Day 17 of 27 — Darkness and Spirit

July 7, 2021

 

My fatigue has peaked after Father Stan’s death and the response from the Central Government to criticism about it. They’ve kept it simple. All they say is, ‘The process of law was followed.’ 

 

There is more I want to say about this but I feel my roar becoming a bleat before my lungs can push it out into the world. My feelings whimper out and my body flattens like a balloon without air. I signed the petition demanding the laws that kept Stan Swamy and many others in jail without the glimmer of a trial be reviewed. The way the laws are being used to punish and frighten voices criticising the Centre be reviewed. The citizens of India deserve better. 

 

Many feel that the rot is too deep and don’t see the point in these petitions. Many sweep such things under their king sized beds, and ignore the elephant sized dust ball that sleeps with them each night. Many others won’t smell the shit rising around them and delight in the fragrance of the fading plastic rose.

 

I feel at war with my own country-people. These people say I am a BJP hater, a Modi hater. The BJP lost their innocence in my eyes when Advani divided the country over a non-existing temple in 1992. Modi became the bogey man in 2002 after the Gujarat genocide. And though he came back in 2014 cloaked in white sheep-wool, I smelt his blood lust. 

 

All this lot want is the cultural realignment of India into a Hindu state. Not interested in development or economics or employment or poverty or health or education. Just one thing. And power of course. Absolute corruptive power. 

 

I am repeating myself. I echo the tiredness of the activists I see on the shows I watch. I feel the haul has already been long and it is not near over. I have been engulfed in leaden sadness all day. The wily government is winning. They package everything repressive they do in a benign wrapping and with the help of their IT cells fool many. The emergency of Indira Gandhi was solid, material, very visible. The Government and its supporters keep posting articles about it. But activists who fought it say it was declared and so it could be combatted, this undeclared emergency is a darkness we can never emerge from. 

But then a friend sent me a poster on WhatsApp. The people of India are calling Stan Swamy’s death a legal assassination. They will switch their lights off between 8:00 and 8:05 pm. They will fight on.

 

And as I said some months ago — one day the Modi-Shah types will be dust in the earth. I too will be dust. But this spirit of life, of unwillingness to be suppressed will live on.