BY SHUBHA BALA
Sweating upstairs in my private room, waiting for anything, waiting for 604800 seconds. An entire week. The autobiography of Gandhi, with its Indian pages, too thin and too smooth, sprawled out on the floor beside my bed. Me, lying on the hard mattress. My body unable to shape it. My head unable to dent the hard pillow on which it rests. My thoughts missing my daily bike ride to the useless NGO in Rajkot where I hated working. But at least I was able to get out of this stifling apartment.
A week ago, I laid in this hard bed, staring at the ceiling during Indian post-lunch siesta, as I always did that spring. The sun set and I rode back to work, as always. The CEO’s right-hand man (Hindu) greeted me. Some train had burnt, he said. Everyone had to go home, stay inside for the rest of the night. What did his constant smile say? His constant brushing everything aside with a wave of his hand (childrens’ rights, AIDS, genocides). His hand brushed it all aside, like all Indian hands before and after him, and it said it would see me tomorrow.
For what seemed like billions of seconds, I paced between my room upstairs and the living room downstairs where the mom and dad (Hindu, Hindu) slept. The big TV chattered away in Gujarati showing carcassed stores on the street I had once biked along to my internship. Showing images of my people: innocent Hindus killed by evil Muslims, they said. All across Gujarat, it said. Chatter, chatter said the box. I asked it what it was saying but it would not translate.
The box kept showing Muslims being burned alive, being shot, decapitated, herded around streets, villages, cities, countries, raped, stripped, butchered. People that weren’t just TV images like they were back home in Canada. People burning others alive in my living room. My people.
I did not go back to work the next day. I was not allowed to leave my house. Nobody was allowed to leave their house. The police would shoot them. The police would shoot us. To protect us?
A week ago, I rode to work while my aunt and uncle (Hindu, Hindu) took a train back from a retiree vacation in Rajasthan. They sat on the train, unknowingly hurtling towards the blazing station. Chai vallas, plastic blue mattresses, their sleepcar blasting cold air. In traditional hospitality, a family on the train invited them to their village for dinner. They got off the train early. Luck. The next day, amidst a village now in chaos, they struggled to find their way to the airport. Find rickshaw drivers willing to take them through adhoc checkpoints manned by killers. Staring into the eyes of centuries, they would venture a guess at the magic password: “We are Hindu?” “We are Muslim?” “Achaa, pass.” They flew to Madras. Luck.
I asked my host family (Hindu), in words they did not understand, “If I hadn’t just bought this purse with a Hindu ohm on it, would I have been killed?” Everyone laughed at me: “You think they need an ohm bag to know you’re a Hindu?”
Me? This is me?
One second, Two seconds, Three seconds. On the chatterbox: Hindus killing Muslims, Hindus torturing Muslims, Hindus raping Muslim girls, Muslim women, Muslim mothers and their daughters, Hindus chaining 50, 60, 100 Muslim villagers together and burning them, Hindus locking Muslims in their houses and burning them, Hindus laughing, Hindus pointing, Hindus sitting in their living rooms watching TV. And me. Me?
I conversed with my host mother (Hindu) “How ironic Gandhi is also from Gujarat and he wanted everyone to live in peace!” “Yes!” she responded emphatically in broken English, “Yes! After all that Gandhi gave them, the Muslims have proven they are really evil.”
Weeks later, back at work, smiley hand-wave guy (Hindu), fat CEO guy (Hindu), aunt and uncle (Hindu, Hindu), aunties and uncles (Hindu? Hindu, Hindu…), news guy (Hindu.): “For centuries we’ve been peaceful and sat back, it’s about time we fought back”.
Me: “They raped them and cut up their vaginas in front of their moms!”
The rest of us (Hindus): “… still. They need to know what’s what.”
Billions and trillions of seconds later, my mom shouts at my 20 year old self across a long Toronto apartment, balcony overlooking Lake Ontario, freshly painted white walls. She shouts “blah blah blah, they’re Muslims! You don’t get it! You are there for 3 months and you think you know what’s going on!” She screams defenses for the chatterbox, screams why it was right and I was wrong, as if this was a parental debate about drugs, or sex. As if this isn’t about the sex between 9 year old Muslim girls and 50 year old Hindu men. She screams at me like a kid who is too young to understand.
She didn’t have them there in her living room, burning each other alive, charring the white, white walls.
A gazillion seconds later. Me in a New York ivy league library, Indian characters in books justifying themselves: decades of brainwashing they say, the media, the history, the cultural clashes, the political influences, the psychology of religion. I undo the clasp of my silver necklace, lay it on the antique brown table and slide off my little golden ohm pendant, placing it far away forever. Luck.
-Shubha Bala