Bring on the Puja, but keep the guilt pangs alive in your heart

It’s nice to touch base on this personal space after more than a year. The blog had remained idle largely due to other commitments – but to be honest – often due to plain laziness to open the laptop to churn out more words beyond the call of the profession.

  Finally, on the stroke of Durga Puja, I decided it was about time. As the debate of Pujo or Utsav gains steam in the backdrop of R.G. Kar horror, which will be two months old by the time by the festivities are upon us, the cliché of ‘life must go on’ is being thrust upon us. As the sun becomes mellow, crowd surges to catch up on Puja shopping and the pandal workers work overtime to execute the organisers’ vision – we are almost on the verge of giving in.

 There is, perhaps, a lurking sense of guilt somewhere in most of us – and I consider it to be a good sign. For a change, I almost feel that the timing of our greatest festival is not right this year. The other day, an educator who has become a popular face in TV talk shows ever since her motivating speech to girls of her school went viral in the early days of the protests, summed it aptly at a convention of the junior doctors. Bhalo thakben na, (don’t stay well), was her message as the pursuit of justice for Tilottama is far from over.

 Will there be justice at the end of the day?As someonewho has been there and done that in life, the mind is almost conditioned to believe that this too shall pass – but then something in me says it may not be that easy this time. The hi octance lines of We want justice, we demand justice; Bangal-ghoti ek swar, justice for RG Kar,  Shashak tomar kiser bhoi dhorshok tomar ke hoi (Ruler, what are you afraid of? What is your relation with rapists?) ring in the ears even when the roads are empty or the TVs are shut.

This is the kind of impact this people’s movement have created over 50-odd days – so organically – that the powers that-be find it hard to believe that there is no backing from any political parties. Even if there is, can it really account for the spontaneous show of solidarity from all walks of life – from the marginalised people of the society like the differently abled people to the sex workers? Or what about the Swiggy and Zomato boys on their bikes, for whom time is money?

 This is the kind of impact this people’s movement have created over 50-odd days – so organically – that the powers that-be find it hard to believe that there is no backing from any political parties. Even if there is, can it really account for the spontaneous show of solidarity from all walks of life – from the marginalised people of the society like the differently abled people to the sex workers? Or what about the Swiggy and Zomato boys on their bikes, for whom time is money?

 Who brought the octogenarian lady, bent with age but ramrod in spirit, holding a candle on the first of the Reclaim the Night march on August 14? Or the superannuated schoolteacher who turned up at the junior doctors’ agitation at Swastha Bhavan with a bunch of flowers and loads of blessings? It’s an agitation which may have originally belonged to the suffering doctors’ lot but took a life of it’s own through the power of social media and a melange of songs, dance, street threatre and graffiti to unprecedented levels.

 There is no point in trying to fish for brownie points as to whether the cry for justice for Tilottama – a movement bred largely in Kolkata and the state of West Bengal – was more powerful than what the country saw during Nirbhaya’s rape in late 2012. The devil’s advocate will throw statistics of the rape epidemic around the country at you, but then the case of the junior doctor who met such a gruesome end is different.

 It is an institutional murder and consequently – so difficult to prove. The worrying signs for the movement is that the road ahead is looking tougher for the junior doctors in the coming months. There is retribution in the air, any case in a government hospital going wrong will heap the pressure on them (Sagar Dutta Hospital incident being the fresh one) and of course, there is festivity in the air to sway the mood.

 What then is the way out? Bring on the festivities if you will, but don’t let those pangs of guilt go away!