[Reader-list] How someone "well connected" got RIK screening Cancelled

[Kshmendra Kaul]

Jeebesh
   
  The pain in your words is touching. The pathos in your questions will move the coldest of hearts. 
   
  Aahhhhhh! no one left to argue with and convince. Alas! this deep fear and inability to live with disagreements. Woe on this desire of people to satiate their rage. Curse those trying to restrain our intellectual lives.
   
  Jeebesh your traumas need attention. Let's do some role-playing with you as the protagonist.
   
  It was a small world, a village of sorts where everyone knew everyone else. Close cousins were called "my brother" and "my sister", other than parents and grandparents, every adult was an "uncle" or "aunt".
   
  In it lived Jeebesh. In the last of his teens or maybe just past them but really a child as most young men were in those seemingly but largely uncorrupted surroundings. For long years (some say since many a centuries from the past) they retained the innocence of Trust and Hope. 
   
  SK also lived there or at least today he claims to. SK is Jeebesh's "cousin". Everyone in your own age group was a "cousin" if you could not trace out some other close relationship.
   
  18 years back an Exodus of Jeebesh's people took place. Everyone knew everyone else.
   
  Jeebesh knows they had not known enough. The terrain had parted and lake-seas receded, the volcanoes had gone quiet. No one had recognised the signs of upheavals that were to come. 
   
  For Jeebesh today, memories of those times are a whirling blur of images and sounds. They would drive him mad if he could afford to lose his sanity:
   
  - Jeebesh's sister was picked up and raped and left abandoned.
  - Another sister was raped and killed after that. 
  - Another sister was raped and killed but they mutilated her breasts.
  - Jeebesh's mother was not spared either.
  - Jeebesh remembers his father hanging dead on a tree
  - He remembers the corpses of young and old and of male and female riddled with bullets
  - Most of all he remembers the fear in the eyes of those around him.
  - He remembers the loudspeakers blaring hate messages from places meant for worship.
  - He remembers his own fears reflected in the eyes of those around him.
   
  Inspite of that "Trauma List", for 16 years after those days, Jeebesh tried to put his life together in new surroundings. He whined every now and then,  he sobbed in the loneliness of alien lands. He met up with tiny groups to recount happy memories and sing songs of his Lost Land, if they could.
   
  Not many in the New Land seemed to acknowledge that Jeebesh existed. Jeebesh led a quiet existence. Jeebesh's existence had been quietened. 
   
  In the 17th year of the Exodus, Jeebesh's "cousin" SK made a film. Jeebesh got to know about it.
   
  SK's film eulogised those responsible for Jeebesh's 'Trauma List". Self confessed perpetrators of some cases and supporters of other murderers and rapists. SK's film celebrated them and their call for "Aazadi". 
   
  SK forgot that in the seeking of "Hurriyat" (Freedom) lay their merry-go-round of barbarianism that was Jeebesh's whirling blur of images and sounds from his "Trauma List".
   
  Will Jeebesh try to have the screening of SK's film stopped? What will Jeebesh's decision be?    
   
   
  Kshmendra Kaul
   
   
   
  
Jeebesh Bagchi <jeebesh at sarai.net> wrote:
  On 25-Aug-07, at 8:14 AM, rashneek kher wrote:


> We
> filed a complaint and since Sanjay Kak is breaking the law of the 
> land by
> screening a movie which does not have necessary censor certificate, 
> the
> Police did the rest.
>

Did this move satisfy the rage in you?

Can testimonies of suffering justify these kinds of invitation to 
policing of our intellectual lives?

Isn't taking recourse to punitive action an ally of our deep fear to 
live life with disagreements?

If police is brought in to intervene, will there be people left to 
argue with and convince?

best
jeebesh

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