Long back I wrote an article on why I write. You can read it here. So, why am I writing an addendum to this? Because last night, while chatting with a dear friend, I was asked whether I plan to leave, and I said, ‘I am not leaving. I am staying. And fighting. I am privileged by birth. Born in a Hindu Brahmin family with academic/author roots. Two generations in the forces. Educated. Comfortable. If I do not join the resistance, I will be doing a great disservice to my own (and my descendants’) self-respect.’
So, apart from the reasons I gave for why I write in my previous post, let me add another:
I write because if (this is looking more and more like a ‘when’ now, but that isn’t the point of this post) everything goes to shit and we all end up killing each other and then destroying everything our ancestors built painstakingly over the past 92 years (since 26 January 1930 when we demanded ‘Poorna Swaraj’ and the sovereign right to govern ourselves), and historians are sifting through the ashes to find if, during the last days, anybody was standing up for humanity, if there was soundness of mind and clarity of thought present at all in whatever small pockets, and whether anyone saw this coming or were we all caught by surprise and did not realise that we had gone collectively insane and psychotically suicidal, they find my writing as part of the small group of people who, Cassandra-like, went to their inevitable end, not silently, but screaming bloody murder and resisting with their entire might, even if it was limited by the sole ability they possessed: writing.
As an eminent journalist said in his acceptance speech for the Magsaysay Award:
‘Not all battles are fought for victory – some are fought to tell the world that someone was there on the battlefield.’
Remember, I was there. Even if I, and everyone like me, know that it is a losing battle.
Dharmveer Bharati expressed it most beautifully:
तलवार टूटी अश्व घायल
कोहरे डूबी दिशाएं
कौन दुश्मन, कौन अपने लोग, सब कुछ धुंध धूमिल
किन्तु कायम युद्ध का संकल्प है अपना अभी भी
…क्योंकि सपना है अभी भी!
