Another baby step

Hi, for all those who've prayed, wished well, and care, we won this court hearing.
Although we've won majority of the hearings in the past 21 years of the case, the previous two judgments have been extremely negative and our stay order was almost expired. This hearing took five days to pull through, but it did.
In the beginning this judge was really negative, he refused to even allow our lawyer to speak at all. He just kept shooting questions at him and refused to let him answer. He kept throwing Indian State Laws at my lawyer when Andamans is a Union Territory and falls under Presidential laws.
Today, he apologized in front of an open court, complemented my lawyer for his patience and explained that the opposition had already briefed him before the case had begun and he thought the case was simply shut.
In fact, the previous judge had completely gone in our favour throughout the hearing and had even said so in open court that the Lieutenant Governor of the Islands was behaving like a dictator by taking away this property from us, but in writing we lost the case.
This judge completely struck off the previous judge's verdict saying that his judgment was based on no laws, no facts, no evidence, and gave us a favourable verdict instead.
This is just one step, but it's a big one. He extended our stay order until the case is permanently settled and he was so humble and apologetic to us all.
Thank you guys

cold

What if we’re dead? Or dying? What if life were actually leaving us, leaving our physical selves behind, leaving us to die much later, to live dead lives. How do I explain? What if, somewhere through our journeys through our lives we forgot the meaning of living? What is living? Who is living? Who is dying? Am I dead? Am I dying?
What if dying was living? What if the only way to experience life, was through dying? Am I dying? Am I dead?
I can’t feel. I don’t know what I feel. So I don’t feel. Or is it that I do not feel, so I don’t know what to feel? I’ve seen people like me. People with principals, unfeeling, unattached, uncatchable, the wandering soul. What if our souls don’t come back? What if we’re trapped here and they’re freed and hate us and leave us and never come back to us? Is that death?

Small Miracles

A woman on a mission, Irene Mary, an MBBS student who lost out to multiple sclerosis, toils endlessly to ensure that nobody should suffer the mental trauma that December 2004 caused on the peace-loving and easy-going Nicobarese.
Advocating the rights of mental health patients, no one would imagine that this was the same person who was entirely paralysed for 5 years of her life. Admitted into the Jawaharlal Institute of Post Medical and Research Centre in 1996, she started showing the first signs and symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis one year later, but since she was the first case of multiple sclerosis, no one there could identify exactly what she was suffering from, so they'd write it off as stress.
"First the fevers started, none of the doctors could explain it and I didn't want to be a burden to anyone, so I stopped complaining about it to anyone. But the fevers kept getting more frequent and I would shiver and get raggers due to it as time went by. By 1999 it was so severe that I went to the hospital, complaining of a pain in my spine as well, but what the doctors didn't realize was that there was an inflammation in my brain. So again they wrote it off as nothing serious and sent me off. As I exited the gate, I felt an unbearable shooting pain that began from my middle finger right up to my ear and I couldn't bear it. That's when I was carried back into the hospital and then they found out what I was suffering from. By then it was so severe that I had lost sight in one eye and my entire body was paralysed.
So I came home, but even lifting a glass was like a puzzle, slowly I could move my hands but could not feel any sensation in them so my sense of touch could only be established through seeing. I would judge from the impression my hands made on the glass, whether or not I was holding it tight enough. When my sister went out, I would wash and scrub clothes trying to feel the cloth or the soap or the water against my skin. I would do the house chores trying to stand. My brothers would accompany me onto the road and hold my arms while I tried to walk slowly.
Now I can even read in candle light, I can walk steadily without anyone's help, it's a miracle and I want to help as many people as possible. My real improvement started after the tsunami when I came back to see what I could do for my people.
Here the people were so troubled that Dr Sunil Kumar from G.B. Pant Hospital came down and conducted a survey and subsequently, mental health camps were held every once a month," said the 29-year old, one of the six enthusiasts who returned on March 20 this year from Calcutta after a seven-day training camp in mental health care.
"We go from home to home, counselling and giving medications because they have nowhere to bring their family members to if they feel there is something wrong," informs Irene, adding, "At one of the homes we went to just after the tsunami, a 21-year-old boy was shackled in chains, and his wrists were bleeding and swollen. His parents at the time had no choice but to chain him because he was wild with some sort of rage that no one could understand. He would just attack anyone who came near him." But back then; this was the condition of a large number of people on the island. In such a state, there is no ward, referring doctor or mental health specialist on the island.
"Some of us saw the extent of the trauma and decided that something needs to be done. They are the most neglected people in the world. So we would move around and collect all the cases for Sevak's doctors who would come down from Calcutta every once a month. Today, that very same boy plays games and laughs with and entertains his friends and family," informs Irene. Sevak (Saints and Enthusiastic Association of Kolkata) sent a group of three doctors who would use Irene's assistance in treating patients from the island. Irene was working under Action Aid, an NGO present in the islands at the time.
Today, Irene along with her group of six enthusiastic trainees, wish to register their NGO, Dosti, and has requested the Central Government to help fund a Mental Healthcare Centre where people could bring their family members in case of emergencies.

Dividing the Nicobarese

The permanent shelters, although very neat, are designed for the wrong people. A thing for nuclear families and busy office goers, the shelters are currently being used as store rooms, as even the front doors and matchbox bedrooms don’t allow for the King-size Nicobari lifestyle.

It’s cultural that when you ask a Nicobari child to list out his family, he’ll start with his great grand mother, who is currently the head of the family by mere virtue of the fact that she’s still alive, and then move down to his great grand aunts via his uncles and aunts and finally end with his two adopted brothers followed closely by his three pigs and two dogs.
Their culture entails living together, eating together, sleeping together, even washing their hands together in the same washbowl. When a Nicobari boy from one village marries a girl from another village, it’s not just the two of them getting married – it’s a marriage of the two villages. There are two-three hour long debates amongst the village heads on whether the boy should go to the girl’s village or whether the girl should go to the boy’s, depending on the number of their family members and their ages. Sometimes, the marriage is not permitted, because the boy’s village won’t let go of their son and the girl’s village won’t let go of their daughter.
As for their living space, the floor of a Nicobari home is a bamboo machaan, which doubles up as one big bed for everyone in the family to sleep together on. There are usually 8-15 such family members. They will not fit into the crampy 7X6ft wooden-floored permanent shelter bedrooms in Car Nicobar. In fact, one Nicobari kitchen is the size of the current twin-unit (for two families) permanent shelter. It has also been established, that they will not even be able to get their Dekchies (cooking vessels) through the front doors because of their size, leave alone finding space to store them in the 4X6ft kitchens.
Their trunks take up majority of the space in the living room of the unit and only their cupboards fit in their bedrooms. In some of their homes lie 10ft-long replicas of their 100-seater racing canoes with two feet high trophies decorating it, false ceilings used as attics to store the boating equipment and spacings in their stilted bamboo floors to allow for the cool air from below to fill the house.
“We don’t use these units to live, we’ll build our own homes slowly as and when we can. We will only use these as store-rooms because they are so hot and small. It looks very nice, but not for us,” says a village captain, refusing to be named.
But the good news, is that for the first time in history and after three years of bungling things up, our seemingly dictatorial administration has permitted for Nicobari representation the right to inspect the shelters and pass on their views – On April 8, 2008, the Tribal Council was allowed to be part of the permanent shelter inspection team to represent the people of Car Nicobar and their grievances.

Me

My mother tells me I am exactly like she was when she was younger – at least three of my ex-boyfriends think so too.

My father's friends think I am the reincarnation of him, an extension of him, exactly like him.

My lawyer thinks my father’s spirit has entered my body, for the decisions I take and choices I make.

My father’s sister tells me I remind here of herself when she was younger - she was called a firebrand back then.

My father’s mother’s best friend, during her lifetime insisted to me that I was exactly like my grandmother – my features, my eyes, the way I carried myself – she kept referring to my grandmother as my mother no matter how many times I reminded her of the difference. She was senile, of course.

I once walked up to my father’s brother and informed him that he could never defeat me, because I had his blood running in my veins, only, with age on my side. I even went so far as to predict his every move with the sole reasoning that I knew exactly how his mind works, because I am him, just younger.

I am just a vengeful, cautious young girl. I belong to no one or nowhere or nothing. And nowhere or no one or nothing belongs to me.

the setting sun

The Grey Havens
The cry of a gull
tinges the azure expanse
with an endless calm.

And then she whispers
soft, her cherry lips parted
amidst open grass.

Storming clouds gather
she trembles like a flower
curled in the night winds.

Imploring, she turns
her eyes hazel, and wistful
drawing me away.

In the rain we walk
the two of us, holding hands
to the grey havens.
- By Nikhil Hemrajani



Translation: Arm in Arm, they walked into the horizon, little realizing that the sun in their skies was setting & it would be a long, long time before it would rise again.

The seeing blind

The party was over. The children were sleepy. While papa bear put baby bear to sleep, little bear watched and teased baby bear by making funny faces and sticking his tongue out at her when papa bear wasn’t looking. Baby bear squealed and reach out to playfully hit little bear and little bear moved. Baby bear hit the bed instead and papa bear who was gently patting baby bear to sleep frowned and shouted at little bear not to tease baby bear. It happened every night.

Aunt bear, who was leaning against the wall until now, watching, turned to her sister – mama bear. The television was just loud enough to prevent papa bear from hearing what aunt bear had to ask mama bear. “What’s it like?”

Mama bear who was washing the dishes turned to aunt bear with a frown: “What’s what like?”

“To be you.

Describe it. So that I can taste it. Describe it like you would a painting to a blind man.”

Mama bear turned. The television serial was still loud enough. Still frowning she looked at aunt bear.

“I don’t get angry because someone I love will get hurt, I cook because someone I love is hungry, I come home because someone I love is waiting for me, I wake up early because someone I love needs me to do something that can be done only at that hour.”

The serial breaks into an ad. Mama bear is crying. “I don’t know where he goes, or who he meets, or what he does wherever he goes with whomever he meets, but I know one thing,” she wipes her tears away, “when he comes home, he looks at me the way he looks at no one else on this planet and he and me both know that no one on this planet can nor will ever look at him the way I do.

And that’s me.”

She looks at her sister, who’s looking at the spotted tiles.

“You can still have my life, you know.”

Aunt bear looks up, gently leans her head back against the wall, and just stares. “I can have your life as much as you can have mine.

It’s like being blind.

A man who’s been blind all his life can see as much as a seeing man cannot.

I won’t change.”