Agartala, Tripura

I am standing in the middle of an amusement park. There is no one else around, except the workers who operate the rides. It is 35 degrees Celsius in the shade. I am melting in my linen kurta and gently burning in the sun. The carousel is silent; the horses look like candied wax, silently staring down at their suspended hooves. On the sound system an unfortunate song blares.

No no no no
NO no no no
No- na no no no no
No no no no
No no no no
No no
NO ENTRY!

Who is the veritable Einstein who thought that up? It seemed to have worked. No one was there. Except me, the melting visitor.

ROSE VALLEY! The sign had said.

I sneer!

Where the fuck are the bloody roses? They’re burning in the sun like my sanity and patience.

I paid a dollar to get in. Outside the amusement park in the little casbah people no doubt lived on a dollar a day or even lesser, even as a big billboard proclaims Tripura Rising.

I am so bloody sick of these empty promises.

INDIA SHINING

TRIPURA RISING

JAI HO

Give me a frackin’ break!

The local Congress MLA is contesting Lok Sabha elections so he can make some money off the AICC. He gets 70-80 lakhs for his constituency. He will lose the election, but he can still make some money. The commies keep winning. Hurrah!

I have been told not to venture into the interiors. Meningitis and militants can kill me. I am not too keen on going to the interiors anyhow. I know what its like to drive where there are no roads. Its not pleasant and your lungs exchange places with your kidneys. NO no, I am assured. The roads are there. Maybe 16 villages don’t have road connectivity or electricity. I am pleased to hear this. The commies are doing SOMETHING right, even if it is the obsession to get people from point A to point B and giving them the ability to reflect on their own poverty in the glow of a naked bulb. So if you have meningitis you can’t blame the government for killing you. They gave you a road right? Get on it and get to a hospital!

I am somehow reminded of the Potato Eaters.

My heart bleeds a bit!

The sun is killing me now. I can feel beads of sweat trickle under my kurta, down my spine. It is beginning to cling to me. The FabIndia label digs into my neck. I have wrapped the strap of my Nikon around my wrist, so I don’t drop it. If it falls, the marriage is certainly over. I begin clicking. The workers wonder if I will actually take a ride. I will not. I smile at them and wave. They are a bit stunned. Not many women wave at them I guess. I am just being nice. Appreciating them for doing a thankless job.

In India we don’t thank the hired help. It is one way of asserting superiority over them. Make them feel like scum, so you can escape feeling like scum. I’m nice. I thank everyone. I don’t feel like scum. I feel like me.

We’re a very scummy country. And when we get tired of the “u”, we turn into a very scammy country. We love mixing our vowels and moving our bowels.

I return to my vehicle. I reflect as the uniformed driver drives me away from my amusement park experience. CHECK!

How was it madam?

Nice. Very nice.

I am a bloody born liar and actress.

The unsettling feeling returns. My lips curl of their own accord and settle again in a sneer.

Amidst indicators that at some point resemble those from sub-Saharan Africa, someone clever thought people needed to amuse themselves. That’s not such a bad idea I muse. Give them an amusement park, in the middle of nowhere, charge a dollar to get in and hope someone makes some money. Amusement parks encourage family time, and after all, is not the foundation of a stable state rooted in a holistic concept of family, the basic unit of society. Aristotle anyone?

We race to the Indo-Bangla border.

Ten minutes later we are there. The uniformed driver tells me to wait. He runs up to a couple of other uniformed BSF men and nods his head in my direction. I observe from behind my sunglasses. After a few brief words. The three men walk up to me. One opens the door.

Good afternoon madam.

Can I take my camera with me, sahib.

I do not ask. This is a command. I know it will be respected.

Yes madam, of course, please come with us.

They escort me to Bangladesh and back, weapons dangling carelessly. There is some bonhomie between nations after all. The sahib (non-commissioned officers need to be called sahibs, my dad had said, you cannot reduce them to bhaiyyas or sahayaks, titles reserved for normal jawans. I am good at reading ranks.)

Madam where are you from?

Delhi.

What job do you do?

Journalist.

Explaining researcher, Ph.D candidate is difficult. I point at the heavy-duty Nikon as I say journalist. They are satisfied.

I take pictures of the zero line, Bangladesh (looks the same as India) and a border village that straddles the two countries. No Mans Land is a narrow strip of green territory. They cannot broaden it because it reduces arable farmland for both sides. I am done with the border in ten minutes.

I return to the BSF camp, peel of my sticky clothing and turn on the air-conditioning. I wait to die. It doesn’t happen.

If I meet another pot-bellied neta who is sugary sweet, but who gets so incensed with my line of questioning about the opposition that he starts dictating what I should write down in my little notebook, snitching and bitching about the ruling party, I will bludgeon him to death.

Something about pot-bellied men and women when there is so much rampant starvation in India bothers me. But I understand. We live in a country where the poor want to look like the pot-bellied rich, and the pot-bellied rich (especially the women) want to look as emaciated as the poor.

Makes complete sense!

I meet a group of journalists. Their office is tiny with worn out and threadbare carpeting.

Good afternoon. I am V.S.S.

I fold my hands in a Namaste. I never extend my hand, don’t know how men will react to women wanting to shake hands. Journo 1 extends his hand. I take it delicately.

Please sit.

*I intend to, brother*

I introduce myself, give him my visiting card and explain what the hell has brought me here. There are a few men sitting on terminals. I see them trying to listen and watch without so much as turning. One man appears from an inside room and smiling takes my card into the other room.

Eat your heart out buster.

I suddenly wish I could speak Bengali. I am missing some humorous subtext of which I am most certainly the subject.

I am suddenly threatened. I stop smiling. I will not let people make sport of me. My game face comes on. The serious one- when I don’t blink, or move a muscle. When my nostrils flare a little bit, but only because I only want to show the right bit of emotion. And aggression. I have decided I need to be aggressive here, these guys have decided not to take me seriously. I meet Journo 1’s eyes and don’t look away. I pretend the room has dissolved around me.

I keep talking. Journo 1 starts listening. Finally, I have his attention. He throws something about Anthony Smith. I have read the book. I throw a critique of the book back at him. I bloody taught nations and nationalism. Journo 1 and me have an understanding now. I know what I am talking about, and I muse he is not a complete idiot. We start chatting a little more amicably.

I don’t blink or take my eyes off his face… for about an hour.

He gets uncomfortable.

I get tea.

He lights up, then remembers he should ask me if I mind him smoking.

I shake my head.

*Not my funeral, Journo 1.*

I hate people smoking in windowless rooms. I hate my hair smelling of cigarette smoke. That’s my biggest grouse against smoking. I hate the way my hair smells when someone blows ciggy-smoke into it.

I have shampooed my hair that morning.

SHIT! I will be shampooing like mad again.

Journo 2 walks in.

He is jovial and cordial, but also prepared to be non-serious. He is older than me. I stand up, and take his extended hand.

I am not going to waste my time anymore. I begin talking. He asks me for a poll prediction. I give him one as detailed as I can. Someone from one of the terminals turns and smirks.

The game face is still on.

My analysis is based on CSDS predictions. Yogendra Yadav zindabad.

I think of Seinfeld and “SERENITY NOW” to calm down.

I imagine everyone naked. A smile appears and disappears faintly around the corners of my mouth.

I like Journo 2 a little more readily. He begins lecturing on the militants in the state.

Save your breath, I have known about the NLFT for a very long time. How? Well, they tried to kill my uncle twice. I heard about this even before I knew I was going to work on the northeast. They blew up his cavalcade many years ago. They hit his ambassador car, misfired and the projectile hit a wheel. The car flew up into the air, tumbled several times and fell on the ground burning. He is my mom’s brother. He survived. His reinforced and bulletproofed ambassador had somehow protected him. The bonnet and the windshield, he said, had fused together. He lost a few men that day.

That was the first time a state called Tripura had become relevant for me.

He swears by ambassador cars and was very certain that when I went to Agartala I would not stay in a civilian area by myself. I understand his concern and I respect it.

Two days ago I spent an entire day reading confessions of NLFT militants. I was left alone in the room with two huge folders full of neat, typed up reports. I now know motivations, names, training camps, points of exit and entry. I could not take notes, scan, and copy or do anything else. I only read. Like an exciting spy novel. Except these are real 18 -25 year olds, with real names, real families and real lives. They are weak, affected youth with no jobs. I am sorry for them. Some of them are married. Others are just running away from something. But their lives are al here in these typed up reports. Who they know, whether they have a preference for ‘ladies’, what they wear, what they were caught with, names of their families, friends and associates.

These are people – starving, suppurating, severed from land, socially dislocated, straying, and dealing with meningitis in some pockets, surviving on limited means and still standing.

Yes, Mr. Sarkar, we surely need another amusement park here to take their minds off their own individually tragic lives.

I am somehow reminded of the song Naxalite, by the Asian Dub Foundation...

Brothers and sisters of the soul unite
We are one, indivisible and strong
They may try to break us
But they dare not underestimate us
They know our memories are long
A mass of sleeping villages
That's how they're pitching it
At least that's what they try to pretend
But check out our history
So rich and revolutionary
A prophecy
That we will rise again!

Like springing tigers
We encircle the cities
To the future we will take an oath
High up in the mountains
Deep in the forest
Our home is the undergrowth.

And we must never give up
Until the land is ours
No never give in
'Til we have taken the power.

Because, I am just a Naxalite Warrior
Fighting for survival and Equality
Policeman beating up me, my brother and my father
My mother crying 'can't believe this reality'

Iron like a lion from Zion
This one going out to all youth, man and woman
Original Master 'D' 'pon the microphone stand
Cater for no sceptical man me don't give a damn!

'Cos me a Naxalite Warrior.....

Naxalite warriors sitting in the comfort of London, right ADF? All this sounds great on a full stomach and a full wallet. Reality is different, it is not color-saturated and packaged for consumption. It just IS... and I am here visiting it, brushing with it, making it a part of me and dying of grief a little bit everyday.

So say we all!