DON'T BLUR HER FACE

Don’t blur her face with your two-bit pixels.

Don’t. I need to see it. I need you to see it.

Not the photo where her purple kameez is burnished like velvet, her eyes like bright black orbs and her smile like Monalisa’s.

No. Not that picture.

(By the way, have you seen that one?
In it, she’s a little girl, only a poor, undernourished, tribal shepherd girl. But still, she’s alive in it. All bright and alive and her face shines. A Purple Girl!!!! 

This picture was taken just before she went into the forests to graze her herd. And was abducted and raped and killed.

She was eight.)

An after-thought: Shouldn’t she have been in school, instead of in the forest with her herd?

Or was it a chutti  day? 
Perhaps it was.

Every Sunday and on other school holidays, Gungun comes to my home. To play with Mimie, my plump white Labrador. They are great pals, Mimie and Gungun.

Gungun is not yet eight. She is my colleague's daughter and a chatterbox to the hilt. She lives only a few blocks from my own home here in the hills. She is not yet eight but looks just as tall.

They sit in the sun, Gungun and Mimie; Gungun combing the dog’s soft, silk-like fur with a broken comb and the dog’s eyes droop with the pleasure and the comfort and the camaraderie.

Then she asks me, “Aibee Auntie, toffee?"

So I climb up the stool in the kitchen and reach behind the forest of jars and packets and baskets in my pantry to extract a tin full of ‘toffee’. Chocolate filled.

Now, we both sit in the sun, chomping on the toffee and watch the noon turn into evening. Mimie sits at our feet, head resting on front paws as Gungun takes to gently patting her head again. Orange speckled brown butterflies flit around us, sparrows chirp, the sweet pea is fragrant, the tulips bloom happily and the calendulas are brighter than the sun. I watch and think: What a wonderful gathering of life around me : a living doll, an adorable dog, bright flowers, brighter butterflies, pretty birds.........

All God’s creatures, Her most beautiful creations and some of the reasons that make life worth living.....................

The toffee is done and Gungun wants to go home. She looks at me. “Auntie, ghar jaana hai.” 

The sun is setting and it’s getting dark. I take her hand and walk her down. These hill roads are as safe as a baby’s crib; yet.....I cannot convince myself to let her alone.  I hand her over to the safekeeping of her nanny and still wait, watching until they are both within the safety of their home’s gate. Only then, do I turn back.

Did anyone watch the Purple Girl’s back as she left for the forest to graze her donkeys? Maybe not. And today she lies face down on the hard black earth, her purple kurta splattered with mud, her Monalisa smile erased and her face blurred with your two bit pixels and their easily hurt sensibilities.

Don’t blur her face. Don’t.

We all need to see it. 
Me- Gungun’s Aibee Aunty. 

Gungun’s Mumma. 
Gungun’s Papa. 
Sana’s Mummy. 
Aisha’s  Dad. 
Naheed’s  Apa.  
Tanvi's Di.
Cheryl's Ashish Bhaiya. 
Chomchom’s Thamma.
Mehak’s  Mum. 
Sofia’s Daddy.
Paramjit's Virji
Neelu's Physics Sir
Sunita’s Ma
Adira's Principal Ma'am................................

We. Each one of us.

Unblur her. Now! Right now!

Then splatter her face all over this amnesic, aphasic country. Strew it all over the World Wide Web. Fling it over the prime time debate on television channels. Splash it on the newspapers and the bill boards. Let it suspend from grim thunderclouds over our villages, towns and our cities.

Unblur her face.

Let us see that death-swollen face without the shroud of your pixels. Let us see the vacant eyes stopped forever in mid blink. The bloody lips, rodent scratched. The excoriations, the dried phlegm, the rusted blood on her cheeks. The mouth frozen in a distorted O, the remnants of a silent dying scream. 

Force our denying heads to turn back and look upon that death mask of the little doll.

And make us keep looking till its dreadfulness churns up our indifferent stomachs and we puke with the horror of it all. Let it remain in our line of sight till ire roils our apathetic blood and it boils up and over. Let it remain, un-blurred till we rise up- we, mothers and fathers, teachers and neighbours, aunties and uncles, brothers and sisters and together, shout from the tallest roof that no longer can the perpetrators: these monsters, these fiends, these mutants lay claim on their own right to Life.

PS: The Purple Girl is Asifa, an eight year old Bhakarwal tribal girl from Jammu who was kidnapped, tortured, raped and murdered over issues over land. 

Stay Away

Innocents Abroad

You know what the problem is with these mountains? They fill you with an insatiable curiosity to know what's there beyond the next bend. The deeper you venture into the folds of the hills, the greater is that urgency. So yesterday afternoon, we took a drive deep into the hills behind my home, up on a road that we had never yet taken. It meandered up and up, past scraggly lantana covered slopes, past pine groves that looked like giant broccoli gardens from afar, past dried river beds and brownish sides of mountains lining the road. It surprised me that people actually lived at these remote heights and that there were numerous little villages tucked into the mountain bends and hanging on its precipitous slopes. At one of these villages, our car came across four (or maybe five) little boys, about four feet (give or take a few inches) playing on the road. The moment they spotted the car, one of them ran deliberately across the road, as if daring us to run him down. Nothing surprising that, as we all know what little devils boys are. I didn't give it a second thought, because Other Half is an excellent driver and having driven in places like Ranchi, Amritsar and Jammu which are all Meccas of the Jaywalker, he smartly skirted the little devil with invisible horns without a hitch and we were soon on our way. But then suddenly, he braked jolting me out of my time-pass reveries. I turned to find him frowning into the rearview mirror, his jaw muscles in hyperdrive, always a very ominous sign. I glanced back to find the four feet devils scrambling away from the car.

Okkk, I knew. They had pelted our car with a stone.

The moment the realisation hit me, I felt as if I had been betrayed. I have been staying in this part of Himachal for the last one year and I've formed the opinion that this is India's best corner to live in. It's exquisitely beautiful no doubt; but more important than this is the fact that the people of this place are simple, friendly, God-fearing and law abiding. I love this place so much that I seriously wish I could settle down here for the remainder of my life. So to have these Himachali little boys, throw stones at our car felt unreal and worse, it felt like a betrayal of all my beliefs in the nice-ness of this mountain town. I couldn't quite take this and stepped out of the car. With my oversized sunglasses tucked over my hair and my Angrez attire, I reeked 'tourist' and the boys probably stopped running out of sheer curiosity. They now clambered up on a large black stone and were waiting for this funny looking woman to reach up to them. I trundled over and quaking with indignation asked the nearest little boy, in my best 'totally betrayed' voice, 'आपने हमारी गाड़ी पर पत्थर क्यों फेंका?'
The boy replied confidently, 'It wasn't me !'
I turned to another four-footer, 'Was it you?'
'Nope.' Replied this one in a pink shirt.
'No?'
I threw the question at another one. This one was sitting on top of the black stone and giving me amused looks. He said firmly, मैंने तो नहीं फेंका।
I was wondering as to what track I should adopt next when the tiniest of the bunch, peeking from behind an older one volunteered earnestly, 'मैंने फेंका।'

😳

This one was barely four feet, and had a tiny face that was the sweetest I had seen for a long time. Red apple cheeks and such terribly naive eyes....... His confession was so disarming, so guileless, so earnest that I was completely floored. I just managed to ask him, 'Why DID you throw that stone, beta?'
'It wasn't a stone.' Came the prompt explanation. It was the cap of a bottle!
Oh! went my thoughts. I felt just a little foolish and
with nothing more to say, I walked back to the car.
But, as we drove back, I found myself feeling unnaturally elated because   my mountain boys were not guilty (well, not in the strictest sense of the word) and my belief of the nice-ness of the people of my mountains was not at all misplaced.

😊😊😊😊

Moral of this Story: Come to Himachal. It's truly DevBhumi, the Abode of the Gods.

Two More Haikus: JLT

A Haiku is a verse with seventeen syllables, in three lines with the strict form of 5-7-5 syllables in the three lines. Originally a Japanese form of poetry, it has now been adopted by poets in other languages.
Now, read on......

RIDING IN THE MOUNTAINS

On his back, my cheek-
The wind frolics in my hair.
A road flows downhill.

 TAKE ONE WALK WITH ME..

Take one walk with me
Before the memories fade
And the spring snows melt.

War Game: A Haiku

WAR GAME

Inside, tin soldiers
Play war on foolscap paper;
Outside, a bird sings.


A Haiku is a verse with seventeen syllables, in three lines with the strict form of 5-7-5 syllables in the three lines. Originally a Japanese form of poetry, it has now been adopted by poets in other languages.

The Winner Takes It All..

'Supersession' is a word that's been on my mind often these days. A little more frequently than is healthy, but then wallowing-in-self-pity provides such masochistic delight that I cannot quite stop myself from indulging in this exercise. I love the word 'wallow', for it paints visions of this great pool of soft, gooey, orange clay into which I sink as it engulfs me in its warm embrace. It's cathartic, this 'wallowing' exercise. If you ask me about the 'pain' portion of the masochism, I'll say that that the pain is trivial: a few sniffles here and there, a bit of something rising up your throat and occasionally your heart doing that weird somersault; but other than these, the pleasure is without doubt, oodles more than the pain, for seasoned masochistic 'wallowers' like me.

Now that the operation of supersession has been completed successfully, I suddenly woke up one day to an insane urge to find out the etymogy of this word that's successfully punctured the gung-ho of my committed-to- Hedonism life. Oxford English dictionary says 'supersession' is the replacement of a person or thing previously in authority or use. Not completely convinced, I sought a second and a third opinion from other websites. These, I found were more elaborate but in no way any more comforting. One gave the meaning as 'obliterate'. 'Obliterate' as I understand, is to wipe out. I had to actually look into the mirror when I read this one. Far from being wiped out, my mirror reflected an Aibee much increased in volume. The second meaning I found said 'To replace'. Well, this too was perplexing, because Aibee still remains very much in her old haunt, here under the mountains. She has till date, as far as I know, not been replaced, leave alone by a superior being, not even by a better version of herself. The third definition said 'To make useless'. This was not confusing at all. On the contrary, this was absolutely crystal clear. In fact I had been experiencing a feeling quite akin to it for quite some time now. So all it did was to make me dive into my wallow pool of self pity once more. Being rendered 'useless' or being decorated with this epithet is not at all nutritious for one's metabolism. It is wont to give you dyspepsia, dehydration and depression all at once, a dangerous syndrome. And worse, it tends to open the floodgates of self deprecating ruminations and then refuses to close them.

So I ruminated from deep down the bowels of my wallow pool: Now that I have been certified 'useless', should I attempt to dig out or fashion lateral ways of making myself useful? Or should I just let it be as has been ordained and continue to remain 'useless'?  The temptation to persist playing useless is very great. It's like playing the part of that peon in the public bank who sits at its gate, the one who is short and fat with a three day stubble, who spends his hours in fruitful pursuits like poking his ears with a match stick, scratching his ample paunch, taking an afternoon nap at nine in the morning with his mouth open and then taking a well deserved break from it all by digging his nostrils with his stubby fingers. Yes, I could do playing 'useless' quite easily (less the nose-digging bit).

But there are other angles to this 'supersession' ball game beyond the 'playing-useless' portion. That is the easy part. The difficult part is dealing with the entity called 'ego' which the creator has generously placed within every man's brain. What makes it worse personally for me is that I have quite a tagra one with a voracious appetite for the gourmet dish called 'achievement', a dish that is expensive and rare and difficult to source. Every now and then Ego sits down, places it's halfmoon spectacles at the tip of it's nose and pulling out its humongous bahikhata, takes an inventory of Aibee's achievements. For the last few years, the khata's pages have only a few sparse entries and hence Ego is underpaid and underfed. And when this hypoglycemic, slightly emaciated Ego surfs through the Yearbook of others' lives i.e. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and is subjected to a barrage of glossies of the near and not-so-dear ones flaunting their career advancements, corner offices, designer kids, topper kids, foreign holidays and the unkindest-cut-of-all, an all new washboard-flat tummy, the Ego has a breakdown and sinks into the wallow pit, with me in tow.

And from the depths of the wallow pit, I can't help but think: ABBA was SO right-
The Winner Takes It All...
The Loser Standing Small...

I hear Other Half yelling from the front porch: Heyyyyy, Aibee....come quick. Quiiiickkkkkk........!

The wallow pit doesn't let go easily, clinging, clutching...But his voice is insistent and I can sense the undertones of a deep delight and a happy excitement. So, I manage to heave myself out and totter to the porch.

Shhhhh, he whispers and points. Look!

I look. On the veranda, between the purple pansies and the sunlit calendulas, a Plum - Headed Parakeet is busily gorging on the bird seed that I strew every morning for the sparrows. I've been doing this for nearly a year, hoping that the wild parrots would come down from the mountains to my garden; but till now all that I've got are those rambunctious sparrows. Of course we have become good friends but this plum headed beauty is a surprise treat for me, a real treat. I watch enthralled as the beautiful bird pecks at my birdseed, the iridescent plum coloured plumage on its head reflecting the morning light in hues of magenta, red, blue and purple.

Behind me, the Dhauladhars are bathed in a thick blanket of pure white snow.

Another treat.

The Winner Takes it All......

Or does he?