There’s a certain comforting harmony in the very little bits and pieces of everyday existence that is so inherent, I’d be hard pressed to take notice at all. But harmony assuring as it might be also has that undeniable monotony to it. Discord is intrusive, but perhaps it has a rhythm of its own. How else could I hope to find happiness in life? A life that has become so exhaustively banal, I’m looking for joy in half baked arguments and discarded movie tickets.

Laugh at the silliness of it, at the echoingly empty grandness I call progress. It’s not a growing diffidence you’d associate with my achievements; it’s just that clichéd jolt of realization that we won’t be aching to claw out each others eyes anymore. It goes without saying that you will always be the bully, loud and obnoxious. But I shall miss the ringing in my ears long after you’ve stopped shouting. Because it’s different. When you raise your voice, I’d still hear it over the din.

I’ll learn to pick out the right clothes, do up my eyes the fancy way and turn on the charm like you taught me to. I’d keep a smart tongue and sparkly teeth. But when I get back home, take off my heels and rub my sore toes, I’ll learn to keep the blabbering to myself. Perhaps I’d be half tempted to make a call, but then I’ll count the hours, gauge and sigh. I’ll stoically put my story aside and go to bed. I’ll learn to untangle our togetherness, I’ll learn to grow up.

I THOUGHT I was not alone, walking here by the shore,

But the one I thought was with me, as now I walk by the shore,

As I lean and look through the glimmering light-that one has utterly disappeared,

And those appear that perplex me

-Walt Whitman

Traitor

The human mind is an ever-baffling source of wonder. It’s like a bright riddle, apparently simple and colorful, but the deeper you dig, the murkier it gets. The labyrinth of thoughts that snake through the many layered human intellect are those expert tools, clicking away methodically and efficiently to deliver the right choices. Of course the machine is not perfect, it’s only human after all. So often, there are distractions. The magnitude of their infection varies, but their purpose never sways. They gnaw at our healthy forest of thoughts, threatening to influence our outlook and perspective. They make martyrs out of some, monsters among others. Monstrosity in itself is not entirely an absolute concept. But human laws have their own ways of recognizing and weeding out the canker that infests our race. The hitch is, although our system is competent in its endeavors, it fails to acknowledge the basic crimes of human nature that are in fact worthy of the most severe retribution.
Trust is not merely the matrix of all human networks, it’s the fuel that drives our decisions, fosters hope and keeps us rolling. And by hope, I mean that light at the end of the tunnel. It is clichéd in it’s brightness, but nevertheless the magic is hard to ignore. Hope has so many surfaces, so many ragged edges and blunt ends, its true significance is now just a wisp of vapor, hard to define, yet conspicuous in it’s paling shimmer. It infuses into the very foundations of human action, making it our one indispensable necessity. So anything that induces a crack in our perfect pristine existence is certainly not welcome. Because one crack will beckon other fractures and the only noise audible will be our voice, looking among the many broken splinters for something we had lost long ago. And trust that’s lost will take a lot more than time to return. Initially it will cost us our dreams. Gradually it feeds upon our peace. Finally it will tear down the sense of security that has sheltered us so loyally. It’s a meticulously slow process, and it spans an entire lifetime of happiness.
In the meantime, the fire that started it all and caused our life to go up in smoke will move on to greener pastures. We’ll be too shocked by the betrayal, too bruised and battered by all the deception to run after the deserter. Inner torment is inconsequential in the justice system. It will fail to see the blood because we’ve bled inside. No blood spilt. No charges pressed. The killer goes scott free.

Cambodia : Phnom Penh

…when the plane was busy making a dusty bumpy landing on the tarmac, I could see stretches of green fields punctuated by little clapboard house roofs here and there. And then the potted green colour of plants in the cool airport waiting room, not a leaf out of place. Looking at the polished doorknobs, the immaculate lapels, the synthetic brightness of the flat television screens and dollars being flung on every counter, it was hard to believe that this country had faced the largest proportional genocide just 30 years back. Through the haze of immigration complications, I could make out the starched uniforms, the practised smiles. Yet the eyes held a different story for every Cambodian we came across. In a regime that had wiped out a third of the nation, every person had a history of loss, a new tale of agony that was to stay forever.

But Phnom Penh the capital, had in no way stayed behind. Youngsters perched on motorbikes whizzing through the night breeze along the riverside; night clubs and flashy food joints crowding every street corner; and that “ happy” life to tempt those with the green bills. The rest were also there. Not hidden away, just overlooked. Outside the museum, selling Lonely Planet copies, or playing with apple peels on the pavement, showing me the way to my car. It was a sickeningly simple social ladder. Two rungs. The highest, lost in clouds and the lowest, left to grapple in the mud. A gaping void in between.

Yet, the air hangs heavy with a new scent as one approaches The Killing Fields. Even the grass is a different green here, a green lost in the dark ditches that lie scattered all around. Sometimes the stories are engraved in blunt words for tourists to read and sometimes the wind’s feel on your skin reminds you. The ditches have coughed up thousands of skulls that now adorn the shelves of the memorial. A mound of clothes have been dumped on the first level belonging to all the corpses that were recovered. A wooden post says: “ Clothes were cleaned with deodorants in 1988”. And above it, rows and rows of yellowed bone, the teeth still glued, the jaws still fixed, the gashes on the cranium bearing testimony to Pol Pot’s famous words: “Don’t waste bullets”. Bludgeoned on the head and buried unconscious.

The ideology of Pol Pot (head of the Party of Democratic Campuchia also known as the Khmer Communist Party) which later defined all Khmer Rouge activities in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979 was based on a radical form of agrarian communism. So the country needed cleansing of those who didn’t till their land. All but farmers were methodically executed, the figures rising to 7.5 million (1975). The driving motto was “ To keep you is no benefit, to destroy you is no loss”. Execution and burial of thousands took place at “The Killing Fields”, victims being transported from the prison “Tuol Sleng”, which has become another popular tourist attraction in Cambodia.

Orginally a school building, the black boards at Tuol Sleng have heard more than history lessons. The blood has long since been washed away, the stench removed, the bits and pieces of flesh and skin mopped out, yet the rusted iron shackles peek from the brick torture cells, the sunlight fails to illuminate the metallic beds, the enamel plates, the cuffs and ropes, and the large photographs screaming at you from every room at Tuol Sleng. Black and white shots of burnt corpses lying on the same beds.
The dust on the huge makeshift gallows looks down upon the immersion pots below. Now empty. Yet when I stand so close to them, the camera clicks and buzz of tourists wane. I can hear the water gushing out as prisoners were immersed, hanging upside down from the gallows.
And then the faces. Apprehensive, frowning, angry, surprised, smiling, wary, expressionless. Hundreds of mug shots looking straight at me, the prisoner numbers pinned on their shirts. Some didn’t have shirts, so the paper was pinned on the skin. The twinkle in each eye veiled, the tears frozen, the gaze steady.
I look away. Outside. Where the chirp of sparrows flitting in and out of the windows have dampened the cry of prisoners, where the scent of blossoms wafting up from below the gallows have replaced the odour of singed skin and where the menacing barbed wire and the stained prison walls look up to the cheery blue sky above…bringing promises of a new chapter.

The memorial at The Killing Fields

Mass grave: The Killings Fields

Skulls of victims on display

Clothes of corpses excavated

Photographs by Tirtharaj Paul

dekhite giyechhi parbotmala
dekhite giyechhi sindhu
dekha hoy nai chokhkhu melia
ghor hote shudhu dui-pa phelia
ekti dhaner shisher opor
ekti shishir bindu.


This October, Cambodia. And yet I wonder.

To DP

New Market in all it’s glory. Cheap trinkets bought and shared. The Sudder street detour. The flavoured biryani.
Someplace else. Empty couches and clean ashtrays. Green Apple vodka and the Wednesday afternoon high.
Honours Lab. Tiffin and a very angry DS. Little snippets of gossip and forgotten lab coats. An even angrier DS.
Moidan metro station and the corn. Missed trains and shopping advice.
Lebu cha and classics. Rai annoyed (you too).

That comforting stretch of grass. A not so normal evening.
And that strange wind which plays with us so often.
To us. And the rest who have felt this wind.

My magic hole

The last post was so sordid and depressing, I was determined to write something bright and cheerful, to make up for all that grouchy complaining. So I thought about the first thing that elevates my mood : movies.
I am not exactly an exception here; I guess everyone enjoys escaping into a different world, if only for a few hours. Then, it doesn’t matter if I have a pile of papers to work on or a house to clean or a garden to mow or an angry neighbour to confront, because for those few hours, I’m sucked into that vortex of fantasies so different from my world. The one’s on screen become part of me and I cry with them, laugh with them, join them in prayer, wait for miracles to spout even in the most impossible situations. And then suddenly the lights are back. I realize people shifting in their seats around me, a growing buzz of conversation and my fingers sticky from the leftover butter of an empty popcorn bucket.
Till my secondary boards, this was more or less my idea about cinema on the whole. My route of escape, three hours of unadulterated fun.
I guess I was born under a lucky star, because one afternoon, one very special afternoon, changed my life forever. Thanks to someone very generous I had been enrolled at a film appreciation course organized by Seagull Media and Arts Research Centre. I was quite eager, wanting to utilize my post exam holidays to the hilt. The course was illuminating, with regular classes pushing us further into the world of films, meandering into the technicalities of film making and all the sweat that goes into it. I was duly impressed, absorbing everything, thirsty for more, an ideal student. And then the magic afternoon happened.
One day, after the lesson was over, our teacher showed the class a movie. He said it was an old french gangster movie. I wasn’t exactly excited, because it didn’t sound very engaging to me. The name of the movie was “Breathless”. It had been made by Jean Luc Godard. I had never heard of the person or the movie. The movie started. I remember feeling different. And I remember wanting to watch the movie again. And again. I couldn’t follow half the movie. But I knew something was unusual. Somewhere, my preconceived notions about cinema were changing. I had never known that a mere movie could make me feel like this. It was more than a film, much more. Then I came to know that “Breathless” was just one. I couldn’t wait for the others. In the next month I saw “Battleship Potemkin” by Sergei Eisenstein, “Stagecoach” by John Ford, “Citizen Kane” by Orson Welles. Each one was different. All were amazing. I was like a kid who had been gifted a free lifetime access to the candy store. Cinema became this new craze for me. I recall my mother commenting one day, that this new passion for movies would soon wane; this was just a passing phase. Strangely enough, it has been almost four years and I’m still going through that “phase”, as my mother put it.

At the end of the day, every single one of us need that one little corner to ourselves where we can wash away the troubles that plague us throughout day. That’s the fuel which drives us the next day and all other days to come. For some it’s playing video games, for some it’s reading story books, for some it’s cooking, for some it’s collecting stamps or orchids and for some, it’s movies. It’s our very own magic hole.