#DDGujDiary, #2

Continuing from the previous post, here are some more notes from my Gujarat 2002 diary. I tweeted these yesterday (as @DeathEndsFun, same Twitter tag #DDGujDiary).

***
* Fatma, 45, ran to the hills without footwear and hid there for three days without food and water. This is because mobs burned her house in Randikpur.

* After telling me this, Fatma is quiet, then says out of the blue: "It's a Rs 14 ticket from here [Godhra] to Randikpur."

* Yakub whom I met in a camp says: "We can't go back because they have destroyed our homes and turned the area into a maidan."

* Young girl says, the sarpanch hid us in a field, telling us we'd be protected. Then he went away. When he came back, he brought many people with him to kill us.

* The same girl saw a friend standing in front of her home, saying "My father will definitely come to save us!" Then she was cut down by a mob.

* She starts crying quietly as she tells me of that brief incident, and then she tells me three of her uncles were also killed.

* 22 yr-old Fatma (another Fatma) hid in the fields too. A mob came -- "there were ten people for each one of us" -- to kill them. She was hit by a lathi and a sword, she fell unconscious, they left.

* In Godhra camp alone, at least three different women told me about sarpanches who directed them to fields and then called a mob to attack them.

* Zohra, 23, hid with her husband in a cornfield. A mob set fire to the crop. They got up and ran. The mob caught her husband and killed him. She saw it happen.

* Bilkis of Randikpur had a three year-old child who was "cut and thrown away". Then twelve men raped her. She is pregnant.

* I should point out that I learned about Bilkis from her bua who was with her in camp. Bilkis herself was unable to speak.

#DDGujDiary

In 2002, not long after violence erupted across Gujarat, I joined a group of people on a trip through that state, what some of them thought was a journey of compassion. While I believe in compassion, I was admittedly cynical about it applying among people who had done a series of unspeakable things. I went thinking of myself as an observer -- both of what had happened, as well as what kind of reception this idea of compassion would get.

We started in Godhra, and went on to Baroda and Ahmedabad, with plenty of stops at smaller villages and towns on the way, and several visits to camps for the victims of the violence. It was a raw, disturbing, nerve-wracking and soul-deadening trip, among the most depressing several days of my life.

To remember, ten years on, here are some notes from my diary of those days when I travelled through a massacre-wracked Gujarat. (As @DeathEndsFun, I tweeted these using the tag #DDGujDiary. They are here as they appeared on Twitter, except for expanding any abbreviation necessitated by the 140 character limit).

***
* In Dehlol, we pass a trishul which has an unexpected object fluttering from it: a bra.

* Huge hoarding in Godhra, with a portrait of Narendra Modi and these words -- "Gujarat measures 9.9 on the recovery scale."

* Met a man called Siraj Patel who had watched three people being killed on the road that runs from Limkheda to Baria to Antala (sp? Can't tell). One of them was his 10th standard son.

* Inside the carriage -- that carriage -- at the railway station in Godhra, of all things I notice grains of rice strewn all over the floor.

* Also seen on the floor of the carriage in Godhra: shoes, jeans, socks, bottles, twisted metal, pictures of the filmstar Govinda, a metal cup.

* The inside of the carriage looks like the barracks in Auschwitz or Dachau. There and here, how could anyone hope to survive?

* (Picked up a small handful of ashes in that carriage. They're on my lap now, wrapped in plastic. Ten years on, ashes fly in the breeze).

* A half-burnt kid's exercise book at my feet inside the carriage. Its first legible page has these pencilled Hindi words in a careful schoolkid hand: "baal kaan haath gaal naak maathi". Who wrote all that?

* Also found in the carriage: several booklets called "Ayodhya", with a picture on the back of the Babri Masjid with people on top of its domes.

* Also found in the carriage: Several books printed in Hindi, carrying this title in English: "Ayodhya Guide."

* Man in Gurgaon whom I speak to a few days later on the phone, his eldest brother and wife (kids too? I can't tell) died in the fire. "I'm afraid to come to Gujarat", he tells me.

* Among the people in our band is a theatre group from Delhi called "Nishant". At the carriage in Godhra, they gather outside and sing.

* In a camp in Godhra, Yusufbhai from Kuwajar village says the mob that drove him and several others from his home was shouting "Maro, kaapo, maal loot lo" (kill, cut, steal).

* Yusufbhai says the police did nothing to stop the mob. Instead, they told Yusufbhai and the others with him, "save yourself and run".

* In a village near Dahod, 70 houses were burned down. In the camp, I met a man from there, his wife and their four kids. They had to run from the village, they stayed in the "jungle" for 3 days without food and water.

* He also says 14 members of his family were raped and/or killed.

* In the same camp is a 20 year-old girl from Kesharpur. She had a 2 year-old child who was killed. She doesn't know where her husband is.

* Salambhai's house in Kuwajar village was burned by a mob. "What is the fault of us villagers," he asks me, "in what happened in Godhra?"

* Met two teachers in the camp. One says "We believe in this sarva dharma sambhav; but the people who watched their kids being burned, how will they believe?"

* A woman in Godhra camp says the police told her: "You had better run away, or the swords will be used on you!"

* Siraj (another Siraj? can't tell) watched three men he knew being burned alive. He tells me how it was done: "They tied branches on them and set them on fire."

* Amina's son was "made into 3 pieces" (what I was told was, "unka teen tukde banaye"). A man with him was shot dead. Another man with him was tied up and burned alive.

* A ten year-old girl shows me a gash on her back from a sword. She saw her father being attacked and ran to save him; that's when someone slashed at her. She is alive. He is alive.

* She tells me about another ten year-old who told the mob "Kill me, but spare my sisters!" Her father was killed with a blow to his head.

Truth, ten years on

Yes, like in South Africa emerging from apartheid, let's have a Truth and Reconciliation Commission for Gujarat, 2002. Why not?

For that matter, let's have a T&RC for Bombay, 1992-93; for Kashmir 1989+; for Delhi, 1984; for Laxmanpur-Bathe, 1997; etc -- but this is a tenth anniversary of Gujarat we're marking, so let's discuss just that for now.

The important part of that is that first word, "Truth". Meaning we need to see the perpetrators of ghastly murders come out and tell the truth about what they did. It's called making a clean breast, and there's no substitute for that.

Meaning: No rhetoric that we've "moved on", or "much water has flowed down the Sabarmati", or "what's the point of re-opening old wounds that have healed?" No resort to invoking 300-year histories of communal violence. No pointing fingers at previous despicable Congress governments. None of that stuff. Just fronting up to the truth.

There's a reason it hasn't happened yet. Making a clean breast of things needs great courage. Far more courage than you need when you're in a mob setting fire to a train, or chopping up defenceless women, even pregnant women. Because you have to look in the mirror, and be true to yourself. Hard to at the best of times, infinitely harder when you've got blood on your hands, or when you're trying to cover up or explain away the blood on your friends' hands.

Nevertheless, it's possible, that truth and reconciliation. Let's start with the truth. Right now.

Ten years

Coming up to ten years since what I think is one of the worst crimes in Indian history; as also one of the worst breakdowns in law and order in our history. The massacres across Gujarat, of course.

There's so much that's already been said about those godawful weeks and months, so much that I don't even want to try finding something new to say. But these few points:

* To those who say there should be an end to "raking" up the past, there's just this to say: If there had been some kind of justice for everything that happened then, nobody would be raking up anything. Since there hasn't been that kind of justice, please don't expect silence. The country you live in is itself a testament to the spirit of folks who would not keep silent and who kept raking up injustice.

* To those who say we should "move on", there's just this to say: I'm set to meet someone who lost, say, a young son to the violence, who will say "It's true, we should move on." On the contrary: some of these people are the most dogged I've ever knowm, in their pursuit of justice.

* To those who speak easily and angrily about the "demonization" of the CM of Gujarat, there's just this to say: This man presided over a collapse of law and order across his state on a nearly unprecedented scale. If it had been any other state, this man's own party would have been leading the calls, and rightly so, for that state's CM to own moral responsibility for this collapse and resign. (Consider, after all, that the CM of Maharashtra lost his job after the terror attacks of November 26, 2008). But in this case, any criticism at all is immediately painted as an insult to a state, the demonization of a man. Both of which charges are nonsense. Understandable nonsense from those who want to sweep a massacre under a carpet, but nonsense nevertheless.

* To those who talk of "development" and the "efficiency" of Gujarat's government, there's just this to say: How do those things change the reality that 1000+ people were slaughtered in 2002? But more than that, what is the "efficiency" in failing to prevent those 1000+ being killed?

* To those who say "but are you aware of the ground realities in that state, then and now?", there's just this to say: I travelled Gujarat while some of the violence was still happening. I got a pretty good sense of some ground reality, thank you. It was this: 1000+ people had been slaughtered, and those wounds were still raw. That reality has not changed, and does not change because of other claims.

* To those who say "but why does nobody speak about these other horrific massacres in state X, under leader Y of party Z?", there's just this to say: Plenty of people speak about those other massacres too; if you choose not to listen for your own reasons, that's nobody's fault but yours. More important, the fact that you make these equations/comparisons is an admission that you know just how horrific Gujarat was, that you know there's been no accounting for it. Face up to yourself, for once.

* Finally, to those who say of Gujarat that it was "unfortunate", or "shit happens", or the like, there's just this to say: when a thousand and more Indians are killed, that's not unfortunate shit happening, that's a massacre. Equivocation doesn't change that.

Ten years on, I want justice for Indians slaughtered in Godhra, Ahmedabad, Dehlol, Halol, Baroda, and plenty of other places across Gujarat. I think you do too.

Shame on you, CNR Rao

Plagiarism is a continuing bane. Young novelists with a Harvard pedigree do it, newspapers do it; sometimes newspapers plagiarize themselves with hilarious results. (If you catch them at it, that is).

Cricket-related examples that I ran into a few years ago: You left out dazzling, and Congratulations, Virender Sehwag.

The latest example to hit the news has nothing to do with cricket. It's from a paper co-authored by the eminent scientist CNR Rao. There's plenty of coverage in the press, and comment elsewhere by far more informed folks than me, so I won't try to duplicate it. (For example, see Abi's two posts The Rao Row and Prof Rao responds, and Rahul's three posts on his blog).

I'm only writing this to vent some steam: I'm just appalled by CNR Rao's reaction to this episode. If he had said nothing, it would have blown over as a relatively minor transgression that even the journal concerned was essentially willing to overlook. But instead, Rao chose to speak to PTI about it. And he says, first of all:

"This should not be really considered as plagiarism, but an instance of copying of a few sentences in the text."

Just what does that mean? In my dictionary, the word is defined as "the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." How does copying of a few sentences from another paper evade this description?

But if CNR did not quite cover himself with glory with that remark, he digs himself further in the mire with these:

"I myself had written to the Editor that it was best to withdraw the paper … I did not directly produce the manuscript which I normally do."

CNR is implying here that he didn't read the paper that carries his name on it (first), and that when he apparently did read it, he himself thought it wasn't worthy of publication. Both of which reflect extremely poorly on an eminent scientist.

But CNR sinks below mire, and into despicability, with one final remark. The "copying", he said, happened "because of X" (X being the student whose name appears on the paper). Instead of having the courage and decency to take the blame himself, CNR chooses to blame, by name, the student: thus likely leaving a permanent black mark on a young scientist's career.

Shame on you, CNR Rao. I can only hope you are the exception in Indian science, not the rule.

Stop the world and let me off

What I like about astronomy is not just the beauty of the night sky, but also the clear mathematical reasoning that underlies predictions of so many cosmic phenomena. Some of that spirit is what I'm trying to get at in my latest "A Matter of Numbers" column for Mint, in the paper last Friday (in that sentence alone, an indication of how much I've neglected this blog). It discusses something we can't hope to see, but we're pretty sure exists.

No, I don't mean Lady Gaga.

Give me a shout if you recognize the novel mentioned in the last line. That way, I'll know you read the whole thing, and I'll also get a good handle on your age.

(No, you won't skip straight to the last line. Right?)

Take a look: Stop the world and let me off.

And as always, comments welcome.

Past laurels

Seventeen years ago, India played Sri Lanka in a cricket Test in Bangalore. Sri Lanka crumbled to a heavy defeat by an innings and plenty, but that was hardly the story of this match.

In their second innings, chasing 310 just to make India bat again, Sri Lanka had subsided to 179 for the loss of seven wickets at the end of the third day. When play began on the fourth day, India's captain, Mohammed Azharuddin, asked his premier spinner, young Anil Kumble with his stellar career still in front of him, to "bowl wide of the stumps".

Kumble had taken two wickets already. Against this team that "seemed to want to get the match over as soon as possible", victory was in sight. There were only Sri Lankan tailenders to remove. Why did Azharuddin tell Kumble to bowl like that?

Because another bowler on the team was chasing a record: the (then) highest haul of Test wickets. On that fourth morning, the equation was simple: this bowler needed three more wickets to break the record, there were three more Sri Lankan wickets to winkle out, and all three were tailenders. Thus it was that Kumble got his instructions to bowl wide.

Unfortunately, Kumble didn't fully follow the script, because he took the first wicket to fall that morning, at 188. Now the best that the record-chasing bowler could hope for was to equal the record, not beat it. No doubt the instructions were delivered to Kumble again, more sternly this time.

He must have complied this time. 27 lustily-hit tailender runs later, the last two tailenders had fallen to the record-chaser, India had won, and he had equalled the record. "He broke down as the emotions of the moment overwhelmed him." Azharuddin was awarded the Man-of-the-Match award, but handed it to him.

Of course, what this meant was that the record-chaser needed one more Test to actually break the record. That came a little over a week later, in Ahmedabad, also against Sri Lanka. "The [first] morning had been reserved for the wicket" he needed to get there. He took it in his 8th over, "sparking off a long round of celebrations". Having reached his record, he bowled only one more over in that innings (a measure of the faith his captain had in his abilities, really), only five in Sri Lanka's second innings, and didn't take another wicket as Sri Lanka lost heavily again.

But Kapil Dev had his record.

No matter that he took exactly 50 percent more Tests to reach the mark than Richard Hadlee had taken to set it. (Hadlee, 86 Tests. Dev, 129 Tests).

No matter that he had limped to it in a fashion that was a painful embarrassment to the stellar performer he once had been for India. (Kumble aiming outside the stumps? Please! Makes you cringe. Should have made him cringe.) In his last 20 Tests, he took 54 wickets (2.7 per Test); in his last 10, 20 (2 per Test) -- a clear indication of decline in his once magnificent skills. More evidence of this decline: compare to the 240 wickets he took in his first 60 Tests (4 per Test).

But Kapil Dev had his record.

So when this man tells us, referring to the current Indian team, that "past laurels shouldn't help you retain a berth" in the team, about what happens if "you are not performing" … well, you'll forgive me if this stuff sticks in my craw.

Big time. Record or no record.

***
I've written in similar vein about Kapil Dev before: Have to move one. Also about Kumble himself (and Kapil again) -- Aditya in comments below, please note -- here: Ten but tarnished.