The palace of illusions – a review

Did I ever think Draupadi too could have her own perspective of the Mahabharata and the sequence of events that led to the carnage that followed? No, I didn’t.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s ‘The palace of illusions” is a compelling narrative of the epic told by Draupadi herself… to be contd.

Why is illegal migration never an issue for successive governments in Assam?

Being a habitual social networker, I make sure that I check twitter feeds regularly. In one of those usual twitter tours that I took today, I noticed this tweet by a college friend from Assam, expressing his anguish on Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi’s softened stand over the illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in the state.

He tweeted, ” Considering Assam CM Tarun Gogoi’s soft corner for the Bangladeshis, he might as well be sent to Bangladesh forever.” This comment comes close on the heels of Tarun Gogoi’s sudden U-turn on the issue. In a public rally in Juria in Assam last Sunday, the CM said that there is not a single foreigner in Assam. Just as the friend reacted, most in Assam must be mocking at the CM.

By saying this in public he has contradicted his earlier comment in media  that there are close to 65 thousand illegal immigrants in Assam, detected from 1985 to July 2012 by various tribunals set up for this purpose.

Unlike others, I am not surprised at this U-turn. Rather it reminds me of a half an hour long meeting I had with Mr. Tarun Gogoi at Assam Bhawan in Delhi, perhaps in October 2008, when I had gone to interview him on the same issue. Before the interview, off camera, he said that there is not a single Bangladeshi in Assam and that the BJP or the opposition cannot prove the contention. According to him all the alleged immigrants are registered and are citizens of this country.

I cringed at the lie told right on my face.  I felt relieved only after telling him  that I have lived all my life in Assam and know one thing for a fact that all the rickshaw pullers, vegetable vendors, house maids and all those doing petty jobs in unorganized sector are Bangladeshis.

If you too have lived in Assam, I am sure you have  seen how the  rickshaws, vegetable vendors and house-maids would disappear just a day before the poll.. On being questioned about their disappearance, they would say that they were all packed together in vehicles hired by someone to cast their votes.

Isn’t it a worth giving a moment of thought? Why would a daily wage earner leave his means of bread and butter and travel to another district in a herd of many hundreds filled in vehicles? To caste his vote? I doubt anyone would do that unless his economic security is guranteed.

Nevertheless, the Chief Minister looked blank into my face while I was telling him all that. After I had finished, he said,” Yes, I agree there are some foreigners and the governement is committed to looking into the matter.” What else could he have said sitting in front of another Assamese and in front of the camera too!!

Who doesn’t know the genesis of the illegal migrants issue? It  can be traced back in 1971 when earstwhile east Pakistan became Bangladesh. Since India played a pivotal role in freeing Bangladesh from the yoke of Pakistan to become a separate nation, it permitted a huge influx of Bangladeshi refugees in bordering states like Assam and Tripura.

At that time Congress ruled at the center and also in Assam. When normalcy returned in Bangladesh, some refugees went back while some stayed back. For eight years since then, the migrants managed to get  ration cards, got their names up the electoral roll and also owned farm lands,  which obviously did not go down well with most Assamese who felt threatened about their rights and also the changing demographic profile of Assam.

If you are wondering why the Assamese did not protest the political refuge that the Bangladeshi migrants have been receiving in Assam, I must go back to the year when I was born.

I was born in 1979, the year that holds its own significance in Assam’s political history. That year, All Assam Students Union and Assam Gana Sangram Parishad ( the party that later ruled the state as AGP)  jointly led an agitation movement, considered the most popular movement that Assam had ever seen since independence.

Mostly non-violent, the movement popularly known as Assam Agitation aimed at compelling the government to identify foreigners and expel them. The agitation which culminated in Assam Accord in 1985 is mentioned in history glorifying Rajiv Gandhi and his government  for coming up with a solution to the long standing dispute. The reality is that the problem is far from being solved.

The recent violence is the outcome of the negligence of this long standing issue which has been left unaddressed by successive governments including the Congress, AGP and the Janata Party which have ruled the state. There has always been political flip flop on this issue and no political will to solve it.

Even today Bangladeshis reside in Assam and we don’t see any efforts made by the government to deport them.

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In my pursuit of happiness, I have learnt to look within first

One evening, a couple of weeks ago I felt a strange emptiness within my heart. I felt haunted by the feeling of being lonely despite having so many people around me. Believe me, the feeling was scary and I felt it to the core of my being. In a go, I could visualize every little incident – both good and worse from my past running through my mind and I felt swamped by thoughts, which most of you may consider as being unnecessary and crazy.

My past, like many of yours, has stories, some that make me feel proud of myself, while some that push me deep into the dungeon of guilt, remorse and  bitter feelings. I counselled myself hard to feel better but nothing seemed to help set my feelings on track.

I think it was a state of mind built on any occurrence that I now don’t remember. Whatever it was, I felt horrible. I felt burdened with many questions about my existence, the purpose of life, death and the life after (if it really existed). I felt inundated with thoughts that made me uncomfortable and restless.

Pihu (my 3 year old daughter) was sleeping and I wanted to feel better before she woke up. After all kids are demanding, what if she wanted to hear a story or wanted to play with me? I didn’t wish to snap at her! So hurriedly walked towards the balcony, pulled a chair and sat down –  again getting back to what I was avoiding to do – thinking.

With many thoughts in my mind I was looking  outside the balcony. My wandering eyes caught the sight of a lady.  This was a lady who was ordinarily dressed, was perhaps a house help and returning from work. She had a little baby around her waist. It looked like she was in hurry. My eyes kept observing her untill she came just below my balcony. I rose from my chair and looked down. The woman, still holding her baby, in her arms now, knelt down, kept the polythene packet aside, that she was carrying in her right hand and was busy doing something with her slipper. After a brief struggle, she rose again and limped through a few steps. She must have walked only three steps when I saw her bending low, taking both the slippers off and putting them into her polythene bag. After that I saw her walking bare feet and with an obvious rush, as if to catch a bus that she was about to miss.

That little thing made me feel extremely guilty. I felt a bit ashamed of what I was doing minutes before seeing the lady. I thought about the lady and began imagining how difficult life must be for her. She must be heading home after a long day, with her baby who must be either hungry or sleepy or  both. May be if she missed the bus she would have to wait for another two hours etc. etc. While she may be struggling with so many genuine issues,  I was thinking of the past, feeling horrible about things that are gone? And within a minute I could see light of wisdom descending upon me, piercing through the dark imaginary clouds that I had created in my life.

We humans are strange you know! We see our lives from the point of view of what we don’t have or what we missed but ignore the lovely stuff that we already have. I think, no spiritual path can teach us to be positive unless we learn to seek happiness within. By the way, that realisation didn’t transform me into someone who looks at life from a positive point of view. I am still struggling to be there. Even today I have days when I feel low and horrible, but I do make efforts to seek that elusive butterfly called happiness inside me before I see around.

Smile, shine and be happy

Maa

Daudti bhaagti zindagi se jab thak si jaati hun, zindagi jab hairaaN bhi karti hai aur pareshaaN bhi.. Maa tere godd ki chhaanv bahut yaad aati hai.. Thanks for giving me life and a reason to be proud of you.

Motherhood & Career: Can I choose both please?

Hmmm… second post in a day. Quite a feat for someone like me who had almost forgotten how to write amidst the humdrum routine of life – the same exercise of waking up at 6.45am, getting daughter and myself ready, dropping daughter to school and then work. A 360 degree run called life.

Anyways, my post is definitely not on life. I feel that the theme is way too dynamic and complex to sum up in a blog. In due course will try to pen something on a few critical and interesting aspects of life, as seen through my lens.

Motherhood has been the most amazing journey for me so far. I think what you achieve by being a mother is far too rewarding than promotions, salary hikes and other such achievements of life. But let me caution you, if you are thinking that it is a cake-walk, I am sorry, it is challenging and demoralising at times too.

I have never travelled abroad and do not know much about the work-life balance story there. I come from my experience of being a working mother in our country and that too in the media industry.

Photo courtesy: orangeparents.org

I concieved when I was working as a Sr. Correspondent at Times Now. I  wanted to start a family but at the same time was daunted by the fear of not being able to make a career.

At that time, I just moved into Times Now and was given a national beat – BJP, my all time dream to cover politics was coming true. Little did I know that after being pregnant my career would take a nose dive.

I quite vividly remember how I gathered courage and broke the news to my Managing Editor, Mr Arnab Goswami in an email. Perhaps, I knew that getting pregnant might not be appreciated 4 months after joining the organization. So, I wrote a mail to Arnab appologetically ( I regret doing that though, but I had no choice). I wrote to him saying that I would like to resign if he thought that I would be a liability to the organization in that situation. Interestingly, the man known to be a business minded guy, wrote back saying that I needn’t resign for being pregnant and that the channel would love to have me on other desk assignments.

I guess, he realised that a reporter would be happy to produce a show rather than being underutilized at the input desk. So I was given the opportunity to work with the production team on an international affairs show. I was excited but soon realised that his ‘team’ in Delhi wasn’t happy about having a pregnant woman working at the bureau.

I remember having worked for more than 19 hours at the peak of pregnancy when the 26/11 Mumbai attack happened. On 27 November, 2008 I was supposed to report to work at 10am, instead I was asked to reach office at 5 am. No one thought, how would a heavily pregnant lady will make it to work at that time? No one cared really.

I remember a line from the film ‘No one killed Jessica’, which resonated well with me. In one scene Rani calls up her junior colleague in the middle of the night and asked her to report to work for an urgent assignment. When the colleague asked, ” at this hour?” Rani responded saying,” Are you in a government job?”. I heard this line many times during that time.

Nevertheless, the experience of being a would-be mother was not great.

Wait, wait, I have another interesting incident to narrate from those times. I was on a loo break ( pregnant women need to answer the nature’s call many times due to the heavy uterus). But my the then political editor, incidently a woman and mother of two was perhaps not privy to this fact. I heard her screaming on top of her voice saying, ” Where is Sonika? Why can’t she be around.”

If you are curious why she did that, let me tell you nothing was earth shattering. There was some news ‘breaking’ and there was no one at the input desk.

I wanted to ask her if she never was pregnant to know that a heavily pregnant lady needs to break from work to relax? Well, may be in this country pregnant women are seen as a liability. At least I think that way. If you think otherwise, i’d love to know positive stories to feel better.

I sometimes wonder why is it expected of a new mother that she should leave her baby and the emotions attached with him at home and then report to work? Why is it believed that a 6 months maternity leave is sufficient? In my case I had to beg for 4 months maternity leave and once that was over I was expected to surrender myself to work and taking leaves was taken with great offence.

It is not just my experience.  I have heard such tales from other friends not just from the media fraternity but from the corporates as well.

I think women need a year’s maternity leave and as a law it should be applied to both private and public sector so working mothers don’t have to go through such harrowing times and live under the threat of losing a career.

See you soon with a new post.

Love ya all

A war fought and the heroes forgotten: Justice for Captain Saurabh Kalia

Wondering where to start from. The day before  yesterday I woke up early, fetched myself a cup of tea and the newspaper. The front page had the picture of Martyr Captain Saurabh Kalia.

The news story was about Captain Saurabh’s father Dr.NK Kalia’s solo fight for justice. Hurt  on being denied justice for last 13 years, Saurabh’s father has now moved the apex court to direct the government to take his son’s case to International Court of Justice (ICJ) at the Hague.

Over these years, I wonder the amount of pain the father must have gone through running from one ministry to another, writing letters to authorities and traveling from Palampur in Himachal to the national capital seeking justice for his brave heart son – Saurabh. How disheartening it can be for a father to get a cliched ‘sarkaari’ response -” We are looking into the matter”, each time he approached the defence and external affairs ministry demanding justice for his only son.

Is it not a gesture of disrespect for the martyr and his family? Is it what a mother sent her only son to the Army for?

Each time I see young Saurabh’s pictures, I feel a sense of loss coupled with a feeling of familiarity. He is my husband’s namesake and co-incidently his father shares the same initials in his name as my father in law.

The army officers glamorized by cinema live in tents, go on counter insurgency operations in the rough terrains, and walk for days. Besides the pain of living away from their loved ones adds on to more stress. Life is definitely far from being easy for men in uniform.

In this picture, parents of Capt. Kalia are participating in the pipping ceremony.

The day that every cadet in the academy looks forward to. The day when the stars on their shoulders are revealed signifying the day of being commissioned into the army. In the picture one can read the sense of pride in the eyes of the young Lieutenant and the joy in the faces of his parents. Little did they know that in four months their son would be captured and brutally killed by the Pakistani army and the government will act as a mute spectator to a huge war crime committed by our neighbor.

I dread to repeat the details of the torture in this post, wondering how would have the mother seen the mutilated body of her only son.

Pakistan is culpable for infringing Article 3 of the  Geneva Convention which clearly prohibits the following:

1. Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation,  cruel treatment and torture;

2.  Taking of hostages;

3. Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humilitating and degrading treatment

Then why is there delay in justice? Why is the Government reluctant to take this up with the neighbour if not the ICJ?  Is there a fear that the stories of human rights violation from this side of the border will come to the fore if Saurabh’s case is raked up? What is the reason? The country wants to know the reason behind the harassment a father is being subject to?

As a mother, I cannot imagine fighting for justice with the burden and pain of losing a young son for the country, the thankless country which does not care for what our men in uniform are sacrificing. I am not generalizing. Ask yourself, how many times you think of these men and their sacrifice? Do you visit the India gate (obviously in the absence of a national war memorial) to light a candle on Kargil Vijay Diwas as a mark of respect for our martyred heroes? I am sure most of you will say a no.

If you love your Army write in social media channels and demand justice and respect for Saurabh – the brave son of this country who sacrificed his youth for us.

raat jaaga paakhi

Kothaaye jeno deke jachhe ek raat jaga paakhi..

Aami ki sheta paari?

Jodi paartam tobay lagto na raat eto bhaari

                                                      – Amita Bakshi ( my mother )