BY SHUBHA BALA<\/p>\n
Sweating upstairs in my private room, waiting for anything, waiting for 604800 seconds.\u00a0 An entire week.\u00a0 The autobiography of Gandhi, with its Indian pages, too thin and too smooth, sprawled out on the floor beside my bed.\u00a0 Me, lying on the hard mattress.\u00a0 My body unable to shape it.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 But at least I was able to get out of this stifling apartment.<\/p>\n
A week ago, I laid in this hard bed, staring at the ceiling during Indian post-lunch siesta, as I always did that spring.\u00a0 The sun set and I rode back to work, as always. The CEO\u2019s right-hand man (Hindu) greeted me.\u00a0 Some train had burnt, he said.\u00a0 Everyone had to go home, stay inside for the rest of the night.\u00a0 What did his constant smile say?\u00a0 His constant brushing everything aside with a wave of his hand (childrens\u2019 rights, AIDS, genocides).\u00a0 His hand brushed it all aside, like all Indian hands before and after him, and it said it would see me tomorrow.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 The big TV chattered away in Gujarati showing carcassed stores on the street I had once biked along to my internship.\u00a0 Showing images of my people: innocent Hindus killed by evil Muslims, they said.\u00a0 All across Gujarat, it said.\u00a0 Chatter, chatter said the box. I asked it what it was saying but it would not translate.<\/p>\n
The box kept showing Muslims being burned alive, being shot, decapitated, herded around streets, villages, cities, countries, raped, stripped, butchered.\u00a0 People that weren\u2019t just TV images like they were back home in Canada.\u00a0 People burning others alive in my living room.\u00a0 My people.<\/p>\n
I did not go back to work the next day.\u00a0 I was not allowed to leave my house.\u00a0 Nobody was allowed to leave their house.\u00a0 The police would shoot them.\u00a0 The police would shoot us.\u00a0 To protect us?<\/p>\n
A week ago, I rode to work while my aunt and uncle (Hindu, Hindu) took a train back from a retiree vacation in Rajasthan.\u00a0 They sat on the train, unknowingly hurtling towards the blazing station.\u00a0 Chai vallas, plastic blue mattresses, their sleepcar blasting cold air.\u00a0 In traditional hospitality, a family on the train invited them to their village for dinner.\u00a0 They got off the train early.\u00a0 Luck.\u00a0 The next day, amidst a village now in chaos, they struggled to find their way to the airport.\u00a0 Find rickshaw drivers willing to take them through adhoc checkpoints manned by killers.\u00a0 Staring into the eyes of centuries, they would venture a guess at the magic password: \u201cWe are Hindu?\u201d\u00a0 \u201cWe are Muslim?\u201d\u00a0 \u201cAchaa, pass.\u201d\u00a0 They flew to Madras.\u00a0 Luck.<\/p>\n
I asked my host family (Hindu), in words they did not understand, \u201cIf I hadn\u2019t just bought this purse with a Hindu ohm on it, would I have been killed?\u201d\u00a0 Everyone laughed at me: \u201cYou think they need an ohm bag to know you\u2019re a Hindu?\u201d<\/p>\n
Me?\u00a0 This is me?<\/p>\n
One second, Two seconds, Three seconds.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 And me.\u00a0 Me?<\/p>\n
I conversed with my host mother (Hindu) \u201cHow ironic Gandhi is also from Gujarat and he wanted everyone to live in peace!\u201d\u00a0 \u201cYes!\u201d she responded emphatically in broken English, \u201cYes! After all that Gandhi gave them, the Muslims have proven they are really evil.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.): \u201cFor centuries we\u2019ve been peaceful and sat back, it\u2019s about time we fought back\u201d.
\nMe: \u201cThey raped them and cut up their vaginas in front of their moms!\u201d
\nThe rest of us (Hindus): \u201c\u2026 still.\u00a0 They need to know what\u2019s what.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 She shouts \u201cblah blah blah, they\u2019re Muslims!\u00a0 You don\u2019t get it!\u00a0 You are there for 3 months and you think you know what\u2019s going on!\u201d 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
She didn\u2019t have them there in her living room, burning each other alive, charring the white, white walls.<\/p>\n
A gazillion seconds later.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Luck.<\/p>\n
-Shubha Bala