celebration - happy independence

It’s such a simple thing, time is. It’s a construct of our imaginations, a construct meant to explain this otherwise inexplicable, beautiful, wild world. In our attempt to domesticate it, we try to divide it up. Into the before and after. Sometimes the now too, but the now when you read is now the before. We don’t focus much on the now. We’re concerned about the after, or worrying about the before.

I was there when it happened. He had come with pomp and vigor, meaning to spread it out over years. He didn’t know anything about my home. Him, in his arrogance and black boots so well and regularly polished that you could see your reflection in them, the same boots that some of my people had kicked in their subservience to these creatures. He had come with much gusto, an inflated chest, one that would be punctured in due time. Someone would shoot him much later. It wasn’t enough. Nothing was. But I guess, we too were to blame for what happened in those days. We are all responsible for ourselves. Others can share that responsibility but we are our “own and perhaps only homes.” 

I was there when it had happened. The clock had struck twelve, the ceremonies had begun. In bad taste. Sikhs twirling swords, their turbans flawless, their beards still wet from the washing. Muslims and Hindus dancing. Perhaps the last time these people would be friends. They lived in better times for centuries and then the dividers and the conquerors swept in, and did what they did best. They created fasaad.

I was there when it happened. It felt unreal. A tingling through my body. Something of great import had happened. Where I stood was not where I was standing, even though it was the same spot, a minute ago. Chills up my spine, a warmth in my heart. I had a home! We were taught to believe that we needed this home. The other would not have let us live. Who were the teachers? The dividers, of course.

I was there when it happened. I looked over at his face, and saw a plethora of things, some I recognized, others I didn’t. There was the air of arrogance, of course, they thought they were better than us. And they had made us believe that. For centuries we would believe it. We needed to be fair to be lovely. There was joy, he had done what he had been tasked to do. Finality, they had landed on our shores almost five centuries ago. On this day, they had officially divided up our land. Exhaustion. They were tired of it. Of us. That made sense. I was exhausted too. By all this fighting. By all this division. Why did the fictions that were invented to bring us together now pitting us against one another. One of those fictions had originated on the banks of the Ganga, another in the scorching Arab sands. Sadness. I didn’t understand that. Relief, I understood, and he displayed that. Relief that they were done with us. Sadness? Only later would I piece together the puzzle.

These were his friends. The people celebrating his achievement had become his friends. They were genuine, honest, they were open. He was sad because he saw what we did not. He saw what would happen over the next few years. He saw the trains that would be drowning in blood, crimson leaking from the spaces beneath their doors, wheels splattered with red. He saw the lifeless bodies. The villages filled with corpses. He saw the women drowning themselves in wells to avoid a far worse fate. He saw the babies with their heads cut off and stuck on spikes. They had done this. We had done this.

I was there when it happened. And what an Independence Day it was.