Rohit Kumar: Insomnia in 'New India'

By Dilip -
NB: Well written Rohit, and thank you. Nishkaam karmayog..DS
I have never had a problem with insomnia, but over the last month or so, sleep – “sore labour’s bath, balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, and chief nourisher in life’s feast” – seems to have forsaken me. I find myself anxious and awake till the wee hours of the morning, thinking about the violence that is spreading across India. I find myself thinking about the brutality with which Tabrez Ansari from Jharkhand was dispatched from this life. I also find myself thinking about Mohammad Akhlaq, Pehlu Khan, young Junaid, and all the Muslims who have been forced to say “Jai Shri Ram” but beaten mercilessly anyway. 

I think about all the rallies I have attended over the past five years, and all the placards I have held up asking for peace and non-violence, wondering what good they have done. My thoughts then turn to the conversations I have tried to have with those who have lustily cheered the birth of ‘New India’ and their utter immunity to facts and figures underscoring all the various ways our country is in trouble. I find myself thinking a lot about Sudha Bharadwaj and wonder how she is feeling, having given her life to India’s marginalised and landing in prison for her pains. 

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And then, after I have exhausted myself completely and I finally start drifting off to sleep, the smirking faces of those in power appear in my mind’s eye and say to me, “Kyaa ukhaad loge?” - “what difference will it make?” What, indeed, does one do in these dark times?

A few days ago, after a particularly difficult and sleepless night, I ducked into a MacDonald’s outside a Metro station to get a coffee on my way to work, and as I stepped out, almost collided into a shoeshine boy standing at the entrance. He asked if he could polish my shoes, a cheerful grin on his face. I was about to give him a few rupees and move on, when he put a grimy hand on my arm and said, “Bhookh lagi hai (I am hungry).”

Something about that gesture stopped me in my tracks. 
“How many of you here?” I asked him.
“Three,” he said, pointing out to two other disheveled boys standing a short distance away.
“Call them,” I told him, went back into the store and bought them three McAloo burgers, or whatever it is they are called. It was a small thing, but for some reason, the sight of three shoeshine boys sitting under a tree happily wolfing down aloo tikki burgers brought me a sense of calm I hadn’t felt in weeks. And as I walked away with a slightly lighter heart, it dawned on me:

I can’t do everything
But I can do something.
And what I can do
I will... 

read more: https://thewire.in/communalism/narendra-modi-new-india-insomnia

see also
1948: Supreme Court, RSS and Gandhi
A message and an appeal  
Peace as a punctuation mark in eternal war






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