard it from a man who sat hunched on a chair in an impersonal cop’s office. Truth, they say, can set you free. The jury is still out on that. But truth can turn out to be stranger than most things imagination can invent.
The man’s story had a beginning, a middle, and an end. But the end was begging for a new beginning. In real life, this is a fairly common problem. Ends tend to be a messy business. No such thing as a clean cut, a bloodless incision. You can live through an experience and move on. But when you walk into a new scenario, ghosts of the last episode of your life trail after you. Ends, like shrapnel, are embedded in you.
There a chosen few who can carry off perfect ends. Writers for example. Or film makers. You create the perfect end for your cast of characters... And then they lived happily ever. Untouched by memory or regret. End of story. Or they melted into a splendid, dizzying, digital sunset as violins serenaded them on dolby stereo. Fade out, end credits. All is well. That ends.
But in a real life story, the lines are blurred. I met a man in Kashmir a week ago. A place so complicated you can be forgiven if you think you walked into a fictional set-up. The air thick with intrigue like a dark John le Carre novel. Plenty of violent twists and turns like a Forsythe plot. Official versions and unofficial versions. Official body counts and the real deal. The truth, invented, interpreted and recycled. By the army, the police, the paramilitary forces. By mainstream politicians, militant outfits, spies, informers. By people who are caught in the crossfire. By people who engineer the cross fire. By vested interests. By innocent bystanders. By those who have nothing left to lose. Their lives, written off as collateral damage as old power games spin completely out of control.
The man’s story begins in 1983. He was 15 then. He woke up to an ordinary day in Kashmir. The day, like any other, would see several bloody encounters between security forces and militants. The body count rising by evening. The breeze smells of bloody ends. Explosions of pent up rage. The sound of strident war cries.
He was 15. He left home for school in the morning. His green satchel slung over his shoulder. In it, school books, a pen his father gifted him on his birthday, the lunch his mother had cooked in the eerie grey light of dawn.
The man before me speaks in a flat voice drained of emotion. As if he is speaking of a third person. Reliving the story of another life, not this. Another’s story, not his.
“I left home and didn’t go to school.” He says, fidgeting in his chair, throwing a wary glance at the cop in the room. I have taken special permission from the cops to interview this ex-militant who surrendered to the authorities two years ago. They agreed, on the condition that a cop would stay in the room during our conversation.
“I teamed up with a guide who took me across the border,” he says. He is a man of 35 now. A thin wisp of a man, browbeaten by life. When he gestures, I notice the nervous tremor of his hands.
“I saw a gun for the first time. I was trained to use it. Aim and fire.” He looks at the cop. .
“Tell her more. Did you kill anyone when they let you out of the camps?” asks the cop with a lopsided grin.
“No sir. No. We lived in the jungle next to a village after we came back. I shot some people, wounded them. Never killed anyone sir.”
He lapses into silence. The cop clears his throat.
“Why did you join the militants? You were just a school boy.” I ask.
“Most of the boys from my village were leaving. We were curious. We wanted to find out what was happening out there.”
He gropes for words. “It was like a typhoon. A wave of violence. We were swept away. When you are that young, you don’t think of consequences.”
He makes a fist and stabs at the air. An empty gesture of emphasis. “I had no idea what I was getting into. It was a wrong decision, but it took me a few years to realize that.”
He raises his voice and flings a question at no one in particular. “Who doesn’t make mistakes? But don’t I deserve a second chance now that I have given up the gun?”
Life after his surrender has been hell. His wife is a nervous wreck. They receive threatening phone calls, letters, midnight knocks on their door. The message is always the same: prepare to die. Militant groups see him as a traitor, a turn coat who deserves the worst. His two-year-old daughter and wife have moved from their village to the city, hoping to find safety here. He works as a daily wage labourer at a construction sight. He reports regularly to the local police station to keep them informed of his whereabouts.
“The cops don’t trust me. The militants threaten me and my family. We could be bumped off anytime.” He looks up and makes eye contact. “All I want is a peaceful life. A second chance.”
Does he deserve one?
Who decides?
One more life
I am not an apologist for gunmen, serial killers or mass murderers. Not a fan of annoying television shows which dissect the killer’s psyche after he mows down innocent people. Anchors with patently fake earnestness quiz mental health professionals. A cliché fest. “Sir, do you think the movies he watched drove him to shoot people?” “Could a rock band have influenced his behavior?” “Was he nursing a broken heart, a stubbed toe?” “Did his mother love him enough?” Crazy is what crazy does, guys. So take these damn shows off air, will you? As Chris Rock once famously said while hosting an Academy Awards event: “we can’t call them crazy anymore…whatever happened to crazy?”
That being said, I have a tale to tell.
A real life story. It sounded stranger than fiction when I heard it from a man who sat hunched on a chair in an impersonal cop’s office. Truth, they say, can set you free. The jury is still out on that. But truth can turn out to be stranger than most things imagination can invent.
The man’s story had a beginning, a middle, and an end. But the end was begging for a new beginning. In real life, this is a fairly common problem. Ends tend to be a messy business. No such thing as a clean cut, a bloodless incision. You can live through an experience and move on. But when you walk into a new scenario, ghosts of the last episode of your life trail after you. Ends, like shrapnel, are embedded in you.
There a chosen few who can carry off perfect ends. Writers for example. Or film makers. You create the perfect end for your cast of characters... And then they lived happily ever. Untouched by memory or regret. End of story. Or they melted into a splendid, dizzying, digital sunset as violins serenaded them on dolby stereo. Fade out, end credits. All is well. That ends.
But in a real life story, the lines are blurred. I met a man in Kashmir a week ago. A place so complicated you can be forgiven if you think you walked into a fictional set-up. The air thick with intrigue like a dark John le Carre novel. Plenty of violent twists and turns like a Forsythe plot. Official versions and unofficial versions. Official body counts and the real deal. The truth, invented, interpreted and recycled. By the army, the police, the paramilitary forces. By mainstream politicians, militant outfits, spies, informers. By people who are caught in the crossfire. By people who engineer the cross fire. By vested interests. By innocent bystanders. By those who have nothing left to lose. Their lives, written off as collateral damage as old power games spin completely out of control.
The man’s story begins in 1983. He was 15 then. He woke up to an ordinary day in Kashmir. The day, like any other, would see several bloody encounters between security forces and militants. The body count rising by evening. The breeze smells of bloody ends. Explosions of pent up rage. The sound of strident war cries.
He was 15. He left home for school in the morning. His green satchel slung over his shoulder. In it, school books, a pen his father gifted him on his birthday, the lunch his mother had cooked in the eerie grey light of dawn.
The man before me speaks in a flat voice drained of emotion. As if he is speaking of a third person. Reliving the story of another life, not this. Another’s story, not his.
“I left home and didn’t go to school.” He says, fidgeting in his chair, throwing a wary glance at the cop in the room. I have taken special permission from the cops to interview this ex-militant who surrendered to the authorities two years ago. They agreed, on the condition that a cop would stay in the room during our conversation.
“I teamed up with a guide who took me across the border,” he says. He is a man of 35 now. A thin wisp of a man, browbeaten by life. When he gestures, I notice the nervous tremor of his hands.
“I saw a gun for the first time. I was trained to use it. Aim and fire.” He looks at the cop. .
“Tell her more. Did you kill anyone when they let you out of the camps?” asks the cop with a lopsided grin.
“No sir. No. We lived in the jungle next to a village after we came back. I shot some people, wounded them. Never killed anyone sir.”
He lapses into silence. The cop clears his throat.
“Why did you join the militants? You were just a school boy.” I ask.
“Most of the boys from my village were leaving. We were curious. We wanted to find out what was happening out there.”
He gropes for words. “It was like a typhoon. A wave of violence. We were swept away. When you are that young, you don’t think of consequences.”
He makes a fist and stabs at the air. An empty gesture of emphasis. “I had no idea what I was getting into. It was a wrong decision, but it took me a few years to realize that.”
He raises his voice and flings a question at no one in particular. “Who doesn’t make mistakes? But don’t I deserve a second chance now that I have given up the gun?”
Life after his surrender has been hell. His wife is a nervous wreck. They receive threatening phone calls, letters, midnight knocks on their door. The message is always the same: prepare to die. Militant groups see him as a traitor, a turn coat who deserves the worst. His two-year-old daughter and wife have moved from their village to the city, hoping to find safety here. He works as a daily wage labourer at a construction sight. He reports regularly to the local police station to keep them informed of his whereabouts.
“The cops don’t trust me. The militants threaten me and my family. We could be bumped off anytime.” He looks up and makes eye contact. “All I want is a peaceful life. A second chance.”
Does he deserve one?
Who decides?
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