When a big tree falls, the earth shakes

By John Cheeran
Despite this being the age of social media, in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections in 2014, it is quite expected that a few voices will bring back such far away things like the massacre of the Sikhs in 1984. 
Is the 1984 riots still an election issue? During the campaign for Delhi assembly elections did anyone raise it? People are hardly worried about justice, but are enthused by the prospect of a slash in their electricity bill. (By the way, it was Narendra Modi who reminded the Muslims in Gujarat that if you want justice, you will not have peace.) 
Now it is interesting that as a non-resident Indian Sikh, Jaspreet Singh is very much interested in the riots of 1984. He was in Delhi when the riots followed in the wake of prime minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination by her Sikh security guards on October 31, 1984. 
Singh, finally, has written his 1984 novel. Helium (published by Bloomsbury, 290 pages, Rs 499) is a guilt-ridden account of the 1984 riots by a Hindu academic (an IITian) based at Cornell, of how the events left a trail in his life. But it is largely left unexplained why it has taken the narrator 25 years to look back and find out his top cop father’s role (read complicity) in the unspeakable events during the “three or four days in the past that ruptured his relationship” with him, and another five years to put together this periodic table of betrayal, complicity and guilt. 
There is much drama that Singh works into Helium. But even without such stuff, (for eg, the narrator’s affair with his professor’s wife, a serene Sikh beauty, that is,) the unspeakable horror that followed when the big tree fell should have been enough to hook a reader on.
Jaspreet Singh, however, raises a pertinent question – “Why don’t you Sikhs forget what happened a long time ago?” This is a question the majority tend to ask these days, especially the social media crowd, for whom 1984 and 2002 are mere milestones while they are busy moving on to greater things, such as giving Narendra Modi the prime ministership of India. 
And Jaspreet’s reply too is important – “For the same reason we Indians don’t forget British colonialism, the Amritsar massacre or Mahatma Gandhi’s Dandi march. We don’t even forget mythological events like Diwali and Dusshera. And you want me to forget something that happened as recently as in 1984? Did you do something wrong then? Is that why you want us to forget?”
In a telling line, Singh writes “Ordinary citizens were mere bystanders; they watched the pogroms the way one watches the Republic Parade or a cricket match.” 
Sadly, justice has been denied to the survivors of the 1984 riots. Much the same can be said about the survivors of 2002 riots in Gujarat. Who will you blame but the political system? Or yourself? Is having a Sikh as prime minister (two terms) enough atonement? Will voting Modi into the PM’s seat be lacerating penance for 2002 riots? Or for the puppy that was caught on the wheels of the chief minister’s car?
As a work of fiction, Helium fails to make the cut, despite its roots in history. Singh’s digressive, pastiche style is ambitious but fails to hold together. Sample this: “During the PhD oral examination, for some unknown reason, my mind drifted to my own student days, and I could not help thinking, amid a jumble of stray thoughts, about the most harrowing event I ever witnessed.” Such unknown reasons bring Helium down and make it colourless.  
The anger is understandable but Helium rises to absurd levels when Singh writes: “Then it dawned on me: the Congress Party had conducted its first major genocidal pogrom exactly ninety-nine years after it was formed, and exactly one hundred years after it was conceived in the hill station of Shimla.” 
And statements such as “Operation Blue Star was the biggest disgrace in the recent history of our country” remains a partisan sentiment.
But it is disturbing that there have been few meaningful works of fiction based on the riots in 1984 and 2002. Our inability to imagine the violence, the horror and the hardship of those trying times exposes us to the charge of co-conspirators.
  

Who edits our newspapers?

By John Cheeran
The Sunday Times of India has carried a letter in today's edition.
It begins " Indira Gandhi famously said, “You were asked to bend but you chose to crawl.” Independence Day celebrations at the Juhu campus of SNDT University reminded me of this quote."

So who edits Sunday Times Of India? or who edits these pages?
Are copy editors not supposed to correct facts, even if they belong to a letter?

As far as I know that remark was made by L.K. Advani after the Emergency was lifted.

The same edition carries an AP wire story from the US which tells how some guys were fined for fixing the grammar in signboards in a park.
May be fixing facts, and grammar are punishable in newspapers too.

Reliving June 25, 1983: when a nation fell in love with cricket

By John Cheeran
What was I doing on the night of June 25, 1983?
Where was I? In our haunt at a village in Kerala, southern India, there was no television set. The only link to the wide world was an old Murphy radio, and getting right the frequency for the BBC World was an arduous task indeed.
In a land of footballers, cricket was almost a stranger in Kerala of 1983. Still we had followed with avid interest when Keith Fletcher’s MCC side toured India for the Test series in 1982. I can still recall the garlanded image of Gundappa Vishwanath that Malayala Manorama published after the Bangalore batsman hit a brilliant double century in front of his home crowd at the Chinnaswamy Stadium.
One had to depend on BBC radio and reports that Manorama carried to follow the 1983 World Cup.
What I remember the most about that time was how torrid the monsoon that year was. When Kapil Dev came out that astonishing rearguard 175 against Zimbabwe my heart was in mouth, but mainly thanks to the fact that the roof of our was cracked open by a falling coconut tree from our own courtyard. Through that hole in the cloudy sky, I imagined the carnage at Turnbridge Wells, where Zimbabwe mocked India by uprooting the first five Indian wickets for less than 20 runs.
For me 1983 World Cup was all about the match against Zimbabwe than the final at Lord’s. Kapil’s daring at the batting crease, when the chips were down, was enough to fire any boy’s imagination.
We were no hopers; but that act of sublime daring told me at least certain things were possible, if not everything.
Compared to that, the final on June 25, 1983 was a tepid affair. We all were disappointed at the 183 India posted but then who had expected India to come so far, barely six years later when the country awoke from the internal emergency that then Prime Minister Ms Indira Gandhi imposed on a another milestone day in Indian history – June 25, 1975.
Ms Gandhi had returned to power in 1983, and was one of the earliest to bask in the reflected glory of Indian cricketers that summer.
It was not just Romi Dev who had little faith in Kapil by the time Viv Richards tore into Indian attack. We had switched off our Murphy radio, leaving Kapil and his Devils to their own devices.
But there was a strange light next morning, when we woke up. World had turned upside down. India had won the World Cup. India had won a famous victory on the turf their former masters.
It was only years later that I read Nick Hornby on football. But what he wrote about football and himself was absolutely true in case of cricket and me.
“I fell in love with football as I was later to fall in love with women: suddenly, inexplicably, uncritically, giving no thought to the pain or disruption it would bring with it.”
Yes, the pain and disruption was not far.
Within months of India’s glory moment at Lord’s, an enraged Clive Lloyd stormed through India, much like a modern Mahmud Ghazni, crushing the world champions in all the five one-day internationals played and in three Tests.
But Clive Lloyd and his vengeful band of fast bowlers could not douse the flames of my romance with cricket, and in fact, India’s romance with the sport.