OLD MAN IN THE MOB SAID BHAG JA BETA
A third-theater play

Parnab Mukherjee

INTRODUCTION

C1: The characters of this play are not imaginary. Their names are real. We did not invent facts in the play to suit our dramatic convenience. These facts have been gathered by the playwright during his extensive travel amongst riot affected areas including Disa, Bhildi, Palanpur, Khedbrahma, Patan, Bhisnagar, Himmatnagar, Modasa, Kalol, Gandhinagar.

C2: Ahmedabad, Lunavada, Kheda, Surendranagar, Godhra, Nadiad, Limkhera, Bharuch, Ankleshwar, Surat, Bhavnagar, Rajkot, Jamnagar, Baroda and even Bhuj.

C3: It is lucky that the color of Gulf of Khambat isn’t red as yet. Blood red.

(Everybody moves saying “blood-red” and “red-blood”…alternatively)

C4: Our play isn’t a study of religion, politics, correlation or death. It is about a few children caught in the web of circumstances that refuse to die.

C5: And it lingers on. Even today as we do the play. Blood oozes drop by drop. I wash my hands in that blood. I brush my teeth in that blood. I take my bath in that blood.

C2: And I am drenched in that nothingness. In that reservoir sprouting red.

C3: So there we are 425-296.

C4: Now what’s that?

C1: Haroon Iqbal --is that.

C2: Farooq Kharadi --is that.

C3: Firoz Khan Pathan -- is that. And that is the margin but which POTO became POTA in the Indian parliament

C1: They are all residents of signal Falia.

C2: Asif Kader -- is that.

C3: Altaf Diwan -- is that.

C1: Naseer Pathan --is that.

C2: They are all residents of Vejalpur road.

C3: And then there is Hasan Khan Pathan of Dahod.

C1: All names mentioned stayed in Godhra.

Chorus: They have all been arrested under a beautiful little scheme called – Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance – lovingly called POTO. Of course now called POTA.

Chorus: The arrest was made by the Government Railway Police for the February 27th attack on the Sabarmati Express.

Chorus: And the best part is that all of them are below 16 years of age.

C1: My name is Hasan Khan Pathan. I am a class XII student in Dahod in the Panchmahal district, 150 km. away from Godhra. I came to meet my Uncle and Aunt on February 26th. In the morning of February 27th I was playing with some local friends including Firoz and Mustaq.

Chorus: Woodcutter cut my shadow from me. Free me from the torment of seeing myself without fruit. Why was I born among mirrors? The day walks in silence around me And the night copies me in all its stars I want to live without seeing myself And I will dream that ants and thistle burrs Are my leaves and my birds Woodcutter cut my shadow from me Free me from the torment of seeing myself without fruit.

C1: We all heard something going on near the railway track. We got scared and came inside. After a few hours the police came and picked me near Ali Masjid on charges of mass murder. My mother who is separated from my father Wahid khan could only meet me on March 6th.

Chorus: The SP of Western railway J.K Bhatt says: “Don’t accuse me of keeping minors in custody.” As of March 27th about 24 persons are still with us. You say they are minors – well they all have moustaches and beards.

Chorus: As if moustaches and beards were the only way of ascertaining their age.

C2: I am Sakina Bibi, mother of Firoz. Ladies and Gentleman, you may check Firoz’s school certificate. It shows the date of birth as July 16th 1986. On that day I went to meet my sister in Dahod. Firoz and my elder son Mustaq were at home, while Sikander my husband had gone out on his daily job of selling detergent door to door. Next evening I found out that Sikander and Firoz had been arrested and Mustaq had been missing. I am shattered. Torn. My world crumbles around me.

Chorus: Under Juvenile Justice act minorities below 16 years of age have to be sent to a Juvenile home and not to a police lock up.

C3: But then in India minors are judged only through their moustaches.

C1: The police does not listen because they don’t want to.

C3: Did you see my photograph in the newspaper?

C1: (surprised) Your photograph -- that’s ridiculous.

C2: (surprised) Your photograph --where when and why?

C3: I am Raja Bunde Bhai, the 11 year old boy who got 10 mins with National Human rights commission chairman Justice J.S Verma. The photographs of my meeting were published in newspapers all over the world.

C2: So what is the big deal?

C1: And what do we do? Bow to thy feet and then grovel in the dust?

C3: At Naroda-Patoya massacre I saw my mother and sister being killed. While hiding in shed like structure near the colony I and another woman watched several of my friends being stabbed and set ablaze. Some of their attackers entered the shed. One of them held me by the hair while a man shouted: “Chop his head off.”

C2: The others by then had killed the woman who was with them.

C1: It was then that an elderly person in the group said: “Bachhen ko marna nahi hain.” Even as others argued the elderly man stood to his stand and told the Raja -- a local ruffian to take it easy with the kids.

Chorus: Night of four moons and one lone tree. With one lone shadow and one lone bird I see my flesh the tracks of your lips The fountain kisses the wind without touch I carry the no that you gave me in the palm of my hand Like a lemon of wax almost white Night of four moons and one lone tree.

C3: Bhag ja beta. And I started running. I started running across countries and continents as time stood still. My head whirled because images kept floating back of my mother and sister being stabbed and then doused in kerosene.

C2: I know who they are. How the Gopinath and the Gangotri society. I remember that man who was holding a thick chain in his hand and hit me on my chest and abdomen. From various shades and shanties I have watched more people being killed than I even counted in the Amar Chitra Katha comics issue on Kalinga war.

C3: I finally managed to sneak in to the State Reserve Police post and stayed there for three days. Finally my sister located me and I was shifted to the Shah Alam camp.

C1: I am traumatized to the point of being defiant. My only problem is that I cannot help looking at that color red. It seems that the color seems to be oozing out from every street. From every cranny. From every nook. From every corner.

C3: And rumors too keep on flying thick and fast. How wounds and wombs were cut open to make incisions.

C2: Have you heard of Ivan Illyich?

C3: Who that nonconformist educationist who wrote the books Detooling Society and Deschooling Society?

C1: That brilliant man with a broad furrowed forehead , smoldering eyes, and surprisingly low and unassertive voice.

C2: When invited to India by our then Prime minister Indira Gandhi -- he refused to come because he had a deep prejudice against India.

C3: The reason for the prejudice, asked Mrs Gandhi.

C1: Later when he finally came to India, he explained that the initial rejection was stemmed from the fact that India got Gandhiji cheap without deserving him.

C2: In his view our concept of non-violence is very muddled. We apply it in dozens but the ultimate goal of the entire country turning towards nonviolence is very slender.

C1: To most of us Gandhiji has become a reminder of what we could have developed into an individual and as a nation if only tried hard enough.

C3: Sabarmati is a short river writes H.Y.Sharda Prasad. It is full only during the monsoon season. Sometimes it even jumps from banks for most of the years. It is a sandy stretch. The river seems to sulk like a neglected undeterred child.

Chorus: The night does not wish to come so that you cannot come and I cannot go but I will go though a scorpion sun should eat my temple and you will come with your tongue burnt by the salt rain. The day does not wish to come so that you cannot come and I cannot go.

C1: Gandhiji lived in the ashram for about 12 years until he set out on the Dandi march taking a vow that he would only return after the country has become free. In fact, he did not set his foot again in Sabarmati.

C2: Why should he? Would he ever realize that one of the most disturbed areas during the Ahmedabad mayhem was Bapunagar.

C3: Or maybe he would have known that the blood trail will take so many different hues and change its course so much that the sands in the Sabarmati whiff aglow with blood printed saris, pachedis, sheets in russet red, earth brown and mango green will one day show trickles of a rare human commodity blood.

C1: A decade ago, Anthropological survey of India estimated that there were 4599 communities in India with as many as 325 languages dialects in 12 distinct languages and nearly 24 scripts.

C2: In his shorter constitution of India Durga Das Basu argued that the insertion of the word secular to our constitution was productive of more mischief than benefit. In our hurry to draft a picture perfect document the founding fathers of our constitution made a passing reference of the word in the article 25(2a) when it was bequeathed to the country.

C3: Yet what happened in Gujarat is frightening to the estimate of the mob size in the FIR’s total some 12 lakh citizens performed in orgy of destruction and terror.

C1: Worse small but significant Xerox copy of these riots that were unpublished took place in Kaithal and Loharu in Haryana.

C2: So there we are with memories: tattered, fragmented, torn. Ayub Qureshi a laborer seeing his son Sihel and daughter Farnez being torched, said: “It was a dance of death it will haunt us forever.”

C3: Fahia Nasia, wife of Ehsaan Jafri a former MP living in Ahmedabad Gulbarg society in Chamanpura district is not seething with anger. She barely appeals for that magic word to be turned into an act: restraint.

C1: Perverse death. Macabre life. Vengeful spaces. Lunavada Navoda patil. Afsaan a 12 year old whose bruising body made the cover of India today.

C3: Diabolic designs. Fires at S6 and S7.

Chorus: But I will go yielding to the toads of my chewed carnation And you will come through the muddy sewers of darkness Neither night nor day wishes to come so that I may die for you and you may die for me.

C1: Homeless justice Akbar Divecha. Bodies recovered from Hns inn and Tasty hotel. Natraj hotel. Helplessness at Ansar Nagar. Jadphia’s constituency. APJ Abdul Kalam’s conducted trip that cannot heal. Haridar Nagar. And Godhra the town which saw riots in 1947 1952 1959 1961 1967 1972 1974 1980 1989 1990 1992 and that stupid Subba Rao report. And that “joker” described so aptly by election commissioner Lyngdoh.

C2: My red mountain is empty. They have broken the Bamiyan. My mind reminds of British politician Michael Foot’s quote, Men of power do not have the time to read yet the men who do not read are unfit for power.

Chorus: You were frightened of being overpowered By goodness, goodness which you deny You were afraid of losing your identity You were afraid of losing your authority Of your own permanence Permanance which is perishable

C3: A pattern showed in the behavior of the mobs. Beside ethnic cleansing there’s a clear evidence of economic cleansing. Gas cylinders were used to blow up establishment and mechanical devices for cutting electrical connections.

C2: Mumtaz Banu and Munna Salim Sheikh were lynched at Vejalpur. At Himmatnagar mob setting fire to Takiawala. As reports came in 1679 houses, 1965 shops, 21 godowns, 204 shops and 76 shrines were damaged looted burnt and raged. And these are just the semi-official list. Kalupur, Shahpur, Dariapur, Karanj Dani Limbata, Vejalpur and oh yes Kazipur. Silence at Baqar Shas Ki Rauza, Jeevraj park . Thank god Jahanpura survives with all others. But now they are building a semi-fortress around it.

C2: Don’t we already have National Security Act, The Armed forces Act, Special Powers Act, The Disturbed Area Act, The Special Courts Act, The Unlawful Activities Prevention Act to have a POTA. Justice V.K Krishna Iyer has a wonderful observation. He had said POTO reminds us of a similar name: Pol Pot.

C1: How can we talk of industrial resurgence when the entire CG road has been reduced to a rubble . When all that is seen in the Mehemenmad Tabuh is bodies charred beyond recognition bodies in the posh Law Garden is now a picture of ruins.

C2: The story is the same for Vadodara.(characters start intersecting one another, start creating myriad patterns with their body, the movement gets more faster becomes more furious.)

Chorus: You destroyed my physical being You blasted the rock, the cave Commemorating a long lost faith It was an act of mad amorous adventure To reach me to some personal destiny

(C1, C2 and C3 utter barely comprehensible words): Roshannagar, Sanjay Nagar, Jadphia’s constituency, Swati Market, JS Bandukwala, Pandya’s resignation, Modasa, Ahilasha, graveyard, Navodaya Vidyalayas, Ramlalki chali, Khedbrahma, Sindhi Muslims, 50,000 makeshift camps. Habib Tanveer’s Bagh.

C3: Wipe out of an entire generation.

C1: And in the end there’s the three of us.

C2: Looking at you face to face.

C3: Grappling with frozen pain. Logistics of the lumpens or even being gratefully dead.

C1: Have you heard of Khalil Gibran?

C2: Yes of course the man who wrote parables with a subtext. But I feel he is a better painter.

C3: Lets all recite his poem MADMAN.

Chorus: You ask me how I became a madman. It happened thus. One day before many gods were born I woke up from my sleep and found that all my masks were stolen. The 7 seven masks I have fashioned and wore in 7 lives. I ran maskless through the streets shouting thieves, thieves the cursed thieves. Men and women laughed at me – and some even ran to their houses in fear of me – and when I reached the marketplace a youth on house top cried He is a Madman. I looked up to behold him. The sun kissed me own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for the sun – and I wanted my masks no more. And as if in a trance I cried Blessed blessed are the thieves who stole my masks . Thus I became a madman. And I found both my freedom and safety in my madness. The freedom from loneliness and the safety from being understood. Because those who understand us enslave something in us. But let me not be too proud of my safety. Even a thief in jail is safe from another thief.

C1: Hence we run.

C2: We keep on running.

C3: They are chasing us.

C1: Images.

C2: Conjure.

C3: Drip………..Drip………Dripping

(As the running gets faster)

C1: The voices in my head .

C2: The voices in my head.

C3: Keeps on saying Bhag ja Beta.

C2: Bhag ja beta.

C1: bhag.

C2: bhag.

C3: bhag.

(laughs hysterically)

C1: bhag.

C2: bhag.

C3: (screams) bhag ja beta.

They face the audience and the Chorus now says: But I Am still there . . . with my imperishable grace In the hollow of that cave As my divine personages always did It is only a metamorphosis That of a cosmic spirit from stone to sand Me, the Buddha, formless, but a form

They again start running and keep saying bhag ja, bhag ja beta . . . they’ll either kill you or force an election . . . bhag ja, bhag ja beta. Gaurav Yatra is coming. Bhag Ja Beta. Bhag. Bhag.

THE END

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