Democratic Governments strive to prove the worth of their existence. Time and again, in this country and that, the essence of democracy is questioned. Democracy has been hailed as the true and authentic voice of the people, working for both their tangible and intangible interest. People thing in this land have long cherished the dreams of living under constitutionally-approved healthy governments. But then, there’s only so much we can bear. It is when faith in legal systems fails them that revolutions break out.
Ayan Sanyal, tall dark and handsome was the jewel of the family. The pride of his parents. The height streak that his grandparents lived for. The hope that his parents lived for. Beyond doubt he was extraordinary. Excellence fell far short of the talent he possessed. Always charismatic, he was a born leader. He would draw people to him with mere lectures. His friends admired him, his enemies loathed him. Relatives envied him. Ayan was the boy any parent would have wanted to call their son. Extraordinarily handsome, there were few people who were not attracted to him. He excelled in academics, always securing the first position and nobody had ever been able to defeat him at a game of chess. Seldom was he scolded by his mother, the exception being only during times he forgot to finish his breakfast in a hurry or because he kept his room too untidy for another soul to enter.
His higher secondary scores, as expected, had been extraordinary and he had secured the first position in the state, as it was later discovered. By then, it did not matter to him any more as he had already got admission at Presidency College. More than this, what really pleased Ayan was the fact that he could study what he really wanted to - Physics. To him Physics was so much more than simply another subject on his curriculum. He hoped that someday soon, he’d be able to do what he really wanted.
He wanted to continue with Nuclear Physics. Aware of the costs and the modest salary that his father earned, he did not mention a word of this to his parents. His father, who worked as clerk at a nearby government office, earned just enough to pay for his education and manage a fair living. His elder sister, less brilliant than him and who had just completed her course in Bengal Literature, had been married off less than a year back; some of the money borrowed back then had still not been returned. Although his father had worked at a part-time job to clear the debts, five thousand rupees still remained to be payed back. This amount worried Mr. Sanyal a great deal. The last thing that he wanted was Ayan to leave his studies for the sake of his family. So things continued. A heavy debt, a job to keep, and a son to raise. The house, huge to accommodate the many relatives who dropped in during any vacation, was built beside the main road. Where the road took a turn the house stood majestic, unconditioned. It isn’t always that revolutionaries break out in the middle of the city.
But this was during the late 1960s and the city was burning with the flames of Naxalbari; the young and the fiery Marxist Leninist ideas formed the CPI(ML). The movement lead by Charu Majumdar and Kanu Sanyal was at its peak with trams and police stations burnt, constables and vice chancellors killed, schools and colleges vandalized. The movement had become unorganized. With the leaders in prison, the disarrayed efforts placed the state under difficult situations. Their objective was undoubtedly noble. In spite of the aim, the movement was not led well enough. When the Naxal uprising began in 1967, the Indian government perceived it as a law and order problem. It failed to simply analyze the causes of the movement and the extent of mobilization of the people. The government had been gravely mistaken. The movement, as baseless as they called it, could not be put an end to in a short span of time, using force. The present uprising was a result of the grudges the people had against the communist state-government. The Naxalite movement found enormous support among the educated youth. Most of the Naxalites, most of whom detached completely from their families, were engineers and doctors. Universities became hot beds of radical ideology. Naxalism had come to stay. Presidency, the college Ayan visited everyday had become the epicentre of a large part of the movement. As more and more students were attracted to the movement, Aryan saw Souryada, his mentor and the senior he looked up to the most, taking into Naxalism. When he first read the red-coloured book that he found on Souryada’s table one day, he felt a strange tug at his heart. He felt as if it was what he had always wanted to say. He felt as if those were the words he’d actually wanted to express at the table in the coffee house when they had had intense discussions about the movement. When in an essay written by a Bengali author, he read: “the state must be relieved of the nuisances that call themselves communist’’, he understood that what they really wanted was this.
The cause of the upbringing, maybe the cause of the movement, had a deeper root, a more difficult base. In the next few days, his bag was filled with books painted red, and esays titled as “Naxalites : The Liberalist Of The Indian Society”. He started returning home a couple of hours later than what his usual time had been earlier. Upon being questioned one day by his father, he apathily replied, “Extra classes are being held on Thermodynamics by a foreign professor”. His father, who had been reading of a recent murder of a police constable at Tollygunge, looked back into the newspaper unaware that the man who had planned and carried out the murder stood on his right. His own son - his blood.
By the early half of 1970, Ayan had taken gravely to Naxalism as he spent most of his time planning attacks and sticking posters on the wall. No one at home knew a thing about his political life. Life was hard for him. Among the twenty one people who worked in the same core group, Ayan was the only one whose name was not registered in the police records. The paramilitary wouldn’t let him go, however, this he knew. Ayan knew he wouldn’t give up at any rate. Now that he had been so deeply involved, he wouldn’t leave midway, no matter how dangerous it eventually turned out to be.
One evening, as he sat with Souryoda on the chairs that were set up on the banks of the river Ganga at Babughat, he confessed what he earlier never had.
“I can never tell my parents about this. If I do, they’ll send me away”.
Souryada only smiled, his hair being shuffled by the wind.
“But since childhood there hasn’t been a thing I’ve hidden from them, not Ma at least. I’m tired of living in fear that they might discover the masalas I hide under the bed”, he sighed.
Souryada looked at him, his grave face more serious than before. As Ayan stared at the face of the senior he worshipped, he saw confusion and doubt there. It was the first time Ayan saw such feelings cross his face. In an instant, he looked away.
“What’s wrong, Souryada?”,Ayan asked, concerned.
“Can’t we just quit? Mamata doesn’t like it anyway.” Came the reply, with a quietly barefaced stare.
After a moment, when he had almost recovered, he retorted sharply, “Sourya da,” he exclaimed, “Do you know what you are saying? You can’t do this. You were the one to show me this way, to bring me to the world of the Naxalites. I learnt everything from you. You can’t leave me in this”.
He was shouting. When he stopped, he realised he had been shaking with anger. He turned around to see if anyone had overheard their fiery conversation. Though it was winter, there were a few who dared to stay outdoors after dark. It isn’t safe, they kept saying, looking into the tranquil water.
Ayan calmed down. After a few seconds, he turned towards Souryada, taking his hand in his own.
“Don’t leave us now we’re almost there. We’ll win, Souryada . Our belief isn’t wrong. We’re doing this for our country. We’ll do it Souryada.”
He could see his eyes turn misty.
“Im tired Ayan”, he said softly. In the quietness of the dark night words as soft as they were echoed across the river. Unaware, he continued, “I can’t live in this constant fear anymore. For the last two and a half years, I have been leading. One fourth of us have been killed - either shot dead or bombed. One half is underground. They‘re safe at the moment but they won’t escape; the police will get them I’ve not returned home for the past one week, afraid that the police might land up at home. Baba can’t bear it. He won’t survive another heart attack. I’m tired of having to hide all those magazines here and there”.
His words were now hardly a whisper. Unable to make out clearly, Ayan looked away. “They won’t let you leave . Not this early.” he said confidently.
After a while, he added, “I really look up to you”. That was the last time the two of them spoke to each other. Ayan knew that once Souryada made up his mind about something it would be difficult to persuade him out of it. He had been correct when he pointed out the problems. Ayan could not agree that there weren’t any solutions. However, three days after the conversation, Ayan got a letter while he was at home. He had a practical examination in the college and had not been able to visit the party office that day. As he stripped the letter open, his heart beat fast. This was maybe a warning from the police. They might just have discovered him too. It could also be a message from his co-workers. - an instruction to meet somewhere to plan the next attack as he had been away the whole day, he thought.
His fingers were shaking as he tore the final seal open and unfolded the letter. He felt numb. It had two sentences: “Sourya Choudhury dead. Come immediately to the Dumdum office”. Still in his college clothes, he rushed down the stairs, not bothering to reply to his parents’ persistent questions of “Where are you going? It’s late”.
He could hear them shouting when he finally reached the party shed. He had to push his way through the thousands who had assembled there. He remembered how empty the rest of the city had been, as if a curfew was in place. On searching for the main door, after stringent efforts he saw what he was detesting and was trying to avoid all this while. Souryada’s body, draped in white and covered with red flags and white flowers and surrounded by incense sticks, lay lifeless- with no more fears. Surrounding him were the people he knew and those whom he didn’t, he had met at earlier meetings. People he had been introduced to by Souryada at coffee shops. Among those stricken faces, he spotted Mamata, unusually calm. Not a tear escaped her eyes as she stared at the space in front of her. She stared at the space in front of her. She had been the only person other than the party workers who had full knowledge of Souryada’s involvement in the Naxalite movement. Beside the lifeless corpse that resembled Souryada only physically, a woman in her early twenties sat crying. As the body was lifted up to be taken away , she howled miserably. It was probably the sister Souryada used to speak about, Ayan thought. Ayan looked around but failed to spot his parents.
He turned away from the body, not bothering to touch his feet, not bothering to pay his last tribute. He had been ditched. On his way out, he asked a fellow comrade, “How?”. Then he walked out of there. He did not return home till early next morning. He had been at Babughat all night long.
The following morning, a couple of hours after he returned home, he was called by some of the other party members. They had found a dilapidated house where bombs could be made. As he entered the house which had been evacuated by its rightful occupants, he saw two comrades working on the materials already. In the last few months of training under Souryada, he had mastered the art of putting together the things really well. He knew exactly what quantity of which chemical was required. As he started firing the explosive, he was reminded again of the previous night at the ghat. He thought about what Sourya had told him. He wondered if those words had actually made sense. If those were a message; a final message from Souryada. No, he told himself. He wouldn’t let go of the movement now that they were almost on the verge of victory. He condemned his thoughts for straying in directions that distracted him.
Even while he thought this, he was reminded of his family, especially his sister. Ever since childhood, they had shared everything, every little secret that they came across. They had fought over trifle matters, often landing up hitting each other black and blue. But at the end of the day, they knew they wouldn’t be able to survive without each other. It was him that his sister had confided in when she fell in love with Nirmalya, the man she had later married. Things had been different after her marriage, though. They had drifted apart, unable to even spend the time together. Their bond had remained the same and each year around kali puja, they pledged to make it stronger on bhai phota. He had kept her in the dark too. This had been the secret that they didn’t share with suppressed squeals and shrieks of laughter.
Ayan was snapped back to reality when he heard a loud sound. He turned back in time to withdraw himself from getting burned. Before he knew it, they were already running out of the already open door. As Ayan felt the adrenaline rush through his veins, he leaped out. In less than a minute, they were all outside.
“Who was smoking there?” Ayan shouted. One of them looked up, a guilty expression on his face. He continued, “Do you know what that could have resulted in?” His hands were burnt badly. In the next few hour their arms were bandaged after medication, and they were at a meeting at the party shed. He had bunked college again. He would have to make up something to say, he thought. As he looked up at the sky on the way back home, he saw the birds chirping their way back to their nests. The end of yet another day, he thought to himself, and the beginning of another.
It was a cold winter morning when Ayan was woken up by a scratch on his windows pane. The signal, he thought. He left bed in a hurry and got dressed in less than five minutes, the bed left in the mess for his mother to clean. As he looked out of the windows, there was not a soul in sight. Everything was shrouded in thick mist, mist that blocked proper vision. As he was buttoning the red nylon shirt that he had borrowed from a friend last week, he glanced at the calendar for a split second, not caring to look at it for long. Twentieth December spacked at him. Bright red. He took the watch from the table, then leaving his finger ring, on the bed that still smelt of cigarette smoke, left. His mother, unlike no other day called his name behind him.
“Babu complete the glass of milk at least”. Then, realising with a painful shock what she had just done, uttered the name of god three times. A bad omen. “To hell with your milk”. This was the day Ayan had been waiting for the past three and a half months.
In a few hours he had transcended the barriers of human ties and the tug of his family. He no longer felt guilty that he had kept his family in the dark. He did not care anymore. After Souryada’s death he had assumed complete leadership of his wing. He was the one to decide the dates of the attacks, The materials the bomb was to be made of. A month back, they had decided 20th December would be the day things would change. They had planned five serious blasts at five epicentres of the city. The first to be planted by Basudeb, was intended to blow off the Behala police station. The second to be carried to the Tolly club by a girl called Madhu in disguise was the one attack that worried Ayan. The third would be planted at Jadavpur more by Kishor Das, a senior comrade. The next attack would be at the Khidderpore dock, supervised by yet another lady. The fifth and the most dangerous one would be planted at Chowringhee more by Ayan. Potentially, this was the strongest. At twelve sharp, Ayan was at the tea stall that stood right at the centre of Chowringhee square. Before he took a deep breath and close his eyes, he thought about what Souryada had told him. Without an afterthought, he placed the bomb on the road. It was designed such that a tiny spark fire on the material would destroy the vicinity. Ayan was to move at least ten feet away from the potential biller before throwing the lighted cigarette on it and then running for his life. A second after he had moved back he threw the cigarette with as much force as he could, like a tourniquet. He had just turned to flee, having seen the golden flames that he had been waiting for, when there was a loud sound, one that was not supposed to have sounded, and he turned. That was the last thing he saw. The last thing he ever saw.
At six in the evening when Ayan was supposed to visit the party shed to conduct a meeting, he was there. It seldom happened that he broke his promise. His face had turned blue. The red colour of the nylon shirt that he had been wearing had only intensified itself. Beside his lifeless body his mother sat howling. His father, known to be sceptic, did not utter a single word. Not a tear escaped his eye. A little while later, his son’s body was being carried away by the fellow comrades. Draped in the red flag, he looked so much more handsome than he ever had. At the same time, even the bright red colour could not penetrate the darkness that loomed in the surroundings. It seemed as if the entire city had suddenly been silenced by a gunshot. Back at home his sister was evacuating the house, getting rid of the things there was no longer any need for. When she lifted the thick mattress that covered his bed she found fifty seven red books, twenty six posters, three letters from fellow comrades and a side bag that had the Marxist logo painted on it. Under the wooden plank of the bed, on the grey floor, were six cans of red and white paint and a box full of masalas that the bomb that killed him were made of.
The violence is reflective of the pushing and jostling for elusive entitlements, a handmaiden of the stop-go model of development pursued by India. Asynchronous development of the economy and its institutions often lead to the privileged sections of society cornering disproportionate gains, resulting in discontent among the less fortunate. This then becomes a fertile hunting ground for political dividends. As the economy staggers through a new model of development without overhauling the outdated feudal structure — that still discriminates on the basis of caste, sex, class — missed opportunities and unrealised aspirations push many of the deprived into the arms of opportunist politicians. Divested of education and employment opportunities, bereft of basic health facilities, exploited by the powerful and ignored by society, the underclass can only turn to political warlords for not only survival but to also actualise their dreams and aspirations. They become the shadow army, the heaving underbelly that the urban middle class doesn’t want to talk about. Democracy is a feature of an industrial, not feudal, society. But the intention of our founding fathers - Pandit Nehru and his colleagues - was that democracy and other modern principles, such as liberty, equality, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, liberty or equality, as well as modern institutions such as Parliament and independent judiciary, etc. would pull our backward, feudal society into the modern age.
The prospects for a negotiated end to the conflict look poor. The Naxalites claim to be fighting for better treatment of marginalised tribals; but deny the government access to areas they control. Nor do their leaders appear to harbour democratic ambitions. They are scathing of their Maoist cousins in Nepal—to whom they have no close link. After its birth in India, the Naxalites have grown from strength to strength and with their anti-national activities occurring almost every day it seems to be achieving its objective of establishing their rule in the tribal belt of the country. Once the liberated zone comes into existence with their regular army to defend it, the nation may face a civil war situation like the one face by Sri Lanka with the LTTE. If such a situation arises, it could result in the division of the people of our nation with one group supporting the present democratic government and the other portion supporting the liberation of the tribal zones under the banner of Naxalism. The Naxalites consider the state power as a weapon in the hands of the rich and the ruling classes which are against their movement. So their prime target is to destroy the state power in all its forms and create a new one of their choice and act merrily in the domain they have established for themselves. As the state power is based on the might of its armed forces their sole aim is to paralyze the police and the paramilitary forces. The second target is the people’s representative of the state assembly and the parliament. They attack and kill democratically elected leaders and also the common people to create fear and panic among the public so that they remain docile to their rule. In order to let the people remain cut off from the police and the administration from fear of being brought to justice, they involve maximum people in committing heinous crimes like murder and rape.
To win war is to fight like war with weapons and for that matter with superior weapons.
Virtue over vice—who will pay the price
Ironic twists of fate are flawed if virtue does not equal reward
Logic needs to triumph—to beat and defeat
The tragedy of treachery that strives to cheat and repeat
Try to see outside myself and understand the eyes
To analyze, theorize, recognize and polarize
Excuse all the highs that terrorize Unacknowledged trauma’s are like wounds that never heal Never feel—on a constant wheel—a terrible price to pay for sin
Until at last the outside matches the justice
History written on the body—a canvas of poetry In the end, reality, the price to pay would be too great
Too much at stake . Comfort zones obliterated, confusion reiterated.
What then… the end? Life seems slow to reach conclusion
To wait, turn back, to stop or go, to fly or dive when there is no restraint or self control.
Deceit makes it hard to separate the self seeking truth above the easy way out
To shout, express doubt, to dropout- - burnout
Justice is tested through another’s eyes . Disguising their own lies as they spy and deny.
The poetry of playing the same game Camouflaged by another name—to shame blame and disclaim Does virtue win the day? Or vice have its say and inevitably stay?
Does it triumph and receive reward? Or is logic a masquerading fraud?
The poetry in justice must ultimately distrust and adjust this.
Lift the darkness Make it painless, nameless and stainless.
The punishment… its sword.
