[Reader-list] Don’t Hold My Hand Longer Than You Need To (Shuddhabrata Sengupta)

[Naeem Mohaiemen]

"Let's not light candles tonight as we have been taught to do by
television, lets not make a spectacle out of grief, let us not make
mourning a telegenic, slow motion filler between the smug, loose talk
of war and retribution on prime time where everyone gets to make a
cameo grab at patriotic grandeur."


'Don't Hold My Hand Longer Than You Need To'
by Shuddhabrata Sengupta
http://kafila.org/2008/11/29/dont-hold-my-hand-longer-than-you-need-to/

There is such a thing as an exhaustion of witnessing. Glued to the
television for long snatches of time over the last forty eight hours,
while I watched gun battles and firestorms in Bombay, the first thing
that i found failing was reason, the second thing that failed was
speech, the third thing that failed was the capacity to do anything
meaninful in the face of such disproportionate horror. I did nothing.
I was parched, I drank a lot of tea, and water. I nursed insomnia to
fitful, erratic snatches of sleep, populated by lucid dreams that
smelt of cordite.

Now, as the paramedics go in to retrieve bodies and body parts, as the
calculus of loss and damage is ascertained, as the smoke lifts, as the
ashes cool in crematoria and hotels, and  as the hoarse voices of the
television impresarios of the carnage begins to lower an octave or
two, can come the necessary task of making amends for silence. Let's
talk.

We can begin a conversation. Terror calls for speeches and statements,
communiques and condemnations, the one thing it kills is conversation.
We must mumble, if necessary, because even that is preferable to the
ludicrous platitudes that emanate from the tube that pours news into
my veins Today, I prefer a stammer to a statement. I dddddarrre
nnnnnoooottt sssayy a thh-thh-thhousand things that run through my
wakefulness, my dreaming.

In the video of a song that Aman posted here earlier, I see a woman
driving a taxi in the city that they used to call Bombay. The song
that runs through her silent head says 'don't hold my hand longer than
you need to'. I want to stay with that line. I want to hear it again
and again and again. I don't want to commiserate or to condemn, more
than is necessary. Yes, I condemn. But no, I won't have the
condemnation wrested out of me like a confession. The mathematics of
tragedy does not follow the laws of simple arithmetic. A rising body
count is neither more, nor less tragic than a single gratuitous,
meaningless death. 'Don't look at me longer than you need to'.

You might say, commiseration is necessary. I'll say "lets not hold
hands longer than we need to". Let's not light candles tonight as we
have been taught to do by television, lets not make a spectacle out of
grief, let us not make mourning a telegenic, slow motion filler
between the smug, loose talk of war and retribution on prime time
where everyone gets to make a cameo grab at patriotic grandeur. Let us
not disrespect the dead and the bereaved by even pretending that we
can share in what they feel. I feel all sorts of things, I cannot say
'martyr', 'coward', 'hero', 'villain' as easily as many can. I feel
that all these words are like the decorations on a coffin. I want to
see the body. The naked, injured, dead, body that asks for no
decoration, for nothing other than the dignity of a decent burial or
the comfort of a well stoked pyre. I want to speak of and to that
body. Those hundreds of bodies.

In the strange and paradoxical solidarity of death in conflict, the
bodies of deceased assailants and their victims, become just that,
bodies. They were terrorists or hostages or rescuers, Hindus, Muslims,
Christians, Jews, Indians, Americans, British, Turks or Israelis till
they died, in death, their inertia brooks no name, no qualification,
their distinctions, barely meaningful while alive, died with them.
Now, they are gone. That is why, when someone dies, we say, "they are
no more".

But we are. We are still claiming for ourselves a piece of the action.
Still bursting with pride and thirsting for grief. These are our worms
and ashes. These are the signs of our rigour mortis, the stench of our
daily, hourly decomposition. Some of us are calling for war. Some of
us are saluting. Some of us are speculating on the realignments in
international relations. Some of us are wondering what this means for
the investment climate. Some of us are mulling which quotation from
which scripture to hurl in which direction in order to prove which
religion teaches you to kill with greater ferocity. I have no comforts
to offer, none to hold on to. I have no war to fight, no stocks to
worry about, no holy or unholy books to throw.

The truth is, all abstractions, all attempts to tell us that there is
something more valuable than life itself in the end, demand their
prices in blood. The difference between a terror attack and an act of
war is ultimately a question of degree. A man who kills another is a
murderer. A man who kills ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, hundred
is a terrorist. A man who sends thousands or millions to their deaths
is usually called a president or a prime minister or at least 'great
leader'. We hang one, shoot the second and build memorials to the
third. "Terrorism" is actually only a name for the dull mediocrity of
organized violence. In lesser or greater degrees it comes with less or
more honourable appellations. Homicide, Terrorism, War, Genocide. No
one sings songs to terrorism, but our brass bands do blare the music
of war. In the end its just a question of how many bodies there are in
the morgue.

When you value a book, a map, a flag, a code, a memory of an injury or
a vision of heaven or hell more than you value the eating, drinking,
sleeping, walking, working, dreaming, shitting, pissing, fucking,
tired, old, young, wrinkled, bare, naked body of just another human
being you will in the end, pick up, or genuflect to those who pick a
gun, walk into a city, and begin a few days of mayhem.

Ask the little terrorist in your own head, the next time you curse one
you see on TV, "what will it take for you to admit, that there is
really nothing more important than the ungainly, misshapen bag of
water that is a human body". Now ask the same question to the little
policeman in your head, and try and divine the difference between
their answers. I have tried all my life and I have failed to
understand the difference. Both say they shoot to avenge injustice, to
fight wrongs, to bring hope and peace into the world. I understand the
voice of the assassin, the bank robber, the psychopath and the injured
lover, for they shoot for no reason other than to do with the concrete
circumstances of their lives. They shoot for money, madness, love or
revenge - all human reasons. I am not condoning the murderer and the
assassin, but I can see that they take responsibility fo what they do,
and there is a strange honour in that, a perverse, twisted honour
perhaps, but honour nevertheless. But the terrorist and the
counter-terrorist shoot for supposedly altruistic reasons. They shoot
at you and me, for the sake of other yous and mes, sometimes even for
just ourselves. The voice of the terrorist and the voice of the
policeman sing the same song. "I will shoot you for a higher cause. A
higher cause, a higher cause." The cause varies, the bullets stay the
same. And I am always told, 'I am the cause, and that higher cause is
you'. No terrorist ever says that they shoot to perpetuate injustice.
In their eyes, they are the just. They say that they are the only ones
who are. Such certitude is the privilege only of those who shoot in
the name of things loftier than themselves, it could be a state or a
wannabe state, it could be a dream or a nightmare. Something, I don't
know what, tells me that I could be better friends with the madman,
the bank robber, the assasin and the jealous lover, push comes to
shove, I could even share their prison cell. But the terrorist and his
mirror leave me cold.

All flags are shrouds. Every holy book is a sheaf of death
certificates. And the priest who sometimes wears the robes of a
politician is the undertaker. The terrorist is only the shadow of the
hangman.

Take your comforts while you can. Do not let the drought of the real
make an arid desert out of your soul where the flags of many states
and insurgencies can flutter their shadows. Switch off the television.
Blow out the candles. Turn out the light. Pour yourself a cup of tea,
a glass of wine, a beaker of water. Drink. Stay awake through the long
night ahead. Squeezed as we are, between terrorists and hangmen, there
is lots to do, and not much time. Or, as the song that Aman posted
(the one that I talked about earlier said)  -  'Lets do the things
that we normally do'.