The Pool

I live with Ba and Bapuji in a very very big city, in India. This city has too many people, roads, cars, autos buses, noises and lots and lots of stuff, for people to buy, to be happy. They repeat this all the time on TV. But, I don't like TV. It's too noisy for me and makes my eyes and head very tired.  Bapuji says all big cities in India are just like this, and most people like to watch TV - as they do.

 Since Mummy and Pappa died, Ba and Bapuji are constantly fearful for me - they tell me to not do this or that, to not talk to strangers, to not cross the road alone, or even go down alone by myself. In the evening we all go down to the playground. They sit and watch and chat with other old, fat people, like themselves, and I wait for my turn at the swings. I love to swing - very very high. Sometimes I think I can reach out and touch those fluffy clouds. I used to try!

But Ba saw me once reach out and screamed in sheer terror - that I almost fell off - and later cried and cried that her dead daughter, my Mummy, would not forgive them if something were to happen to me. But, how could Mummy forgive if she's gone and dead? Anyway, I had to promise to hold on to the swing tightly, with both hands, otherwise no swing time. So I promised.

We live in a small flat, in a tall building. There are many many such tall buildings in our colony. All areas are covered with concrete, bricks, stones, cement, glass. There's no dirt anywhere, since people do not like dirt. There are some potted plants here and there and a large cluster of trees around which people walk round and round and round.

No one ventures into the trees. Ba says there can be snakes, insects, and many other strange creepy-crawlies that can harm humans and even kill them, especially a little girl like me.
Mummy and Pappa used to love all nature, birds, animals, insects, snakes - they were never afraid. They used to say that even the most poisonous snakes are more afraid of us than we should be of them. That humans have killed more snakes than have ever harmed us. We all used to sit very still an watch mama-bird feeding her young, the funny centipedes that would curl up into spirals at a mere touch - that I collected in my frock pocket. Then they opened up and crawled all over me. It was so ticklish - and I laughed so hard that sometimes they just fell off me. My Mummy and Pappa loved me very much. Too bad they are dead. It makes Ba and Bapuji very sad to think of them. Not me. I like thinking of them and day dreaming of All the things we did together - Ba, Bapuji would be so shocked and disapproving.

It was on one such day when I was day dreaming of them, that I decided to do something. The house was silent, except for an occasional loud snort from Bapuji - they were taking their afternoon nap. I refuse to nap, even though they insist it's good for me. I quietly took the house key hanging by the door, got into the lift and went out. I walked towards the cluster of trees - remember the one that people walked around but never entered? I reached it easily and stepped off the walkway into dark ground.

The trees were tall with thick canopies, almost touching each other. The ground was soft with  years of fallen leaves and mottled with perfect round bright sunspots. The air was silent and still with soft bird songs from high branches. I kept walking, gently ducking the full rounds of silky spider webs blocking my path. I heard a slither - must be a snake nearby. So, like Pappa had taught me, I stomped my feet and kept walking - this would tell the snakes to keep away. As I walked I could smell the soil, the green, a forest smell that I remembered from before. Suddenly ahead I saw a clearing - a space of bright sunlight, almost blinding my eyes. Squinting and protecting my eyes with my hands I entered the light, to see before me a bluest, nicest swimming pool. The shrubs and bushes had overgrown to its edge and were full of flowers. Colorful, fragrant vines had grown all over the nearby tall trees and hung down in patches of bright colour. Dragon flies of blood red flitted, small birds chirped flying here and there, tiny mauve butterflies, medium yellow ones and large blue ones flew from flower to flower, so thirsty. This was a world I knew and loved from before. This was my world. I realised I was at the community's neglected and long forgotten swimming pool. I quickly slipped off my dress and jumped into the cool, bright inky blue - lucky mummy had taught me how to swim from the time I was a baby.

 Immediately I heard another plop, and then another one as two plump frogs decided to join me - to my utter delight. I dove deep in, swimming underwater to find a large school of shimmery transparent fish surrounding me on all the sides. I played floating, flipping and whooping with joy, racing with the frogs, fish - till they tired of my games and decided to ignore me. Three little monkeys leapt from branch to branch, coming to the pool's edge, chattering, and then dipped down for a drink of water. I  swam briskly to the other side of the pool to find a wagtail waiting for me bobbing it's head and wagging it's long tail up and down. I grinned and it jumped around my face in play. I swam back to the other side on my back, and a red dragonfly landed on my nose - just for a joy ride. I fully cross-eyed, trying to see the dragon fly on my nose, it's black mirror eyes, the fine lacy red wings.

I had discovered my own secret pool and had never been happier since, you know, that day. This would be my secret - just for me and Pappa, Mummy.

When I was done, I returned, as I had come, and quietly entered the flat - luckily, the snores were still on.
I quickly changed and decided it was time for my afternoon nap! Bapuji and Ba would be so pleased that I was finally listening to them - but they'd  never ever know of my own secret pool.

Red Chillies of Guntur

Dear Comrades,

This will be my last and final message you. And I think therefore it's important that I share my story with you. Please be patient, if my story is long. For,  what is this world, but a collection of stories that we inherit, create and leave behind - for others to pick up and begin from our lost endings or someone else's. That choice  determines our entire saga - for nothing really lives or dies - but plays out endlessly on this world stage.

I was born J. Parvathy to parents who were landless, poor, and bonded to our Malik, a Janardhana Reddy, owner of vast tracts of land in Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh. To a normal eye, it was a waste land, ruddy and dry, where hot summer winds conjured red serpents and blood dripping demons in air - right there in front of our little hut. We all huddled together in the farthest corner staring up, praying, that our flimsy thatch roof would not blow away. I was held tight by Bapu - as if I was his own life, while Ma hung on to his broad shoulders - as if he could always save her.

But you know the ways of the rich. Malik, lived in a giant white palace - and persuaded water to flow freely on these miles upon tumbling miles of barren red land and thorny scruffs - must be by God's grace, for his many poonyas from previous births - that is what Bapu said. And I believed him. The white palace glistened in the scorching, moving, transparent heat, reflecting sometimes, as if on a lake. I could stare hard at it - unblinking-  till tears poured down my cheeks and I imagined that this was how God's heavenly home must look like. Bapu agreed - Malik was our God, the reason we lived, ate, worked - tirelessly under the scorching heat, especially during harvest. Malik's land was cultivated from horizon to horizon with chilly fields. It was so magical - the land that was dry, barren & red,  turned into thick dense carpets of green stripes, and finally it was all just red - deep crimson blood red of the chillies - the famous Guntur chillies.

Bapu says that chillies grew on the harshest, inhospitable lands, rejected by all but the poorest, who had no where else to go. And chillies were a special treat for us -
God's only gift- for it helped swallow our dry meal - bursting our mouths, eyes and nose into flames, also water, so the dry roti glided down our gullets like ghee halwa. Yes, I have eaten halwa on those special puja days when all the labor queued up at the palace gate, for a morsel of what Gods had been offered.

But I am getting ahead of myself. Ma tells me that before I was born, she ate endless amount of Guntur chillies, tying some to her pallu, chomping them with bright laughter and relish. Bapu used to laugh at her madness and worry it would harm the child in her belly. But how could it? She was doing what the child was demanding of her! I was born right in the middle of harvest time, kicking and screaming, fair as a rose - a Guntur chilly red coloured rose. My eyes were wide with curiosity and large, sparkling like little diamonds, my round cheeks the colour of sunset skies, and my mouth - oh my loud, incessantly demanding,  mouth that went silent as soon as I was put to her chest, and then immediately fell asleep. All this my mother told me - loving me dearly and never tiring of repeating the same story again and again. God's had given her a most precious gift - her little Parvathy, or Lali - as she used to call me - for red, of my cheeks, mouth, the fairness if my skin, the wide happiness of my smile, my curly raven hair. She used to say that by mistake, God's had given her a precious angel, and she loved me more than she knew she could ever love.

I grew up amongst this red soil, spread thickly with red chillies, first on invisible small plants and then laid out on dirt road, front yards, back yards and all cleared spaces to dry - rustling red in breeze  - smarting our eyes and nose, if we got too close. Red was my favourite colour - more than the giant domed blue sky, the cool greenness of the scrub trees in spring, or yellow of turmeric that ma applied on our skins. As a child, I was happy, curious, and very loved.

There were many other things that Bapu and Ma also did not tell me. But I understood slowly as I grew up. The summons from the palace came regularly when I was young. Then Bapu and I walked Ma to Malik's house and left her there for the night. We walked back silent, Bapu's face dark like thunder clouds, first rains glistening on his eyelids - withdrawn, heavy, defeated. At first I used to talk non-stop, but soon I learnt to be silent and not ask questions. I did not ask questions also when ma returned next day, drawn and tired, huddled into a corner, wiping her eyes in silence. Bapu would finally give her some water, and everyone would resume their daily work - from this there was no escape.

I did not ask questions when I was sent to an English school with other children from Malik- uncle's family. I was gifted and so were my parents - who says no to Gods? Other children from the village teased me and laughed at me. Why was I so fair? Why was I treated special by the Malik's family? Bapu told me to ignore them because they were just jealous of our good fortune. Yet, I realised that was not the only truth.

I grew withdrawn at school, was good at my studies, and understood far more than I let on. What was the point? Who could I share with?

Everything changed when Bala came to the village. A few years older than me, from the big city of Hyderabad, waving a red flag - LAL Salaam. LAL Salaam for Lali? It made me laugh - so much. But then he started talking. Talking about big words like justice, revolution and big questions like What made rich, rich?? And poor, poor? Who decided that. He did not believe in Gods or rituals. To him a new world was ours to make, our duty, responsibility. He demanded our sacrifice, but what were we really sacrificing - a life of abject powerless poverty? He demanded our imagination, to believe a new world was possible, and in our hands to make. Youths gathered around him listening speechless to his neverending river of words - a river that cleansed us, bouyed us with hope, set fire to our imaginations with long stories from distant lands where poor people themselves decided to end their misery and make a world where all were equal and comrades - friends.

I loved him. Was it his red flag? Red fire of his anger - sparks from his bloodshot red eyes. It was all that and much much more. He taught me to dream, a noble true dream - a dream of a better world of humans and a better natural world. A world where the rich would not be allowed to exploit the poor -  Bapus would not be slaves for a few cups of grains, and no mas would be lead to whims of any rich man. He talked of rights, dignity, meaning of life - our lives.

I left quietly with him and eight other youths from our village, for good. We became each others, in love and passion of our common dreams.  I was 16, he was 23. For the next decade we walked tirelessly, fearlessly, talking endlessly to eager youths who saw, but saw no way out.  They joined us. Our numbers grew. We trained physically, studied sincerely, and strategized endlessly. Our territory covered the entire impoverished hinterlands of Andhra Pradesh, along its border with Jharkhand - where we'd escape following any news of police attention or raid. These were our formative years and we gained increased popularity. Since we moved in quietly and disappeared without a trace, we started being called Red Panthers. We all agreed that this was a good name.

The following decade saw us make many small, successful attacks on the government-corporate nexus. I pulled off guerrilla raids on government godowns, MNC factories and distribution centers and freely distributed the spoils amongst the poor. We were welcomed, supported, fed and sheltered amongst the poorest, who saw in us, their hope, and a possibility of a rare dream. We worked in small groups, distributed and coordinated. Our name sent shivers around many small, understaffed police chowki in rural and forested area between Andhra and Jharkhand.

At the same time, our successes were dampened by a real realization of the high speed technological surveillance  and it's superior additional advantage  for our enemy, who already controlled nation's resources, security power, and most dangerous of all - people's mind, via an aggressive propaganda that we were the real threat to national security! The aspiring, educated but brainwashed middle class bought this and we became feared even in small forgotten corners of the state. We started getting hunted down - relentlessly - not for any physical harm that we managed, but for a real and valid fear that just as we understood their game, those who heard us, would also see through their vast machinery of lies and deception, the erosion of individual rights, a crippled justice system and
the vast exploitation and plunder of  natural resources - our common future heritage - to benefit the richest and the most powerful in the world. Our thoughts and our words were their real fear - for what could a group of a couple hundreds really achieve against a nation of 1.3 billion. No one thought to ask this - not even the educated. The state had decided that we should be eradicated. But, Red Panthers were really just dreamers and idealists - that's all they had. How could they give up their dreams?

We decided that it was better to die trying to live out a dream, than to die for money, power, of too much food, or too old an age, or to live being dead - without dreams. It was at this time that we all started wearing a small taviz - a religious amulet - that we knew the superstitious police would be reluctant to remove. That was our ultimate weapon - the sanctity of our own right of choice, to live, or to die.

It was a couple of years later that nostalgia brought back to our origins - to my village in Guntur, where we began. The red chillies were ripe and we could easily get harvesting work. My parents' hut was in ruins, abandoned. Malik's fields had become much larger and the village much poorer.

It was just a miserable stroke of luck that Bala was recognised. We were both picking on far sides of the field when I noticed a CRPF battalion creep up on Bala and surround him. I wished to run to him, to call out - but I was too far, and his time had run out. I saw Bala slowly raise his hands in surrender, when a commando pulled out his gun and shot him, point blank, in his chest. Then after making a several phone calls and taking many pictures, they all disappeared. I finally ran to my Bala - lying as if in sleep, his blood invisible amongst all the red of the chillies.

Something in me also died that day - my spirit and will, to dream. I continued leading our group in attacks, talking to youths about their rights to life and liberty and justice, ceaselessly moving from place to place...till I got too tired to move. I told you all to go ahead, since plenty of work was still pending.

When they finally caught up with me, I was ready. What I had not anticipated was the heinous brutality of men. It's been two days, and they'll return again with their jeering laughs, their sticks and their jar of Guntur red chilly powder.

I am done! I leave knowing that I chose to not be a slave, to dream a dream - which was just, good and worthy of our beautiful and fragile world.

Lal Salaam, Inqalab Zindabad!!

Com. Parvathy
42, F, Guntur Police Station HQ