Guardian of our secret hometowns

hometowns Dr Binayak Sen embraced what everyone wanted to escape. Filmmaker SUDHIR MISHRA remembers the gentle friend of his childhood

IT WAS THE USUAL sultry Bombay morning. I don’t know much about mornings, as I go to sleep only when those who do nothing else but look after their health are about to leave for their morning walk. That day I could see them from my window as the morning broke and I realised that sleep was not going to be possible because it was a “ghost day”.

In my dictionary, a “ghost day” is a day when the past intrudes into your present, pushes aside the immediate, and snarls. “Talk to me,” it says and depending on what conversation it wants to have and who it brings, it’s either a good day or a bad one. Today, it wasn’t particularly bad because it brought along many old friends from Sagar, where I had grown up. One of them was Dipankar Sen. I was glad since he was one of my closest buddies, somebody with whom I had done most of my growing up rituals, all the usual “firsts”.

I don’t know why I looked at my phone just at that moment. I realised that it was on silent mode and someone was trying to get through. It was Dipankar! Many would consider it spooky but these coincidences happen all the time with me so I have stopped trying to figure them out. “Hello,” I said. His voice on the other end was tense. “My brother is in jail! The charge is sedition… waging war against the State.”

This is not the kind of news one hears everyday so there was silence. And then, because he had two brothers, I asked, “Which one?” “Binayak,” he said. When he said that, many things struck me. I realised it had been a long time since I’d actually had a conversation with Dipankar. It also struck me that the Binayak Sen I’d been reading about was Dipankar’s Binayak Da.

I remember thinking when we were growing up how the two brothers were totally unlike each other. Dipankar was great fun. He was tough, aggressive, with a loud laugh and with an equally loud sense of humour. Binayak was soft, gentle and, according to most people, quite brilliant. He was not merely different from Dipankar but also totally unlike other sons of army officers, the core group of the friends I grew up with.

Sagar was really a one-horse town where a remarkable man called Hari Singh Gaur had built a university that had a rare academic quality at that time. Before that, the British had built a large cantonment there that housed the 36th division of the Indian army and also the Mhar Regiment. If you read the British author John Masters, you can read about the lads of Saugor playing cricket matches with the lads of some other town. Dipankar and Binayak’s dad was an army doctor who was posted there.

Even though Binayak was different, he followed in his dad’s steps and became a doctor. That was where the resemblance ended. Or did it? What hidden strengths Binayak inherited from his father I do not know, but his mother has a strength of character I did not suspect at that time. It’s strange how you meet people almost everyday and don’t know them. When I hear about the courage of Binayak’s mother, how at the age of 80, she fights for her son while running a school at the same time, I can’t quite reconcile her with the image in my mind of the “aunt” of my childhood.

Actually, when you grow up in a small town you live in a fantasy world which you concoct for yourself. The reality is too grim or simply boring. People who think that big city kids are selfabsorbed have no idea about the small town kid’s obsession with himself and his single-minded devotion to one single cause: how does he get out of this f***ing hole!

When you grow up in a small town, you just want to leave and reinvent yourself in some other place. Most of us get the hell out and never look back. Of course this happens over years, but one day, you suddenly discover that the connection has snapped. Somebody else lives in the house of our old friends and some other lovers hold hands in the secret places that we thought were ours alone.

Another strange thing happens once the connection snaps. We receive news about our home as if it is from some alien land. “Did you hear about the massacre of the Dalits in your part of the world?” says the big-city smartass shaking his head with disbelief and derision at the savagery and backwardness of heartland India. You look at the moron with some amount of pity because he has forgotten the savagery of his own city. And the countless children who are sodomised in the dark of the night.

You also want to tell him of the divisions between religious communities and the lack of concern for any one else’s death, which is euphemistically called “the spirit of the city”. But we have lost the connection with where we came from to such an extent that we lack even the basic information required to stand up for ourselves. Plus, we have a horrible suspicion that most of the things that are being said are probably true. Inside ourselves, we know that the big city has given us a home, hope and a chance to reinvent ourselves. We also know that there is nothing much to say and a lot to do. The truth is that we are embarrassed and often pretend that we are from nowhere.

What can you do if your home has no place for you? Sometimes we invent a mythical homeland where everyone loved each other, families were united and people held hands during times of sorrow and joy. Because, back home the shits have taken over, and the young don’t have a hope in hell of competing with the rest of India. Except for one or two exceptions, everybody slowly deteriorates. Nobody ever goes back there except to die.

Nobody except people like Binayak! He left the comfortable club we all are part of and went to a place where there are no clubs. Dipankar, his brother and my friend, once told me that the time he spent in Sagar was synonymous with hell, that when he was there he had a terrible feeling that he would never be able to get out.

Well buddy, your brother went to a worse place and voluntarily agreed to stay there, forever. He could have been in Bombay with me, in Washington with my sister, in Turkey with your other brother, or in Belgium, with you. He would have been an extremely successful medical man and, to quote a comic sage of our time, Sajid Khan, “he would not have just been rich but very very rich”

ALSO, AND NOW I’m misquoting, “his life could have been about loving his children, his wife and four bank accounts.” Because he is not from Bollywood, he would not have been able to give his opinion on all subjects, from public toilets to higher education, but then life is not perfect and the paychecks would have compensated. Instead, he chooses to go to a place where in place of appreciation he gets locked up in jail! Where the initial FIR of the police states that he is not even a doctor. Where the people who run that place are using him as an example to all those who dare raise their head that if they don’t retreat, they will face the same fate as him. And where his wife fights a lonely battle to get her husband back.

This is the same place, a famine-struck village in Uttar Pradesh, my maternal great grandfather left to make a living. I’m not into self-flagellation and my life has had its share of struggle but I dip my hat in admiration for Binayak. I’m also not an elementary Marxist and certainly do not believe that power flows through the barrel of a gun but I’m sure, neither does Binayak.

I think India needs to listen to people like Binayak, and through him, look at the problems he is addressing. I think more violence will follow if we do not listen to Binayak Sen’s urgent plea for compassion. I think different places have their own unique problems and need unique ideas to resolve them. Thank you for talking on behalf of at least one of the homes that I have left behind, Binayak Da! •