Who betrayed them?

“There’s a famous saying in Bengali, ‘Mir-Jafari Korish na’ means don’t betray like Mir Jafar”…

​The East India Company that came with seemingly business interest grew political ambition and started colonizing India through Murshidabad. Murshidabad is 200kms (120miles) away from Kolkata formerly known as Calcutta, the present capital of West Bengal in India. However, Calcutta did not even exist in 1700s and Murshidabad was at the highest of its glory. Nawab Siraj-ud-Daulah lost the battle of ​Plassey (‘Palashi’ that is how we call it in Bengali) in 1757 to the British due to the betrayal of one of his trusted commanders ​Mir Jafar. Mir Jafar was promised the throne of Murshidabad in lieu of him not fighting the battle along with his troop. ​The East India Company thus won the battle on the basis of a conspiracy that was hatched with Mir Jafar. He got the throne, however, little did he know​ how it​ would be like to sit on that ​under British rule. He was soon removed for the ease of the British lords. ​The Battle of Plassey was a decisive battle that started a 200-year colonial rule of India by the British. I never forgo​t this important piece of history,​ no matter how much I hated the subject as I have fond childhood memories of the place.

Murshidabad, a name that reminds me of many good things but the first and foremost is that the mighty river Ganges flew​ right in front of our ancestral home, in which boatmen rowed in the dark of the night and singing melancholy tunes that made you long for your home even if you were in your home. The soft lights of lanterns in the boats at a distance used to mesmerize me the most in those dark and sweaty nights. Days in and days out we used to jump from the boundary walls, play with other girls and boys from the village and run around the mango orchard until elders​ gave us an ultimatum to return home for a ​bath or food.

Whenever we visited our ancestral land full of History it used to be a lot of ​fun with cousins and children of same age from the village. My young eyes noticed one thing in particular. Most of the children especially the little girls in dusty frocks I used to play and run with couldn’t tell which class they were studying in. I used to wonder whether they have failed in the classes and therefore hesitating. However, I never enquired much as I was no good in studies too. Therefore it was better to keep the​ school out of the topics of discussion during those vacation days.  Later when the visits became more infrequent and we were seriously discouraged to play outside in the mud, because they said, "tumi boro hoye gyachho" (you are not a kid any more) and I tried to inquire​ about them from the window of our house,​ I got to know most of them got married and already ​had their babies. I was still in my middle school. I of course did not realize how fortunate I was to be doing that. I was just sad I lost my friends. ​

Many years passed in between and Murshidabad is just a reminder of our holiday breaks during our childhood. Then in 2014, ​I got a ​chance to meet Soma, ​who works in the area and came to know about their struggle to fight the stigma around rescued trafficking victims.  Another important issue Soma’s team comes across is abandoned young married girls with children. Soma said, “The practice is wide spread in the region. Men marry young girls from poor families, get them pregnant and leave in search of job in the cities. Most of the time these men do not come back or send any money home. They marry again or have ​their own ‘live in’ ​families in the cities and do not care to see what happened to his young pregnant wife in the village.” Often these young mothers become the easy target of traffickers who lures them with good job, a better living for their children in cities. One of Soma’s team member said, “There’s no brothel in the country which doesn’t have a girl from our region”.

I wonder if the same happened to some of my childhood playmates from my village? I wonder who betrayed these young girls like Mir Jafar - parents, families, husbands, traffickers, politicians or we all? Is there anyone who can show that soft lights of hope to these girls like those boats in the dark? Can anyone be the boatman for these girls to ferry these young lives to safety or to help them to ​cross the river in​ dark singing​ songs of struggle and hope?

P.S. To confirm my fear, here's a blog post on a direct interaction with one such young mothers in Murshidabad 
html http://ladybugfieldnotes.blogspot.com/2012/11/of-love-and-other-demons.html

"When God said ‘Love your enemies’, I think he meant don’t kill them….."

I saw the statement on a T-shirt while walking with more than seven hundred strangers on the Massachusetts Avenue in Washington DC for the same cause ‘9/11 Unity Walk’. Coincidentally it was post serial bomb blasts in Delhi. I thought this strapline certainly convey a message to the world therefore put the same as closing lines in my personal e-mail id. Very strangely I started receiving mix reactions from my friends, it seemed strange in the beginning then I remembered the classroom lesson in my early childhood days, “A Glass is half full or half empty, it depends on us how we perceive it”.

Coincidences one after other provoked me to ponder on this issue. I received an e-mail from a very dear friend with pictures of beautiful locations with the captions of “Beautiful Kashmir under Pakistan”. I just asked, “Does it really matter if those heavenly locations are under Pakistan or India or anywhere in this earth?” I have a similar question for you my dear reader, “Does it matter to you so much? And/ does it matter to anyone who are the real victim of economic crisis or lose their loved once on a bright sunny day to a sudden bomb blast in a public transport?”

“Have we not suffered enough loss already due to our ignorance? Can’t we, at least the Generation X be the catalyst of building the bridge”- I was uttering the same in myself and the answers is ‘YES, We can’. It was one of the best days of my life when I saw the priests of all significant religions standing on the same platform- Christian, Jew, Hindu, Muslim, Zoroastrian, Bahai, Buddhist and many more along with the people from all different culture, countries, faiths with the same hope in their bright eyes, “We need Peace, Love and Care to live our lives which God give us”. I felt goose bumps when I saw a Hindu priest blown a ‘Shankh’ on the veranda of the Masjid during the holy days of Ramadan and Imam Majid said, “All our holy books say the same, ‘God is consistent’, in whatever way you want to call him, He is CONSISTENT”….

It’s very much doable, friends! Let’s try not to forget to be ‘Human’ first in the race of being something in our lives. Its up to you now to decide if the glass is half full or half empty!

To Earn a Dollar.....

I don’t remember her name any more but couldn’t forget her weak aged lean wrinkled structure from my visit to her small tribal hamlet in Odisha ​almost 15years ago.  I heard she had ​lost her children to some unknown disease…. “It is a malaria prone zone. Tribes prefer to trust the local healers​ who claim a chicken or a goat with some money to perform rituals rather ​than going to the health center which is miles away where the poor hardly get any service”, said Amulya bhai.  To give you a background, Amulya and his wife Geeta worked​ tirelessly for the rights of tribal in the unknown forgotten areas of Odisha​ for years. 

The old lady used to live in a hut made of dry sticks and leaves that she could collect from the jungles she walked to and from everyday. Her every day chores included walking miles to reach the foothill to collect few chunks of granite. She used to carry those back on her head over a big oval shaped aluminum pot to her very own hut and had a designated naturally​ shaded place to sit. It used to take her the ​whole day to turn those chunks​ into small chips with a help of hammer in her hand. I would like to point that the summer temperature in that region officially reaches 48-49 degrees in Celsius. Government weather channel doesn’t go above that, as they need to declare emergency and take adequate measures to protect its citizens in case they declare the temperature anything above 50-degree Celsius or 122 degree Fahrenheit. Be it rain or shine, this old lady used to repeat this​ daily chore for at least 25days until she could make a pile of chips, which a middleman used to buy from her at​ Rs.50 or less than a dollar. No weighing, no negotiations. A heap of stone chips at Rs. 50.​

This​ personal experience made me realize the life of millions in my own country, to which I had turned a blind eye till then. I told myself that day, “Anddddddd…… I had inhibitions about ​how would I manage myself especially with ​my city washroom habits in this jungle when I started.” Can we all take some time to visit these people at least once in our life time before we even think of talking about various government schemes, plans and acts in the comfort of our home with a glass of wine in our hand? And be a bit more respectful to people who have done so for years?