One of the letters to myself

Disclaimer: "Any letter we ever write, is meant for ourselves, posted to wrong address" (courtesy, Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay, Shankhini)

Today I was reading a bengali short-story by Sunil Gangopadhyay. My heart started bleeding after that! Literature and education, are the mass weapon in my opinion. Media has a very temporary effect on us, we cannot relate to it. "News" always remain outside our bedroom door, as the reality of someone else. We stay warm in our own little bird's nest, agitated with rising gas prices, increasing work load and blood pressure, Friday night party followed by sex and extra-credit homeworks for that "extra-credit" our little ones can fetch out of a course. Ofcourse we have occasional visit to temples and parents and doctors, revisiting memories with old friends and older scotch, political debates which invariably turn into socio-economic discussions (or vice-versa) and tax-free donation to blind-schools, but the death of the young journalist or scream of the gang-raped girl or silent tears of the mother whose 9-year-old is trafficked cannot touch our own circle of life. Or rather, they come and go with the news articles and stock-market downfalls.

But then, there are those writers and they write. They write about what they see, imagine, know of and what they can predict. They reproduce those tears and screams on those printed pages and they haunt us back every now and then, even decades after they were printed. They revisit us in the sleep-inducing bedroom couch by the yellow lamp, at the lonely seat beside the window in the stuffed train, boring afternoons when you bring work home and your wife went out shopping - you just recollect and sigh. You recollect things you haven't seen and you sigh for the person who never existed, because you know that all of it happened, somewhere, with someone, with a different name, in a different time, and you were present there, in a different identity, performing a different role than just the observer. You were there slitting the throat of that middle-aged school-teacher who protested against local middlemen, or may be you were there for your share from the small grocery stores income as the "dada" of your locality, or you are the one who elbowed that fourth standard white-frock, red-ribbon in the public bus. Or may be you did nothing, but were smoking the peaceful puff when that college-goer in the late-evening bus-stand 100 feet away was mobbed, mugged and molested. You then took the next dark allay and found the shortcut to the next street, caught a quick cab home and went to the restroom running and threw up. 


...But then you are you and you know that more than anyone. So you probably stop there for a while, rewind in time and take a step forward to stand against the rogues. Oh, you have diabetes  and vertigo, you can't really beat anyone beyond defending yourself, so you call the cops. Oh, you don't really get the time to wait for the police station to respond and they are dragging her towards the jeep, but you don't take the next exit, rather you shout! Then you scream, scream and scream louder, the scream tears your voice apart but reaches those closed windows, deaf passer-by's and over-speeding cars along the road. You just don't scream for that victim there, but you scream for being a victimized yourself, all your life! You somehow need to stop those faces from embezzling life away from a life! May be your voice, for the first time, sirens meaninglessly, but atleast sirens, against the society, the system, the administration, your job and alcohol, your education, the teacher who penalized you in exam because you didn't attend his private paid classes, the girl whom you loved but who loved money and caste more over your love, the call-girl who sapped your month's pay at the crossroad and the broker who got you the deal, your wife who demanded you to leave your paternal home and your parents who demanded you to live for yourself, and you scream against yourself......yourself next to possible escape and the plausible protest.......you scream because you can't choose.......