Perspective

Vrinda S Mundra- 20SJCCC379

Toba Tek Singh or Bishan Singh, to me they convey the same meaning

We are often known by that one name by everyone, whether it is logical or not,

But that sticks longer to people’s mind than our original names.

Here we are, trying to asses his lunacy or emotions, which one we are addressing is very hard to say

One might say his love for his town is over exaggerated

We, as enlightened humans have nothing else to do but judge, make comments.

Make comments, in our protected homes about situations we have never been 

Or can ever even imagine to be in

Well, it’s just the speciality of my generation. 

We often judge everyone’s emotions

What is acceptable, what is not

What is enough, what is too much 

But, to the opposite, we entirely disregard the emotions of a lunatic 

Which is logical in most of the scenarios. 

Although, Bishan Singh’s non sensical words just conveyed his purest emotions

Cause, his town was the only thing which attached him out of his bounded, asylum life.

That was the only piece of memory that gave him reason and attachment.

It was everything to him, especially when he hadn’t seen his family for so long

When he has no identity other than that place and his ‘forced’ home, the asylum. 

We can say, he’s a lunatic, how does it matter to him where he is or where Toba Tek Singh is?

We banter over throwing away any thing which holds any small, fond memories. 

This was his home, the life he knew out of the asylum.

What do we know? We, who travel from one city to another, one country to another every other day.What it would have been 73years back? To give up everything you have known and owned and start from somewhere else from scratch.

Start with nothing but confusion, fear and lack of security.

Toba Tek Singh, a place? A person? Or a situation?

In my opinion it embodies all three.

A place, a town where its own people are compelled to leave

A town, which is ravaged by communal riots and blood.

A person, a lunatic who finds his comfort in that very town. 

A situation, the ‘No mans’ land, the plight of all those people who were adversely affected by the partition. 

The Sindhis, the punjabis and so many others 

They belonged, yet the didn’t. 

Now, looking at the disastrous situation, we think could we have changed the scenario then?

What would it be now if partition hadn’t even happened? 

Or if partition happened in a ‘peaceful way’? 

I don’t think there would be a peaceful way to do it. 

You are asking millions of  people to leave everything behind, topped with communal riots, famine, lack of administration power, military, financial resources and order. 

If partition hadn’t happened at all, would we have saved lives or just compensated them to murderous riots another day? 

I don’t know if history and the present would have been better or worse if Pakistan didn’t exist.

I don’t know if we hadn’t regarded Gandhi as ‘The father of the Nation’ would there be no Pakistan. 

( I am not a Gandhi follower nor appraiser, if we believe in freedom of speech then I believe I should be having that freedom whether or not my views anger you or please you.)

I don’t know at all. 

The classic advice we are often given ‘Everything happens for a reason’ 

For a fact, I am also be going to be backing and citing that right now. Ironic. 

Report

 I chose to write a poem because I think it was important to convey my feelings  and emotions to the reader, which cannot be done successfully (by me) through a medium of a poster/painting etc. I am not a great painter and didn’t want to have an adventurous trial especially for a 40 mark assignment. Another reason which compelled me to write a poem is that, as an individual I have always tend to communicate my feelings on topics that I am passionate, intrigued and enthusiastic about through poems whether it be feminism or politics. Writing the poem, embodied my individuality in it and  makes it even more personal to me. I found a letter as a medium too long to convey my message, which would in my opinion loose a reader’s attention, although my poem is very long also.

I strongly believe that a creative mode of expression is very influential in historical re imagination. Over years, life changes in a lot of way from technology, attires, lifestyles, traditions and belief systems. For an individual who has not seen or witnessed it at first hand cannot practically reimagine life a 100 years back how it was then. We need colours, pictures, imageries and metaphors to imagine and create a picture we are unaware of. Though journals, newspapers, books etc give a written depiction of what happened but to feel and experience it, it is difficult without other mediums like movies, paintings and other forms of pictorial representations. For example, we are often taught about the brutality and genocide committed on Jews by the Nazi regime in text books but in my personal experience only after I watched movies regarding the World War I could  really fully feel and understand what they had to goq through, what was the state of the ghetto camps, the fear, the desperation. 

The historical context is situated in the post partition  of India and Pakistan. In the text Toba Tek Singh, the Hindu and Sikh Lunatics in Lahore are being sent back to India, it displays the confusion, distortion and anxiety which the lunatics face regarding whether they were in Pakistan or India? Or where a particular place was? The prime focus of the story is about a lunatic called Bishan Singh, who is extremely worried about the fact if Toba Tek Singh, his town is a part of India or Pakistan.The only thing that bothered him was that, even when his entire family had shifted to India. During the transfer of the lunatics, he protests to leave Pakistan for Toba Tek Singh. In the end, the man who stood erect on his legs for fifteen years fell head along on the ground, in between the barbed wires of Pakistan and India, the no mans land. This story sketches the partition era, the difficulties, emotional trauma families went through while moving from their homes.In the text all the lunatics were affected, but it is a representation of all the people who went through those experiences, the feeling of leaving everything behind, everything they have known. The partition displaced over 10-20 million people on the basis of religion. 

In my opinion, I don’t know if the future would have been better or worse if Pakistan didn’t exist nor can I come up with a conclusion that if partition hadn’t happened there would have been peace, people wouldn’t have been massacred.We had deep rooted problems regarding our religious differences which had caused enough bloodshed among the people. But it isn’t like partition didn’t cause bloodshed either, displaced families, lost children, lack of amenities, its equivalently worse. Communal riots were a huge problem then and still are, according to me.I think the only thing which could have changed the future or the past(partition era) if the British hadn’t played ‘ Divide and Rule Politics’, if they hadn’t stirred poison among the communities. I blame them for all of this. Even though we can say, they did what they did but it is dependant on us how we manage it. But doesn’t that seem illogical? A time when freedom of speech was actually in danger, when we were just a country to draw raw materials from and dump exported goods, when there was no digital media, when there was a huge gender gap, when literacy rate was so less, when employment was scarce and a failed agriculture system.They massacred, exploited and ruined India.Yet, the United Kingdom is very righteous to talk about freedom of speech and violation of human rights of other countries.