Plaintive Echoes

By David Buhril

The unwanted tense in Moreh is not only a return to the state of nature. It is also a gullible celebration of the state of nature that we have been nursing fervently. The nurse needs a bad nursing. That is when the bruise got bigger with an insatiable vacuum that thirsts for all that we barely have. Be it the brief visible life. Be it the unseen breathe. Be it the fluctuating pulse. Or the thin and brittle surface of the lurking peace that hide as we continue to seek. Much before we could ask if it would be worth quenching them, it tolls on us. We bled with tears and blood. Bled the little corners and incites them further in the name of blood. And in the name of narrow and dirty bloodlines. The more we bled, the more we become blinded. We plant olive between thick walls. Too thick that we cannot see them grow. Too thick that we never knew it was planted. Too thick for the plant to grow big. Just too thick. Never knowing that when it grows big the shade would be for everyone’s bliss. If the bliss were not what we are seeking for, it would still deliver us salvation. Salvation, not only of some sort, but all sorts. If even salvation were not the quest, then it would be at least for peace.

Communal killings. Shoot -at-sight orders. Curfew. Protest. Charged expression follows. They seem to have been necessary staple in our everyday lives. Unfortunately. Evidence that our peace lies in shallow drying puddles. Looking murkier than ever as blood-hawk multiplies. When will the multiplying small arms be silent for peace? The celebration of the unfortunate discovery drives peace away. The vain celebration. But the dove fly so high that it is hardly visible. Never visible anywhere. In desperation, mortals confessed to be leaders laid tables. Round, square, oval and blunt tables were laid to broker peace. They negotiated and doctored to fit the fragile quest. Communally fuelled and clogged air pollutes the dove’s flight. Peace rains no more. It drained with a toll on precious irreparable lives. Innocents were sacrificed willy-nilly. They die in their blooming youth. Warm tears shed when peace dries up. When will we see the last drop of tears and blood in our stricken vales and hills? The looming sophisticated negative accessories that are exported dwarfed us all in the absence of peace. We become elf-like. Unnecessary make up clothed us with insecurity. Reducing the men and women we are. Reducing the human in us. How shall we rescue our traumatised psyche from the spiral that numbed us? We need peace, not merely to relief the evident vacuum, but to cease our communally ignited mindset. We need peace to revive our society, education, economy, culture, and history. We need peace to revive our progress, hope and aspirations as a people. Peace, which is absent, is suppose to be our biggest resource. Otherwise, if this persists, we will be wavering in bleaker pursuit of more bloody battles. The winner will not occupy the land. Misery will. Poverty will. Unemployment will. War hawks will. Incompensable battles resulting in losers multiply. The winner seems to be an eluding myth. Who will win when there is bloodshed? Who will win when tears overflow? Who would dare say, “I am the winner”, after killing his own brother? Our moral climate is deteriorating. Is this an effect of global-warming, taxing not only on our climate but other resources too? If not, then this is man made too. Our made. Have we patented it to squeeze ourselves dry?

The Leviathan has mastered to distance itself. Today it is concerned with making its shoe size bigger than before. No matter even if its head and feet did not fit into. The thirst fits everywhere. Their game is limited to the belief that size does matter. That is our government? Our problems have blown out to become untouchable for them. Law is never in order. The order never reaches anywhere. We are compelled to choose with nothing much, but to adjust ourselves to the blown-out cases, which has become ours. Meanwhile, like small-uncelebrated gods, politicians continue to scuffle for power. The thirst for portfolios is bigger than that of peace. Power has become a means and an end in itself for the holders. When will it reflect in work, responsibilities, obligations, truth, justice, fairness, welfare, progress, development and all that is miserably missing? A begging government dependent on people’s vote but independent in all it’s functioning. What about its role and responsibility? What about its obligation? Does it have any credibility and integrity as a government? Does it ever realise that it is directly as well as indirectly responsible for the present tense in Chandel’s Moreh as well as all the other stale mess that we are compelled to live with.

We have been accommodating failures and blunders. We have mastered the art and craft of it too. Accommodating them to the extent of surrendering our suffrage for no good at all. Accommodating them with our silence. Accommodating them with our bruised reason. Accommodating with our ignorance. Worse, never questioning the corrigible. It would be good to be reminded that the power to change lie within us. Otherwise, does this democracy, if there is, have any space left for us to make decisions. Old bottles with the spirit of new wine have left us with a clogged space. Degeneration speeds up under the nose of grey corrupted hair. Their supposed power is a mite. Their supposed might is a myth. And their promise limps with all the bruises that would, if we still allow, gnaw into our own generations to ruin. Shall we continue to allow?

The State has resembled a labour room that fails to deliver. It rang with frantic expressions. Of pain and desperation. Of anger and restlessness. Of shock. Of the misery of sin. They have become a normal routine though. The vices are masked in a hood. They hold the sinful power and the gory glory. What we beget is in the hole. The barrel. Justice in the barrel. Peace in the barrel. Power in the barrel. Freedom in the barrel. Democracy in the barrel. Expressions and suffrage in the barrel. The past and present numbed in the barrel. The only question is, will the future remain in the barrel? Our might bowled and bowed in the barrel. Our strength freezes in the barrel. Generations infested in the barrel. Generations invested in the barrel. All actors resorted to the barrel. State actors as well as non-state actors too. The barrel State. When empowerment is through the barrel, it draws bloody lines. It draws communal lines. Ethnic lines. What not? It draws all unwanted lines by erasing peace and the desire for it. The residue is a plaintive note that echoes over the hills and vale.