Irom: A pranam

When Irom lost in Manipur, realised India is not anymore Gandhi land. Shut down TV and switched on Facebook where some good Samaritan had posted ads of Brooke Bond Red Label Tea. Squeezed into youtube films, they pop up and mostly are better than films. A Muslim lady opens the door of her home, invites an aged couple, Hindu for sure, for tea. The offer is put down by the male in white dhoti and his sareed, tika, wife, tired after a day out. Muslim lady goes about her work, a tad upset and who wont be, like Irom perhaps. With no immediate relief, the couple accept the tea offer. The Muslim lady smiles, offer them cups of Red Label tea with the gentleman pleading for a second cup, on offer. Doubt if it will happen in India 2017 homes; like the way we have, decently and democratically, kept out Irom. A second ad talks of an Alzheimer lady sitting at a table, blank; a young, a neighbour, offers her a cup of Red Label; the lady accepts with a smile and mistakes the lad for her son, settled in US, for making the tea; the tagline pleads for caring our neigbour. Will we care for Irom, since she has lost and is a zero today. Maybe, we will forget Irom. She plans to go south; she knows better; but Manipur she should be in. Am nothing to advise Irom. A young kid helps his littler sister with a cup of Red Label tea, in the third ad. Some little Manipuri child will offer her tea or it could be some dabhawala on the Highway, a book written by Sudeep Chakravarti on Journeys Through a Fractured Land. Sudeep writes: ... As Singhajit politely listens to what he already knows of his youngest sister, the professor maps a sort of trajectory of the protester in the making. He talks of how Sharmila wrote poetry in school, how she would travel everywhere on a cycle listening to people talking about human rights. Sometimes, she would display a stubborn streak of independence. She was once failed in school because she insisted on writing her exams using green ink. The professor talks of how she used to be found in Sanamahi shrines, lost in thought..... Later as an intern with Human Rights Alert in Imphal, she was asked to go and meet a young tribal woman, a Kabui, who was raped by security forces in front of her father-in-law. It happened after a skirmish between insurgents and security forces near her village. When this girl related her experience to Sharmila, the professor says, it triggered an internal change in Sharmila. Then the Malom incident happened in early November 2000. And Sharmila the protest icon was born. ..'So the state has created a living martyr,' I say to Professor Lokendro. He nods vigorously, and bursts into his trademark cackle.' Today we have rejected the martyr. Did we not shoot down an Old Man. 'Do you want an honest answer? I don't consider myself an Indian, is a line in Highway.