In line with time

For a week or so now I have been working on a timeline – albeit desultorily, but don’t tell my irascible boss that part - for the anniversary issue of the newspaper I work with. And I find that life wanders about in strange circles, what went around coming slowly back at some time or the other in history. It reminded me of ol’ Santayana, who said something to the effect of ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’. And in the exploration of my own country and the people who have made it what it is, I found much to marvel at, a great deal to be proud of and, sadly, as much to hide my head in shame over. But that is a collective companion to any life, a country’s or a person’s. After all, we are all only human, each one of us as individuals and each one of us who make up a country.

We are all terribly proud of the fight we put up against the British to gain freedom, even though most of us were born long after this country became a free nation. Spurred on by Mahatma Gandhi and his faith in the power of non-violence protest, we cite him and his philosophy as a mantra even today. But we are slowly starting to see him not as the god that politics has made of him, but as a human being, a man, a husband, a father…and not a very good one, either. That was the premise of a story I was doing for the arts section of our paper, pegged on the release of a new film on the Mahatma, called Gandhi My Father, for which I was going to talk to a number of people who had been involved with films on the leader over the years. But eventually, like all stories do, it got turned into something slightly different – a chat with the director, who saw it all from his own point of view. It is a good story, a good interview…and a good film, I am told.

At the same time, another story has been grabbing eyeballs in almost every medium I may look at. This morning I drove past the main jail in the city and saw that the streets were practically clogged with TV crews, policemen and ominous-looking vans with no windows. It was all part of the long-drawn-out legal proceedings against the people responsible for the bombs that blasted their way through the city in 1993, killing so many and destroying so many more lives. All of those indicted – six have been given the death sentence so far – are Indians. A fact to be truly ashamed of, since I am also Indian, so are all those I work with and live with. We Indians should never have allowed such a situation to develop, where we are attacked by our own kin – ‘kin’ being a rather wider term than immediate blood-related family, of course. But we did. And we paid. And now they do.

Just like that, I have had plenty in my life to be proud of, to marvel at and to hang my head in shame over. And so have you. It kind of goes with the territory of being a living, breathing, reacting, acting human being. Don’t you think so?