FREE TO BE FETTERED
ixty-three long and prolific years separate the India that was once bound in chains from the free India that we reside in today, but yet, here I am, groping, in the dark, for answers to the questions that my scruples hurl at me and my professed freedom. Have we not taken a leaf out of the very past that we so earnestly seem to abhor? Have we not been reliving it over the past fifty years? I am referring to the draconian Armed Forces (Special Powers) Ordinance promulgated by the colonial British government in 1942 to suppress the ‘Quit India Movement’ which, till date, survives and thrives under the name of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act in the North-East India and parts of Kashmir. The Act has been criticized by the Human Rights Watch as a “tool of state abuse, oppression and discrimination,” and what we see and hear around us stands testimony to the statement. Sparks of antagonism and upheaval to repeal the Act followed its very initiation but they were fanned into a conflagration after the alleged extra-judicial execution of Thangjam Manorama Devi in Manipur in 2004. While the government claims that troops need such powers as the north-east India of is strategically surrounded by different countries from all sides, some of which are hostile to India, those with power use it to accomplish their hidden agendas. Apart from pointless raids, disappearances and rampant sexual and physical torture, deliberate murders are conveniently passed on as the results of encounters and there is no one to raise any question about this savage brutality. Not a stone’s throwaway from home is a country that has not seen the rays of Democracy wash over its land for the past two decades. Burma, now Myanmar, is currently under the control of a military dictatorship (the 1
Tuesday, 14th December, 2010
State Peace and Development Council or SPDC), who is holding Burma’s leading advocate for democracy hostage. This dictatorship overthrew a democracy to take power in 1988 and suspended the constitution at that time. Control is maintained through intimidation, strict censoring of information, repression of individual rights and suppression of ethnic minority groups. The military dictatorship attacks its own people, killing thousands, and leaving millions displaced. Those in opposition are either imprisoned or killed. Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize recipient and leader of the democracy movement in Burma, is repeatedly put under arrest.* In January 2009, a hundred and eleven people were sentenced by SPDC to a hundred and four years in prison based on laws that repress freedom of speech and freedom of association. Fifty years of civil war have left Burma one of the poorest countries in the world. With plenteous natural resources and a literacy rate as high as ninety percent, Burma today still remains deficiently underdeveloped and backward owing to scarce employment openings, acute inflation, restricted and closely-censored internet and a power supply that lasts no longer than twelve hours in a day, that too, in the comparatively more developed regions. Under pressure from international criticism, the ruling military junta has agreed to conduct multi-party elections in November this year but most have decided to boycott them as the laws governing them are unjustifiably lopsided in favour of the dictators and the results are most likely to be manipulated. As a lone powerless individual, there is little I can do for them but somehow, I feel I am a part of the struggle as my eyes never fail to moisten whenever I put myself or a loved one in their shoes. I am not ignorant and, least of all, unmindful. They say, indifference is destruction and the little we can do is spare them that. Vishakha Sharma, XII Weekly Newsletter of The Assam Valley School
*Aung San Suu Kyi has been relaesed from house arrest since this article went into print.
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Established: 1995
Art By: Ambiso Tawsik, XI
Vol. V Issue 3
T
6 X 6 SPACE
he light at the end of the tunnel glows. I let out a sigh of relief. The long, silver body of the train passes me by. It hurtles under the low dome as faces – hundreds of blurry faces – streak past me. The train with faces. I think about what an intriguing little stop-motion I could make out of this: a train, pregnant with a thousand bodies inside her, speeding into a metro station overcrowded with a thousand more passengers waiting to fill up her insides. Perhaps, a stopmotion in black and white. I can see the passengers inside the train getting ready to jostle their way out. Their hands are in place – glued against the back of the person in front of them. A few have their eyes fixed on the floor of the train; they have to watch where they stamp their feet lest they should trip over the slight gap between the train and the platform. The train has now come to a halt. The doors slide open. Halfway through the opening, the slimmer ones have already slipped out of the train. Once the doors are fully open, the exodus begins...and the influx too. Scores of people are moving in and out of the train – all at once. The doorways are jammed as people are elbowing each other out and into the train. The ones moving into the train are scurrying to find places to sit; the others are darting to find corners to stand; and as for me, I have no option but to stand right in front of the door – my face approximately five inches away from the metro guidelines (graphically informative stickers in yellow) stamped on the door. It was the only space left in the entire train. I am not really complaining; I quite like my 6x6 space. It’s always unoccupied as when the doors slide open again, people slam right into you as if you are invisible and then subsequently
run helter-skelter to find their own spaces. That rarely happens to me though. That’s because when the doors slide open, the first thing I do is step out of the train. I wait; I wait and watch everyone push their way into the hollow interiors of the train until I am the only one left. Only then do I get back inside and conquer my 6x6 space. Once I have collected myself, it is an interest of mine to observe people. Of course, to look around me takes some practice. It took me a week to master the untaught art of craning my neck without endangering myself with spondylitis. Nonetheless, I still am a peopleobserving dilettante. Through a little nook between a woman’s earring and another’s loosely-tied bun, I have in front of me a vista of 1/9th of Delhi’s population. Brown, bespectacled accountants; black and white-suited clerks; housewives balancing groceries and a wailing infant on either arm; dishevelled students in black, wayfarers armed with thick books; and an occasional foreigner or two who is either amused or disoriented by the whole experience. And suddenly, just like that, the train came to a halt. The overhead speakers announced that we had reached my destined station. Lost in my thoughts, I quickly braced myself for the scuffle. The doors slid open. I didn’t have to lift my feet – people pushed me out of the train and a few metres onto the platform. From there, I regained control of my feet again and dashed towards the stairs, past the throng of passengers running from one platform to the other, out of the exit gates, and up the steep escalator and into the arms of broad daylight or rather, the backseat of a dingy autorickshaw. And there, I think to myself. I can do this over and over again. Aranya Phookan, former Editor-in-Chief
PHOTOGRAPH BY:HIMANSHU BAGRODIA , X
There were ripples in The pool, but riots all around. I but, threw a stone. a haiku : by Jai Phookan, X
The stones caressed by a stream, That flow so gently, like a dream. Ever so lightly, does it seem, Every foible to cleanse and redeem. a quatrain : by Sneha Khaund, XI
It had rained through the night, In the morn the boy flew a kite, The puddles he had not seen, So engrossed he had been, That, he fell in it and what a sight! a limerick: by: Prarthana Barua, VIII 2
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e not avaricious for that morning sleep. Let not the warmth of the quilt lull you to another hour of repose, nor be beguiled by the rising haze that appears to be a harbinger for another mouldy and dull day, for a moment not held may be a moment lost. So be up and about, with your walking shoes and the ubiquitous umbrella and forget not to get the verve along…you may need it during the neverending escalations. You will have to jostle along with teeming humanity. You will tread the pot-holed roads strewn with aspirations and disappointments; you may even skirt by hope and despair, and then, just as you are trying to catch your breath ere you start yet another climb you find yourself lifting your face to the sun that percolates through the mist – and then it appears before you – Mahakal Temple, Observatory Hill, Darjeeling. Standing at an elevation of seven thousand feet, with hotels reminiscent of the days of gentle living straggling up the steep road, is the glorious temple. A pilgrimage point to almost all the inhabitants of this seething town, this connect to the supernatural is, for many, the link to salvation and a vindication of excesses. I have never been religious and my belief in a Force or in a Prevailing Will is neither burdened nor augmented by custom. Like not a few, prayer and plea come to me, I am not ashamed to admit, in times of need, and at other times, when life seems not so burdensome and the silver lining behind the cloud shines supreme, He is an avuncular figure that looks on kindly and needs no appeasement or laudations. I am certainly not an atheist, and am too well-schooled to be a skeptic, but somehow the ceremony and religion of faith has not had much enthusiastic support from me. So, the anticipation of this yearly pilgrimage to this seat of fulfillment holds not much of an attraction for me. Or so I think… The town is crowded and the teeming tourists, a necessary evil, become an impediment. The concrete jungle thickens and at every corner lurks a nasty surprise of progress. Yet, as your feet move up towards Observatory Hill, a strange sense of peace settles over you. The air somehow seems clearer as you leave the pulsating multitudes behind. The old charm has returned like a long lost friend and both of you seem not to have changed in the least bit. It gets into you: the allure of the place, its endearing simplicity, its many promises and its lovely lack of sophistication. The complete isolation from the hurry burry of seeking and finding that the sleepy town revelled in, in the not-sodistant past, seems to have magically returned and breathed to you, in a voice familiar, that sometimes one needs to stop and smell the flowers, or rather, sometimes one needs to walk on the steep asphalt road to meet Him. And then the spring appears in my step and fatigue and ennui gracefully secede to the mystique of the mountains. God seems closer now, here, wrapped up in the hundred prayer flags and enveloped by the carillon of a thousand bells that clash and reverberate when stirred and shaken by the wandering winds. God seems to have moved from the vague recesses of my conscience to a more assertive position. He seems to be someone that I could remember, if not all of the time, then, at least, most of the time and His benevolence would help me to hold in my hand something which, hitherto, seemed unattainable. The God in the great temple upon the 3
ILLUSTRATIONS BY: GEYIR SORA, XII
B
Where the Gods are Kinder
little hill makes me understand what omnipresent and omnipotent mean. Faith and belief rise in me and then I believe that even mountains can be moved. My heart, filled with the sense of the divine and the inexplicable, seems to burst, and I proudly understand that my presence in the scheme of things is not incidental or accidental but Providential. How have I become thus reformed? Is it the resonance of the bells that the rarified atmosphere enhances to an almost frenzied chant, or the whirl of the prayer flags in a myriad multitude of colours that creates surrealism? Is it the smoke of the incense that rises to meet the clouds, or the fervour of the devotees who walk barefoot in the biting cold? Or is it because it is my God there at the top of my hill upon my home? The God that saw me through work and play in the little crooked streets and the meadows filled with clover; the God that helped me to learn lessons in a cloistered classroom that, strangely, freed my mind; or the God that taught me that honesty was as much soul food as a shared plate of steaming momos; or, perhaps, the God that helped me discover that a bond could last forever like the stain from a rhododendron bloom. Yes, here in my mountain-temple, I feel as I feel in no other place. My soul surges with reverence and my being bows in acceptance. I perform every religious ceremony as meticulously as the next person and, as I throw the crushed bloom to the foot of the shrine, I believe that what I have asked for will come to me...more sooner than later. I believe, here, the Gods are kinder. Pratima Chettri AVE Tuesday, 14th December, 2010
Sun da y’s T ru un da y unda day’s Tru rutth oonn a S Sun unda day whose arrival, Rob was well treated. It was not before the next morning that the unwanted news broke out to him. His sister had died in a bomb blast. His depression got the better of him and in no more than three days after hearing about his sister’s demise, he slit the vein of his left hand leading to his fatality. Sean, Rob’s supposed friend, came to his villa with a sorrowful face and a grinning heart; his brains estimating recklessly all that was going to be his. Sean felt proud of his immense capacity for planning. He recalled how, through the years, he had wanted to kill Robert and take over his business. He knew he was always envious of Rob’s success. He pitied Rob’s innocence when he recalled how, with money borrowed from Rob himself, Sean corrupted Sunday and asked her to take Rob to any place unfamiliar to him. Sean sent robbers to attack Rob. He had masterminded every incident that had happened and had also ruminated on the repercussions. It was on Sean’s order that Rob was left like a lost ball in high weeds in the alley. He knew that there was only one way out of the alley and so he stood there in anticipation of Rob’s arrival. He had with him a time bomb, timed with precision. After having known Rob for almost a decade, Sean knew Rob’s love for Jenna very well. Not only did he know Rob inside-out, but he also knew Jenna equally well. He knew that every Monday, Jenna would go to a beauty parlour on the outskirts of the city, so he planned the complete event for a Sunday evening. He felt that a success in killing Rob’s most dear one just after finding out that his girlfriend was a fraud, would force Rob into suicide. And it was Rob who planted the bomb and Rob who committed suicide. Sean was just a no-one in the turn of events, just the second major beneficiary in Rob’s will.
Yashash Agarwal, X
Art By: Ambiso Tawsik, XI
R
obert Ackles lay upside down on a rocky road with skin peeling off from under his nose and fresh blood oozing out from his mouth which trickled down from his chin to his chest and stained his shirt in deep red. Rob gathered up all his energy, and with a long sigh, managed to sit up. There he sat, on the cold street, trying to recall the odious and sordid incident that had brought his present condition upon him. “You have been gifting me way too many presents these days and at the same time, you are reluctant to accept them from me,” Sunday, Rob’s girlfriend had said, “I want to show you something, but you’ve got to cover your eyes with this handkerchief,” she continued, handing him her polka-dotted handkerchief. Sunday pulled him out of the restaurant. He was oblivious of where he was being taken. An ambivalence of love and excitement thrived in him. As the car came to a halt, his excitement literally doubled! As the cloth was removed, he found himself standing amidst beautiful gardens, in front of a lovely little cottage. “How about living in here, love?” And then it all happened! Sunday screamed out her lungs and there was an uncomfortable cacophony of noises. Rob turned back only to receive a knock on his nose, strong enough at least to make him fall. He saw Sunday scuttling away, as he was the current cynosure for the robbers. More than the knock, Sunday became the cause of his pain. Before he could possibly encounter a second thought, chloroform brought oblivion. He remembered nothing else. He waited for some time before he managed to stand. Rob trudged along the stony road. He knew that he had been robbed as his pockets felt undesirably lighter. But money was not what he cared about. He was a multi-millionaire. He had lost both his parents nine years ago. His sister, Jenna, was the only sunshine on a bleak day. With an ankle swollen up twice its normal size, he finally reached the road. Almost immediately, an old lady came up to him. The coincidence in the timing made him feel as if the lady was waiting for him. Although she had an unusual face, she seemed affable, “I could help you , but since my weak legs do not permit can you in turn help me a little instead?” Rob, despite the pain, softly replied, “What must I do?” Her tone changed and she ordered, “Go throw this bag...uum…over there.” She handed over a bag to him, pointing at a waste-bin outside a familiar, or so Rob thought, beauty parlour. The heavy bag was thrown carelessly into the bin and by the time he reached back, the lady was nowhere to be seen. He returned home and his servants immediately sent for a nurse after
Publisher: DHM (Educational Administration), The Assam Valley School, P.O. Balipara, Dist. Sonitpur,Asom-784101, India. Telephone: 096780-74320. E-mail: E-mail:ave@assamvalleyschool.com. Printed at: Swastika Printers, Rangapara, Asom. Website: www.assamvalleyschool.com
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AVE Tuesday, 14th December, 2010