This is one of my first blogs after being a mom. Hell, it is my
first blog after being married! And hey I have been married for a while now.
So, while revisiting my blog was kind of nostalgia, euphoria all mixed in one,
it is also a motivation to start writing again. I am struggling now, to put pen
to paper, to translate the half- baked thoughts in my head, to comprehendible
lines.
It is like a thousand volcanoes, dormant for years, have decided to
erupt all at once. The gratification of words, places, actions, stories, lives
led, people met, all wanting to spill on paper, convoluted, jumbled up tales,
half- remembered, half forgotten,
knocking memory, aching heart, adventures other-worldly, all fighting
for a spot in my mind.
Of the dalit family in Rajasthan that lost a daughter to upper caste
violence and the trepidation of interviewing them for “She” was my namesake,
lost to the world. Of the young woman who after losing it all to Cyclone Aila, has
hope and is determined to make her life. Of the countless adivasi families in
the forests of Orissa, displaced by incessant mining, losing their land and
lives to fruitless legal battles. Of wild elephants that destroy habitations
and evening mohua parties not in the glitterati lights of the cities, but the densely
dark forests of Orissa, where silence is felt, not seen.
I remember the sight of countless children submerged in water for
hours, waiting to catch fish. Of poverty that pushes young boys, merely 12 or
13 years to hunt for crabs, hunched in anticipation in the murky lands of
Sunderbans, easy prey for the tigers. I remember the sight of beautiful young
girls, prostituting on the Indo-Bangla border. Of families in faraway Barmer,
out-casted and forgotten, by government and others. I remember the elderly
woman in Bihar clutching my hand, begging for her old age pension. She hadn’t
eaten in days. I remember the lines on
the face of the man, waiting for his papers for legal ownership of his land in
Udaipur. He had been waiting for over 15 years. They resembled the crevices of
the man who I met in Bangladesh, patiently waiting for his land to emerge from
the sea, Char land.
Countless faces, numerous
hands, stories/ anecdotes for some but living for me.
