- And the two options this world gives to those who move away from home
Freedom, of any hue, colour, or creed wants sacrifice, nah, it does not want it, it demands sacrifice. Sacrifice of life is the ultimate one. Once anyone is willing to part with their lives, there is nothing that can stop them from taking the ultimate leap, if freedom from any kind of oppression is end-all-and-be-all for a person, they just can’t wait for the end. They jump the hedge; they trespass the final obstacle and take the leap. Rather than allowing life to take its course and delivering divine justice promised in scriptures, they just prefer the last regret.
Shaheed Bhagat Singh was one of these people along with his group of merry men who went all out to bring the British empire on its knees. They failed. Some were murdered by the state, some slayed themselves. The anarchist in every single one of them was high on the ultimate ideal-freedom, fuelled by fury and rage, they wanted to rid their country of oppression, foreign occupation and exploitation. They failed.
Some would say, they didn’t. They kept the angst alive. They sacrificed their mortal bodies to water the soul of a nation that was divided along a hundred lines. Castes divided the masses into fragments, wealth divided the affluent, more affluent and those having no affluence in water-tight compartments, religions divided same caste members into baffled folks who knew little, thought nothing and feigned knowing everything. Languages divided regional cultures. Muslim vs. Hindu. Jat vs. Bengali. Brahman vs. Shudi. Urdu speakers vs. Sages of Sanskrit. And the division kept on getting deeper and deeper, spreading wider and wider, turning denser and denser, making every reality dizzier and dizzier.
Bhagat Singh and his fellow gentlemen were the martyrs we had, demigods we turned them into and in the marketplace of ideas we sell them like t-shirts having iconic pictures of Che Guevera, Guy Fawkes masks, every Tom Alone, Tom’s Harry, Harry’s Tom and Dick printed on, sans a purpose, without a thought.
And in our age, we the potential Bhagat Singhs from our part of the planet, the sub-continent, seek our ultimate freedom in a student visa, a work permit, a spouse with foreign nationality, an illegal way to get across to Greece in search of greener pastures like Germany and France.
Or, we seek refuge in our own colour, those who have the same passports as us, who have lived through the same realities we already know like the back of our hand. The comfort they have is what we ran away from in the first place. And even though we have severed the shackles of the place we hated; we fall in the same trap. Away from the home, we had. Home, the doomed home, we are still in.
We, the great, grand, splendid folks of South Asia who habitually take impossible amount of pride in our cultures, religions, languages, way of life, honor, world view and what not have all the wisdom in the universe yet we shy away from answering a simple question: What makes us think that we are the centre of the Universe? Why does everything always have to be either in our favour or an enemy incarnate? Why can’t we just realize, admit and move on with life. A life with all the enormity, all the anguish, all the beautiful moments and all the rotten memories. Why can’t we just know who we are to the world at large. We are either a big, humongous market to sell ideas to or a part of the world that provides labour in abundance, while creating manageable levels of nuisance at our borders.
Those who left home, left their loved ones behind have two options to choose from.
Either to assimilate in the international crowd, befriend complete strangers out of the blue, in alone, gloomy, partying streets we find companions who answer our SOS. Fathers, old, old fathers we have left behind, back at home, drawing pension or working two jobs so that we can move ahead in the world, we sense their absence and seek their presence in places they were never fortunate enough or too busy to visit. And Mothers, you can’t endure the tears in pixels on your phone, you end the call. And cry. And roam around missing not hugging her tightly enough the last time you saw her.
Or, we seek refuge in our own colour, those who have the same passports as us, who have lived through the same realities we already know like the back of our hand. The comfort they have is what we ran away from in the first place. And even though we have severed the shackles of the place we hated; we fall in the same trap. Away from the home, we had. Home, the doomed home, we are still in.
When I came here, folks it is still a column not a personal blog, yet I would love to share what option I choose out of the two above. I choose the ‘either’ one, the first one. I choose loneliness over comfort. I choose agony of long, dark, gloomy winters over solace that reeked of home, yet was just an attempt to tame a rogue child I have always been.
What did I get?
Well, I got to experience professors I could share a cigarette with, friends I can get lost and found in Black, Black Berlin and the pastural beauty that Potsdam has to offer. I got to see the world I read about. I got to get over grief. I got over heartbreak. I got over missing home, for I found the reason for leaving it. I belong to a species whose nature is condemned to migrate from one land to another, one feeling to another, one moment to another.
We, the migratory animals. We, the seekers of home in lands not ours.
