My politics and me

A girl got molested in my University back home, and her friends sat on a dharna (agitation). No arm, no bullets from their side, just a raging cry, we won’t tolerate, won’t give up. And then at the middle of the night the VC of my University calls in cops, to save him and his “poor” colleagues. Police come in my campus, drag the students out and molest them again for agitating against molestation. My city wakes up with the news and thousands gather, to march and to show we are not compliant, and we are not afraid. And thousand more, like me so far from my own soil, my own sweat and blood, we feel perplexed. What and how can I be part of the expression of the rage that we all share. A part of me is also afraid to express any feeling, as so many times my friends have told me I lost my “right” to be angry with anything back home when I left them. Yet, I will not be compliant to them, as we are not, I will still show my anger and despair. I will share my story the story, the story of the origin of my politics, of my city, Kolkata.

My first political memory is my grandmother talking angrily about the rape at Bantola by police constables. I did not know what rape meant as I was around 8 when this happened. The whole city practically erupted, I am sure there were thousands of angry students who marched and said we will not sit still, we will take everything personally. Being an eight year old the only protest that I remember from this incident is from the “pujo lighting” (a religious festival dedicated to the mother Goddess, which has become a social one now and the whole city is decorated with light). The “decoration” read-Rokhok na Bhokhok, “saviors or devourers”. The anti-police feeling was planted in me since then and has grown ever since. I have seen several more political statements in pujo lighting, protesting against railway scams (rail gari jhama jhom tahelka.com) and everything that happened in the past year. Even the clay idol of the mother Goddess would often be changed from her traditional, from the scripture, image to show corrupt politicians being killed by the mother or Her as a flood effected refugee carrying  four kids to a shelter. This is the city I grew up in, where Gods also take part in human politics and protest with us.

I grew up with stories from the 60s and the 70s, when Calcutta was the worst nightmare for so many. When students with promised extra ordinary future left college and university to create a new society, to make the world more equal and just. The sky and the rivers turned crimson with their dreams and blood for years. Hundreds were beheaded by the same cops in a Kali temple near my father’s house. As I listened to these stories my mind drifted to a world, where I am fighting with my comrades, and we die but we pass our values to thousands more. I grew up seeing my friend’s alcoholic father, too scared to wake up from his communist dream to face the capitalist country we were presented with in the 90s. I got inspired to break rules from my family who in the 40s lived in a commune as equals and were having babies outside wedlock.  

Every day in collage during lunch hours I will hear students from different political wings shouting slogans, taking their squads, clapping and intimidating, I saw dreams in their eyes which often were my dreams too. You can ask me what I did during this time. For long I was so ashamed when faced with this question, as I was too busy dealing with my own emotional turmoil and was seldom part of student politics. But now I know the value of what I did, I argued with everyone I could on an issue that affected me and thousands like me since 1947. I shouted and screamed saying we refugees have rights, you cannot call us second class citizens anymore, this country, and this world is as much mine as yours. The fear of not having a land, fear of getting uprooted overnight and literally kicked out of a place we called home for generation gave us the burning determination to prove our worth.

Unrest is rest for me, anger is comforting and tells me am still a mortal. My anger does not give way to an apologetic statement trying to justify itself. Politics is not a fancy that I intellectualize; it is a reality, the only reality to survive for me and for so many. I provoke, I love to provoke by my writing, by my existence and often just by being angry.  And at the end, I am so glad that I was born in an economically poor country, where I had to fight for everything,  and for giving me my anger, my politics, and  my identity.