A NEW TERROR by Sankarshan Thakur

Bush’s changing rhetoric could make the world a more unsafe place

RK Laxman said it all the other day in his pocket wisdom. As his Common Man quizzically scrolls the list of things that can’t any longer be taken aboard flights, his droll wife mutters in the background, “Yes, soon they’ll say no people allowed and then air travel will become completely safe.”

The requirements of security are indeed beginning to verge on the absurd. But can anyone afford to quarrel with them? The next bomb cocktail could come contained in babyfood or disguised as shirt buttons. Terror is constantly innovating, constantly expanding its constituency, constantly traipsing frontiers. There’s no knowing where it will erupt next.

There’s no taking chances. It is perhaps fair to say enough can’t be done today to secure the world against threat. Sure, capitals such as Washington and London send out routine advisories to other nations about possible strikes, especially since 9/11; it is becoming increasingly unwise to treat them as merely routine. The threat exists even in the absence of advisories. Stealth and surprise are terror’s operating arms, it doesn’t follow advisories.

But if terror has become our most insistent peril, so has the rhetoric of the protagonists of the war on terror. Hover a moment on US President George Bush’s first reaction to Scotland Yard’s detection of a plot to blow up several airliners flying into America from Heathrow — Islamic fascists! Scourge be upon them! Terror is abhorrent. Fascism is abhorrent. But Islam? Tarred with the same brush dipped in the vitriol of half-baked understanding? Bush — and frontline groupies like Tony Blair of Britain — have spoken this divisive Us versus Them tongue a long while now, long enough to achieve the opposite of what they purportedly intend.

The world is a much more disaffected place today than it was in 2001, thanks in the main to the words and deeds of Bush and his cronies. Their tactics haven’t contained terror; they have sown a million more seeds of violent rift. Just as our shores are not insulated from incursion by terror, so are they not invulnerable to negative byproducts of the unthinking rhetoric of today’s self-proclaimed counter-terrorists. When our Muslims begin to display signs they too are upset over Bush’s new rhetoric, it is time for us to take note.

It is pointless pretending the new Bush line will not impact India. We are in the throes of our own communal tumult and to adopt, or even allow, the Bush rhetoric to prosper unchecked would be to foment greater disaffections and deepen chasms at home. India needs to counter terror, but it requires to be more nuanced and sophisticated in apportioning blame to the guilty. Every Indian Muslim is not a terrorist, in fact only very few are. And it isn’t as if only Muslims are terrorists, in India or in the world at large. Unless there is clarity on this, we are in a more doomed place than we think.
Aug 26 , 2006

It’s a crazy world we live in

Ten feet away from his house, a friend of mine, being dropped home by a friend of his, takes off his seatbelt. Oops, bad move. Drunk out of his senses, the driver drives straight into a tree and my dear friend, equally drunk and now unseatbelted, flies straight into the windshield. Don’t worry, he still lives, with a swollen forehead of course.

I’m walking back home and I come across a well-dressed, non psychotic looking woman, about mid-forties, scanning the foothpath for something. I ask her if everything’s alright. She tells me she just lost her gold ring while slapping a man she points out to, who’s still holding his cheek and crying like a 5-year-old, after he rammed his car into someone else’s. “He’s my son. Stupid bloody fellow. And now I can’t find my gold ring.”

A friend calls, correction – missed calls, and I call back, reporter that I am. The friend picks up, “Oh, hi, that was quick, actually I just wanted to tell you that I’m...(PEEEPOOOPEEEPOOOPEEEPOOO, some bike whooshes past).”
I say “What?” “Yeah,” he says, I’m (PAAAAAAAN another bike).” I say “What?” He starts laughing, “Yes, I’m MARRIED!”

I say “WHAT?” This guy is just a kid who can barely pay his rent, who can only afford to give missed calls, and he’s married???!!! “Wow,” I say. But it's how he got married that's the real treat.

A childhood friend (girl) of his, complained to the authorities of her university of extreme sexual harassment and attempt to kidnap her. She’d begun to feel like her life was under threat. But no one paid attention so she went to the media. Now the Student’s Union got together with the authorities and made her life hell. Meanwhile they constantly called her parents back home telling them that their daughter was doing crazy things and saying crazy things and behaving crazily. So one day her parents came, picked her up and locked her away in a mental asylum. One day she escaped and came to Delhi, where she stayed with her childhood, broke, friend. Her dear sweet parents found out and filed a kidnapping case against the boy they hired a lawyer and were told that under the circumstances, the best thing to do was get married. Voila.

And all in a day’s work

How I started believing in God

Why and how I stopped believing; now that’s easy. Everyone’s got one of those. I’ve got plenty. But to start believing is rare. And what got me started is even rarer.

Me and my brother were on a ship headed back home. My brother wanted to go outside, but I preferred to stay in. So I was decided that my brother would lock me in the cabin from outside since I couldn’t reach the inside lock.

No big deal, reading, reading, I fell asleep. Suddenly the bed started to shake. My table started shaking, everything on top of the table started shaking. My entire cabin was shaking. Shaking violently, feverishly. The lights started flickering on and off. Then the flush began itself. It kept flushing, but when I checked, no one was flushing it. The windows were rattling, there was a strange loud moaning sound from outside. Nothing I’d ever heard before. And I’ve heard nearly every sound the sea can make. And it’s silence. I was petrified. I couldn’t understand what god was telling me, or trying to. I tried the door but it wouldn’t open. SLAM, the bathroom door shut.

I broke down, pathetic, frightened little worm that I was, and I cried, and I prayed, and I begged, and I promised. I promised God that I would believe in him and never doubt his presence, if he’d please send my brother in. I couldn’t face this alone. And I started a mental composition of this promise, if he’d only send my brother back in. And just then, I heard the lock in the door click. I was sure it wasn’t my brother. It was death. And I turned. And as I turned, and as the door opened, and as my brother walked in, everything just stopped. Just stopped dead. It was incredible.

I leapt off the floor and took a running leap onto my completely shell-shocked brother. And as I narrated what had just happened he laughed. “You silly girl,” he tapped me on my head, “I didn’t come back because God sent me. I came back because I thought you shouldn’t miss such an incredible sight.”

“What incredible sight?”

“This is the first ship in the islands to get a mechanical gang-plank lifter. And because the ship is so small, the load of the machine takes up the entire ship’s power and energy. That’s why the whole ship was shuddering so much. Actually such a tiny vessel doesn’t need a machine. Bigger ships still do it manually. That’s why I wanted you to see it. But by the time I got here, the gang-plank had been cleared and the machine switched off.” He paused, smiling. “So now you know, God had nothing to do with it.”

“But I asked God to send you here, that’s why you came.”
“Shut up now. I don’t believe in God. And neither did you, until just now.”
“I now believe.”
“Very very good. Now are you coming? Or should I lock you in?”
I ran up to him, grabbed his hand, and didn’t let go for the rest of the trip back home. And that’s that.

No, God, no

I met a friend from school the other day, he’s writing a book, and needed suggestions on his fight scene. Me, with my violent background, gave him one: with all bottles being broken on each others’ heads, and one guy getting cornered etc. And he says “Dude, I don’t wanna scare my readers off.” I found it so surprising right then that we both came from the same school. What I had just narrated was no fiction, it was a real incident. It actually happened with other guys from my school. I have been an active and passive participant in so many fights that fight scenes are now my forte.

But I stopped beating anyone up since class 8. After that, it’s only been pushing, shoving, shouting, threatening and watching.

I’ll never forget that incident. If it hadn’t happened, I’d probably still be beating people up. I’ll never forget. When she stopped breathing. God, I got the fright of my life. I started pumping, slapping, shaking her, finally, by the time she started breathing again I had sworn I’d never beat anyone up, ever. That was it. There was another girl in the dormitory besides us both, who when I started beating my final victim, was just sitting on her bead screaming like a wild woman. Suddenly I stopped. I realized she wasn’t breathing. The other girl wasn’t screaming anymore, I looked up, she was just sitting there, eyes wide, with her hand covering her mouth. I looked at my victim, why wasn’t she breathing, looked back up at her.

“Oh my God,” I heard the screaming girl whisper, “You’ve killed her.” No, God, no. That was it. This was not meant to happen. I’m no killer. Then I panicked, started pumping and whacking her chest, “Breathe, breathe, BREATHE!” The screaming started. I looked up. “Stop fucking screaming and DO something, go get help.” She ran out, still screaming away.

Just as she was out the door, the breathing strted. In three seconds she was laughing. I’d had enough. I just backed off and ran. The rest of my batch, later, came down with hockey sticks and warned me that if I ever did that again, I’d be dead. I told them I was really fucked up. I was sorry and it’d never happen again. I really was fucked up. I wasn’t lying. They knew it. So they let me go. That was it.

Two years late, that same girl and me, sloshed out of our minds, pried open the grill of my window with her brand new victorinox pen-knife, and sat out on the roof of that same dormitory, one starry night.

And on that roof we got into an argument in whispers about the other making such a racket that we’d get caught by our teachers. She even threatened to knife me with that fucking pen-knife. And I smiled. And we laughed. Ever since then, we exchanged clothes, bandanas, music, books, lies, secrets, pasts, booze and cigarettes. And hickie stories.

It’s too bad. Today, I hear, she doesn’t go anywhere without her booze. What a waste

Just another fire

There was a time when I would write
I would write when there was a time
Now, is neither a time, nor do I write

A tent in a mela had turned into an inflamed cocoon, with over 500 people inside it.
There was just one exit, the size of my kitchen door, blocked by the stampede trying to survive, and dying instead.

An electric fire, it electrocuted those who touched its metal frames. It started from the top, the crowd below in a panic. It was ‘a special discount’ day and the final day, literally, of the electronic goods mela, the first of it’s kind in Meerut.

The burning roof came loose, melting plastic melting flesh. Over 500 people. By the time I got there, three hours since it first appeared on television, even the blades of the ceiling fans had disappeared without a trace. Not one remained. The dead bodies and the scattered goods had been bulldozed by the police to no-one-knows where. There were people at the sight. Crazy, frenzied people. There was a smell, of burning flesh. Over 500 people. My photographer pulls out his camera. What could he possibly see? One of the crazy, frenzied people sees. He stands up and calls out to my photographer: “Idhar ao, come here quick, this is the carcass of a child,” he shouts, holding up something. “A small Child,” his eyes wide, one hand beckoning us. My photographer runs to him, returns, says he couldn’t be sure. In fact, he thought what I was standing on was a potential carcass. I step back. Over 500 people.

I visit the nearest fire station. The blame game’s begun. Then the police station. It’s one am. Then the hospitals. As I leave, I’m almost glad to bump into a tv journalist, another innocent outsider, and he asks, “Are there any worth-it shots in there?” We exchange death tolls. Both the same.

It’s anyone’s guess the death toll was at least in hundreds, we report the official count: 30. And that’s journalism. The frenzied, crazy people can hear us reporting the number. “Arrey I alone pulled out and carried over 30 bodies into the back of a truckload of dead bodies. Where are the bodies? And the trucks?” but we just look at him like he were a frenzied, crazy person. “When they came with bulldozers,” he shouts now, “there were at least a hundred bodies on the ground. Where did they take them? Why did they use bulldozers?” I nudge my photographer to get into position, Sonia Gandhi’s car is approaching. “You journalists come here, with your cameras and lie to the whole world. But we know the truth. We were here.”

“Help me find the trucks,” suddenly I care. He turns his crazy, frenzied eyes to me and through all the pushing and stampede-like chaos that everyone’s in to get a byte from Sonia, he says “Ask Sonia Gandhi”. And he’s gone. But Sonia’s here. Her car takes a circle of the site, stops, stopping a hundred journalists in their tracks. She peeks her head out of her car window, waves a raised arm at her journalist-fans, and hastily departs. And that’s journalism.

I turn and see there’s a crowd of crazy, frenzied people on the side. And they’re increasing. I decide they’re telling the truth. So I set out to get to the bottom of the trucks. I take off. My cab driver warns me nicely, he hasn’t slept all last night, so I must make him drive too much. I’ve gone deaf. So while I’m out investigating, calling up journalists, police, administration, politicians, getting clues and hints of others involved, I hear that my fellow journalists are being beaten up by a frenzied crowd. Pelted at, hospitalized just like those they’re reporting about. I had gotten some proof, but not a clue about the trucks or the bulldozers. Just stuff my editors would pat my back for. Where were they? We get into the car to follow a lead a politician gave us, a hoax of course, but I was adamant. My cab driver walked out a told me he had gone on strike. I could do what I anted but he wasn’t going to chauffer me around any more. I can’t drive. So my photographer drove, while my driver slept.

Today, six months later, neither the bodies have been found, nor the trucks, nor has anyone given and explanation for the bulldozers at the crime scene. But, another fire did break out. Don’t worry, there’ll be plenty

Bihar in bondage

When the two middle men of a series of child trafficking incidents picked their victims, they were obviously unaware of just how far the parents were willing to go to get their children back. Personally handpicked from Bihar’s Sehersa and Supol Districts to work under bondage on Amritsar’s fields, seven boys were rescued on April 10. The children, some as young as nine years old were forced to work under the influence of opium, a suppressant drug, throughout the past four years for over 16 hours a day.

Suraj Sada (12), Lalkund Sada (15) and Mantun Sada (10) from Saharsa District of Bihar and Satto Sada (9) of Supol district of Bihar were rescued by Bachpan Bachao Andolan, an NGO working against human trafficking, from the homes of various Punjab farmers. after having been trafficked by Ramchandar Sada of the same village, who paid Rs 500-1,000 to the parents, to Dilbagh Singh of Amritsar, who would in turn sell them for Rs 10,000-15,000. The transaction that took place between Ramchandra and Dilbagh is yet to be determined as they are both absconding. BBA has received confirmed reports that over 60 boys from various districts of Bihar have been sold to a number of landlords in Amritsar, Punjab.

“For nearly 3 years I worked with Munim Singh. Neither me nor my family have received a single paisa,” says eight-year-old Satto Sada. “Around four years ago Ramchandra met me and told me that my mom would receive good money for my work. He left me with Dilbagh Singh, where I worked for about a year. Dilbagh then left me with his brother, Munim Singh. Munim owned 20 cattle. I would wake at 4 in the morning and tend to cattle till 12, midnight. Besides me there was another boy who also worked with me. We would be served the leftover rotis from the previous day at 12 noon, followed by dinner: the day’s leftovers, at 12 midnight. We would have to wake up at night to water the fields. Even during winters we had to do it. We never wore shoes, and occasionally wore chappals. While working, when we got tired, the landlord would give us chai, immediately after which I would start vomiting. Munim would tell me that Ramchandra has eaten our daily wages. If we fell ill, he gave us tablets and immediately put us to work.”

“The mix (tablet) a particular drug called Afim (opium) in the chai which makes the children work continuously without feeling tired. Two of the children we rescued slept for two days continuously when they were taken off it,” says Kailash Satyarthi, chairman, BBA.

On March 30, a previous batch of 3 children, Subhash Sada, Jai Krishna Sada and Jitendra Sada from the same two villages had been rescued by BBA from Amritsar. Ramachandra would scout the area for financially vulnerable families and then talk to the parents saying their son would bring back a lot of money and make them proud. Some of the parents who went to Amritsar to find their children were violently sent back empty handed.

“When we confronted Ramchandra, he told us that our children had run away and so we could neither have our children nor the money,” says an enraged KaliDevi who lost her husband while her son, Mantun Sada, was away but could not inform him of it. Mantun was kept at Dilbagh’s house itself, “He used to sell Afim. I told him I would never take it and he threatened to kill me.”

Although there isn’t a separate law for Child trafficking for Bonded Labour, this is a crime under section 363, 371 and 374 of the IPC. It is also a crime under Bonded Labour Abolition Act 1976 and Juvenile Justice Act 2000. “Since all the victims belong to Schedule cast, the culprits are also liable to be punished under Prevention of Atrocities on SC/ST Act 1989,” says Satyarthi.

According to Human Rights Watch, at least 15 million children are working as virtual slaves. Agriculture accounts for 52 to 87 per cent of the population of bonded child labourers. They can also be in bondage working as domestic help; in the domestic, export industries (silk and silk saris, beedi, silver jewellry, synthetic and precious gemstones, footwear and sporting goods, and handwoven wool carpets); and in services like small restaurants, truck stops and tea shops.

Estimates of the number of child labourers in India vary from 60 million to 115 million. Other instances of children in forced labour are found in prostitution, begging, drug selling and petty crime. Trafficking of children is specifically reported from the carpet industry.

Bihar, a victim of trafficking for bonded labour in many parts of the country, continues to be victimised by ‘recruiting agents’ and middlemen all the way from the Andaman islands to the fields of Punjab.