TRYST WITH DESTINY

 ARCHANA J

20SJCCC310

 SUBTITLE:ONE MAN,MANY CHARACTERS.

 The British left and we still stay united

 A what if episode plays in my head,

 What if we did not let religion get into our skin

 Would we have our freedom earlier?

 Would we still have Koh-i-Noor

 in our hand

 Indian cricket team would be invincible

 Would we get beef in UP and gulaab jamun in Lahore?

 Would we see Lata mangeshkar and nusrat fateh ali khan singing together

 Would Kashmir be free?

 And we could sip on some tea,

 Remember when Hindustan became India and Pakistan

 Sometimes I think what if it didn’t go according to that plan.

 

“At the stroke of midnight hour when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom” but it also woke to hatred and pain. I have watched so many movies and read stories about the partition of India namely train to Pakistan and my another favorite has to be Toba tek singh.

 

The reason why I have chosen to write poetry is because its unique and it enrages our senses along with our emotions and kind of makes you empathetic and lets us see, watch, feel how the poet is feeling. And I being a fan of poetry myself, wanted to write it because its what Hindustan was and what India and Pakistan will always will be. We have the best food and we do well with words . We explain pain and love in simple words that people who read it feels it deeply and something which stays with them.

 

A Creative mode of expressing is equally important to its historical imagination Because Gulzar who was born in Pakistan but decided to stay back in India wrote:Pakisthan ko main watan kehta hu par hindusthan mulk hai mera(I was born there but I belong here) he in one of his poems adds if you cut people in half, they bleed implying the partition of India. And one of the most popular poems on partition written by Faiz Ahmed Faiz Subh-e-Azadi brings back haunting memories from both sides of the border. Now through my poem I have looked in a positive way. Rather than how India is right now I have imagined how it would be if it was not divided. If I have to justify it I am just imagining all the things how it would be different, how we would never have the conversation of which coke studio is the best (now call me an anti nationalist but Pakistan music is top-tier).How we would never see the Kashmiri’s suffer ,how maybe we would never see fascists rule our country and how with all the differences we would be together. Lets not forget that Mahatma Gandhi too opposed the partition of the country he said we would be suffering the consequences.

 

Toba Tek Singh a hilarious satirical short story to discuss about the madness of communalism yet, heart touching you can feel the pain the story actually wants to deliver. I love how the author has described it to differentiate between the sane and the insane.It also subtlety shows how partition is not all about the demographic borders but the human hearts that only sensitize ones nativity ahead of all rational sensibilities. Now I know one cannot change what happened and neither it is ever possible to back to how it was. We should accept the history positively and tell ourselves that mere borders cannot divide us and we should share the water, sunlight and air.

 

From the historical context I want to address how mental illness being a theme in this short story.Manto who himself has been through mental health issues speaks about it profoundly. The choice of writing a story of partition through the lens of “madness” speaks volumes to me. At the end it makes the patients look sane. The asylum in a sense represents the whole country and the madness symbolizes the partition violence and the character Bishan Singh represents the partition refugees. The constant questioning about where they are and if they belonged to India or Pakistan and their loss of sense of belonging is how the refugees felt. Bishan Singh is someone like you and me during the partition being in a constant place for many years and now moving to a completely new place is scary. The last paragraph of the story brings us despair and we go on questioning the partition and how a insignificant border made by humans who project their insecurities onto others and who use their little faith to break a country, for wars and to cause physiological trauma to people by breaking so many relationships and taking them away from a place where they grew up and belong, thus leaving a mark for the rest of their life. Here Bishan Singh is Toba Tek Singh. It is a place which belonged no where. He is just a man who is hurt and want answers to his questions.

 

What if the partition did not occur? What could have been different? My whole poem is based on that. How we could get to see Shahid Afridi and Sachin Tendulkar play together. How much more diversity we would have? No beef ban ? Or stupid laws like love jihad would not exist. And terrorism what’s that? We could have actually prevented 26/11.I firmly believe that partition only spread communal hatred and it fueled the Hindu Muslim conflict. The Britishers did leave us but the divide and rule stayed and will always stay.

 

Concluding this article with a dialogue from one of my favorite movies on patriotism and freedom struggle Rang de Basanthi “koi desh perfect nahi hota.Use perfect banana pad tha hai”(no country is perfect,we need to make it perfect).

Let us all continue to raise hell for peace.