Baby Bombers

When the first CCTV shot of Mohammed Ajmal Kasab was shown to the world, viewers and readers stared in disbelief not probably so much at the terrorist who with his counterparts rocked the city of Mumbai and the world, but at the fact that the twenty one year old was branded so, at his age.

Once the initial shock set in, reporters wasted no time in dramatically pointing out what they thought looked like a sadistic smile in a garbled image. The lone captured terrorist in the 26/11 attack on Mumbai city, it was not long before Kasab’s supposed past in Pakistan was raked out by investigative journalists and his stereotype whereabouts laid bare before the world.

If one was to believe the authenticity of the details unearthed, then Ajmal’s story once again is that of a typical adolescent gone awry in the company of the wrong kind of people, in this case, the notorious Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT).And assuming that his statements thereafter were not under pressure, Ajmal’s pleas sounded a far cry from someone who had any kind of fanatical beliefs.

Some media sources state Kasab’s interrogation reports as a hapless story of a village lad having a lack of ambition and an illusionary vision of making it big in life as the reason to join an outfit notorious for ‘catching them young’. Other reports speak of a young man who spoke flawless English, knew his mission well and who came from a prosperous middle class family background, all in the inimitable LeT style of ‘catching them affluent and educated.’

While the suppositions are yet to be clarified, devoid of Kasab’s advanced combat and specialised navigation training and baseless scriptural ’ rote reading’ practices, what remains is his age. Irrespective of his background or nationality, Kasab deserves no sympathy of any sorts for his action but it is imperative for us to realise that even while his interrogation is going on, the next batch of youngsters are being trained for an even more disastrous series of attacks. And not for their beliefs but for their age, which is probably the biggest global take-home message in this attack.

How can a young man just out of adolescence, be guided and trained to senselessly and remorselessly kill hundreds of innocent people capable of no harm? And how is it that these youngsters are convinced that their brutal actions are for a greater good?

A popular assumption is that of the young mind who is influenced by his situational and social circumstances, say, for example, he witnesses the death of his loved ones, pointing him ultimately to the highway for his own treacherous actions years later. It is easy to seduce such a mind into the role of an ‘avenger’ and thereby be ensnared into the falsified and ‘pseudo heroic’ responsibility frame of obtaining justice.

But what about others like Kasab who come from no such trauma stricken background and whose association with crime was once upon a time supposedly only in the form of small time misdemeanours or petty street robberies?

Derision could have been one technique as was used among young Palestinian suicide bombers during the Palestinian-Israel conflicts. Not volunteering for a suicide bomb attack made the children an object of ridicule among their friends in the background of a falsified urgency for the need of martyrs for a cause. Of curse, martyrdom, in itself has become a cult.

Anne Speckhard, adjunct associate Professor of Psychiatry, Georgetown University Medical Centre and Professor of Psychology, Vesalius College, Free University of Brussels, writes:

From a very young age children are socialised into a group consciousness that honours "martyrs", including human bombers who have given their lives for the fight against what is perceived by Palestinians to be the unjust occupation of their lands. Young children are told stories of 'martyrs'. Many young people wear necklaces venerating particular 'martyrs', posters decorate the walls of towns and rock and music videos extolling the virtues of bombers. Despite the very deep and real grief of the family and friends left behind, the funerals of 'martyrs' are generally accompanied with much fanfare by community and terror organisations.

The famous’ Baby suicide bomber’ photograph of a young toddler in Hamas outfits that found its way in many an inbox shocked the world and many assumed it to be false. Yet people in Palestine claim this to be a norm and ever since many pictures have made it to the media, of young boys and girls toting around with guns and magazines.

Kasab apparently is a school drop out. The young children in Palestine would in all probability have not had a chance to be in one. So it would not be fair to point fingers at the lack of impact an educational system can make on these minds. Though the effect of education today is limited to only influencing a person’s thinking in the background of logic and reasoning, one is tempted to wonder on whether these children would ever have been targets to such acts had they been educated?

Another strong point for the psychological basis behind human aggressiveness and violent behaviour is that ‘When we feel bad we are more likely to act bad,’ (Berkowitz, 1993). The start of this behaviour need not necessarily be anger. Aversive situations regardless of whether they are frustration, depression or anger make violent actions more likely.

This would also probably bring out yet another situational factor where the child terrorists are taught it ‘fair’ to hurt the ones near and dear to the oppressors that the terrorists are fighting against. This thought is indirectly routed in the minds of these child terrorists as the provocation to justify and make the killing of innocents, a rewarding experience. Of course, if each of us were to look back at our own adolescent experiments and experiences, the realisation would dawn on us on the kind of imprints people left on our minds and the quality of the decisions that we took at that age. Evidently, one can grow terrorists without even trying.

Last year, The Telegraph ran a report on a Pakistan army claim to have overrun a camp in a territory where the notorious Pakistani Taliban commander, Baitullah Mehsud, operated. Militants had transformed a government-run school near the village of Spinkai in South Waziristan into what one officer described as a “nursery for preparing suicide bombers”.

In another location, military investigators found film footage on a DVD that they believed depicted children at the school being taught suicide training. The footage, which was shown to journalists, contained images of a masked teacher instructing rows of schoolchildren who wore white headbands inscribed with Quranic verses. The teacher pointed at the blackboard while an armed guard stood alongside and discussed what to carry in a suicide attack.

Major General Athar Abbas, the army’s chief spokesman, said that the school and a hospital had been taken over by militants “to prepare children for suicide attacks and for making IEDS [improvised explosive devices]”.

Despite human organisations like Amnesty International strongly condemning indoctrination of children for military, commando or suicidal operations, a serious effort in this regard would have lessened or done away with one of the cruelest forms of warfare.

In the interim, somewhere in this world, a packed room of children intently listen to a fanatical religious leader spew out inanities in the name of fighting a ‘holy war’ and’ martyrdom’, while their more decisive friends train outside in combat warfare, hell bent on laying their lives for the same absurd cause.

To the city that never sleeps

Packing my bags for a night flight to Mumbai, a cheap brochure on Asia’s largest laundry alley in Mumbai catch my attention sticking out at an odd angle from one of my rucksack’s many pockets. “Don’t forget the Dhobi Ghat. Not exactly on your way but you might learn something there,” sneers my roommate eyeing the piece of paper in my hand which she had rudely shoved in minutes before, as a not- so- subtle hint to my supposedly OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) ways.

A day later, I was to hear the name again. Squinting at the angry afternoon sunlight on Mahalaxmi Bridge in Mumbai, I was on the lookout for a young thirty something lady who was assigned by the Tourism Board to accompany me in my tour of the city. If you are a South Indian and on your first visit to India’s commercial capital, you would have arrived into the city with countless warnings about pick pocketeers, eve teasers and rapists echoing through your head. As I waited on the crowded bridge, thoughts flashed across my head and I almost yelped when I felt a small but sturdy poke on my back.

I turn just in time to hear a chirpy. “Manik Walame, Official Tourist Guide from India Tourism Board, at your service madam.” I grinned. It was not very often that you get to instantly like the guide you are assigned to on your travels. Most just nose through tour itineraries.

“Let’s just get out from this mad rush of people and bullocks Manik.I can barely hear myself think.”I shout to the 4’ lady who return my suggestion with a frown.

“But this is our first tourist spot-Dhobi Ghat,” she shouts back her eyebrows narrowed to strongly accompany her response.

“Dhobi what?” I think aloud the familiarity hitting me like a ton of bricks.

“The Dhobi Ghat is a unique feature of Mumbai city and one that has lately been of great interest among tourists from different parts of the world. Their literal translation meaning ‘Laundry Rows ‘, these portions of the city have been a part of Mumbai for over 120 years, the most famous of the lot being the one in….”

“Where the hell did you learn to speak like that, Manik?”

“….Saat Rasta near Mahalaxmi Station”

“Maha…station. Isn’t that nearby,” I shout amidst the din of the crowd as a train chugs into view.

“Its just behind you,” she replies in a mock weary tone.

“Wha…” I turn to look behind me and at what I thought all along was one of Mumbai’s slum pockets. What I actually now notice is a whole new scene of colour and noise with lines of pristine and well starched clothes and beneath them row upon row of concrete washpens, each fitted with its own flogging stone and on which bare chested men beat what look like long slings of clothes.

I remember with a shudder my own college days when laundry was an expensive option on our meagre pocket money and the cloth stone was the only way to cleaner clothes. Washing jeans or bed sheets were the worst of the tasks as the drenched clothes almost often threatened to take our puny bodies along with them at every sling.

“Come, let’s talk to one of them,” I grab my camera and run down the stairs and into the alley with Manik. Frenzied tourists are a common sight in any part of India as the culture and tradition often offers a heady thrill, so I did not stand out with my curious looks.

One would easily be forgiven to think that all the men who were thrashing the clothes were following some invisible rhythm as they took aim, raised the cloth and pounded at the stone, almost at the same time.

Shiva Kumar stood thrashing a bedsheet a bit away from the sudsy small troughs that ran in a criss cross fashion across the area. He stops for a minute to give us a ‘what-the-hell-are- you-staring-at’ look.

Manik walks along to him and warbles in Marathi at an amazing speed and his unfriendly stare is immediately replaced by a warm grin.

He looks at his fellow men proudly at work and then speaks to Manik in a combination of English and Marathi. I tiptoe over to them to get a few answers.

Manik translates, “He says the clothes are soaked in soapy water, thrashed on the flogging stones, then tossed into huge vats of boiling starch and hung out to dry. Next they are ironed and piled into neat bundles. Each dhobi marks a unique symbol or character on garments belonging to a particular household. This is marked in black indelible ink to prevent it from being washed off. Since the dhobi charges are much lower than dry cleaners, they are popular with most households.”

“And why are there only men?”I ask.

Manik puts the question across to Shiva who in reply puffs up his chest and answers in a deep baritone voice and I understand his reply even before the translation.

“It is a man’s job, “says Manik anyway.

My eyebrows narrow for a debate but decide against it noticing his bulging biceps and his throbbing veins as they expand and contract to keep pace with his cloth thrashing. I have always had a deep sense of respect for physical prowess.

“The British made this area for the washermen years ago to wash and starch their clothes and now the people of this area do the washing for the entire city. Today almost 200 dhobis and their families work together in what has always been a hereditary occupation” continues Manik.

Shiva puts a hand across his chest and beams again when he looks squarely at me and says, “We no study but no mistake till today,”

I return the beaming smile.

Quite weary of quintessential indianness being touted to delight the average European tourist, I would have left the continent’s largest laundry alley as just that but my first contact with the city taught me all I needed to know about Mumbai: Everybody survives here and in good measure.

Down the valley...

Down the valley right on my favourite rock I sat
Stealing the blend of washerwomen’s songs whisked with the jaywalk’s chatter

The evening sun splashed her last rays across the horizon
A low breeze whistled a fancy into my ear

The wind chimed her anklets further
I sank my feet surreptiously into the temptingly chilly beneaths

Hiding the world’s inquisitive eyes , the clouds gathered above
Naked and smiling,I scissored through the thick oblivion below….

A passing mackerel below nibbled at my knee
Somewhere an expectant frog called out for his partner

Stepping back on my favourite rock, I watched the mangrove branches sway
Their fragrant ripeness blending rendering a blossoming air

When lost in the whirlwind of time, I crave for moments I call my own
Its my day down at the valley that I cherish the most

For I see myself the happiest amidst the slivers of moonlight and the mangrove shade
Than all the cheers that the world has to spare.

Yours truly…..Solitude!

Solitude is a virgin for me. Pure, untouched and innocent. She is not nagging and self-centred like her cousin….loneliness. Solitude has an unmistakeable dignity about her, which she passes on to those who seek her. Perhaps a reason why she chooses to be sought and also remain as a shade of a person’s character as much as is expected of her and not be an all pervasive worry like loneliness which shakes you by your shoulders and penetrates into your soul cancerously spreading through you…

I discovered solitude by chance…that doesn’t come as a surprise. I discovered myself also by chance. Both the findings have a common thread running through them. My adolescence. It was then that I realized that the world in me was larger than the world outside me. All of a sudden I would sense the air thick and polluted with coagulated pride, noxious vapours of egoism and edged with acidic concepts of life. All this shrouded in a thin feeble cover called conversation. I would then slip out away from the glare and into My Solitude. Yes, how could I adore something and not call it my own.

Sometimes my solitude would leave me lying for hours under a carpet of stars. sometimes beside a flowing brook. Sometimes as I lay by the side of the village pool on the cold stone steps….strands of my open hair gently kissing the water below as if trying to symbolize my relationship with solitude.

Rains are never a part of solitude for me. With rains…. well there was always a conversation there. Never the silence that epitomises solitude. The showers always rushed to rescue me from loneliness. That’s another thing about solitude. There is a very thin line that separates it from loneliness. A very thin slippery line. Like the netherworld it is very deadly and inviting.

When I hear lonely people speak…I can hear their voices clang like empty vessels in the dark…bereft of hope and drowned in self-pity. They can’t be blamed, I suppose. A condition conceived out of a situation.

I tasted a little bit of loneliness recently. It is like vinegar on your teeth. That irresistibly irritating feeling. And it gives you bad breath…a pungent odour that keeps the whole world at bay away from you. Loneliness gives you a kick though. But of course you need to be a dedicated narcissist willing to wallow in self-pity.

I have felt pangs of loneliness in my childhood but that somehow was never serious enough to matter. I didn’t have many friends….none in fact… but I had a lovely set of parents who didn’t allow the empty hollow feeling to suck me through. Also, like most kids I also had an imaginary friend…I was Indu.She was Lekha.Today I am both.

We would talk to each other…bath together….cook for each other….the days when I would stubbornly insist to have my dinner in my pink plastic toy cooking vessels….and amma would happily oblige…anything to cloak my bones…;)

As my passion for books grew I needed no other companions. Lekha somehow slipped away into the background so subtly that I didn’t even realize that she was gone. My adolescence wielded a pen in me with a taste to dive in to different coloured pots of ink. Soulful was a sky blue…. Ecstasy…an unmistakeable aqua green…Humour ….a naughty bubbly lime green.

For me writing was a late but inevitable sensation I discovered. Yet like her counterparts; hunger and thirst; it had an unflinching need that required to be satiated. I once heard an actor describe his voracious appetite for sex. Raw and demanding. I couldn’t describe my need to write any better.

I was excited at this new rawness in me. I wanted to explore more of me. My craving to write took me initially to quiet corners and later on to serene backgrounds. That’s when I bumped into solitude. Amongst the rustle of the autumn leaves…alongside the breezy southern wind…with the noiseless fall of the dewdrops. An aura first…then a presence and finally a part of me.

Yet, I also realized very early in life that you can’t turn to solitude for consolation for her youth and spirit also brings with them a whiff of immaturity. The moment you seek her wind to dry your tears, she steps aside to let loneliness in. Solitude understands sorrow but her immense dignity and self esteem expects you to lick your own wounds and heal yourself and come to her for some happy blissful swigs.

I have often mused, it must be this rejection that she does at her doorstep that turns many a heartbroken lover straight into the arms of loneliness.

Some days when I get time to stand still and look at myself in the mirror…I see a very bright ornament on my bare neck…My solitude…. bright and embedded with temperately cut stones…the brightest of ornaments that I have… Reflecting on the simple inspiration that she has been for me all along…

I stopped...to turn!

Through the haze that someone else calls life….I saw the yellow post-it note on a breezy Monday morning. Scribbled in my boss’ scrawny handwriting it threw an impromptu punch to my gut.

“Story on Kerala-need it by next week.cheers.Roy”


I threw the remnants of a wrinkled cigarette on the carpeted floor and watched it angrily burn through the blue fibre of the carpet. I could feel the bile rising within me as the post-it note crumpled helplessly in my clenched fist. The bile of something already churned and digested in some past life now made me feel like retching.

It all starts with the kind of promises you make over tiny heavily finger printed mannappams (mud cakes) and athil ithil games. The kind where one chubby hand opens up to take her Amma’s(Mother) hand and there is a quick “Promise, ok” exchanged before you hold hands and run indoors leaving the setting sun behind and just before Achen (Father) comes searching for you….

Today, it looks like somebody else’s life. The chubby hands have grown to be long slender ones. The eyes more sceptic. The eyebrows narrower. They say the smoking and drinking has sunken my 28 year old eyes further down pushing me way up the chronological scale. I could care less. That brings me to something else about me. I generally don’t care.

Memories are like the spotless thoughts that cannot bear to travel through your mind again because of the muck….

I threw my head back and I could see the swirling shapes come again….like some supersonic game of Venus rings…concentric circles that refused to slow down…and then the circles gave way to a wisp of smoke that played with my senses….It had the fragrance of wet earth…the one which I loved breathing in and growing around….the soft mud that held those chubby feet and lovingly etched footprints to mark existence…
“Passengers boarding AI 987 to Cochin please assemble at gate no. 4.”

How typical, I thought. A trip down memory lane and your thoughts get interrupted by a ground staff’s automated voice. After what seemed like hours, I sensed Kerala…. the effervescent Pookalam (floral carpet) that greeted me at the airport was the first sign. I frowned. It was Thiruonam.and I didn’t even know it was September. Disconnect when deliberately made sometimes snatches away large morsels of time from your hands.

I bend to feel an array of vaadamulla flowers (bright purple flowers that are used to decorate the floral carpet during the Onam festival.). I stood up as a rivulet of goosebumps appeared on my arm. Nostalgia was making an appearance like never before.

“Vegam…Vegam”(Hurry, Hurry) Gayathri chechi would urge us little ones as the first ray of dawn hit the horizon. Sleepily, we would hurry pulling the petals off the huge pile of flowers by our side.” And no leaves, mind you!” she would chide in between. I was always given the vaadamulla pile as its tiny head called for tiny chubby hands. Even as I got busy amma would push a ball of rich curry enticed ball of rice into my mouth much to my distaste.

A bearded old man in a shabby “once-upon-a-time” white uniform and a peaked cap that threatened to fall off any minute appeared from nowhere and held an ironically impeccable white placard that screamed “MISS INDU”. I looked at the holder of the placard and smiled warmly. On perfect cue, he rushed over and hustled my baggage away to a waiting car.

I knew that the journey would add on to my list of haunting melodies even before I started it. I was not wrong. I couldn’t be. As I stepped out, a nauseous wave of agony hit me through the fragrance that enveloped me.

Often stopping to appreciate décor whenever I checked into hotel rooms, it never struck me to glance around. Neither did jetlag. I packed my backpack, had a bite and was about to step outside when I met the driver again at the door.

I stopped to smile then instinctively realised he was waiting for me.

I threw him a puzzled look. He walked over, looked at me closely, “Madam, I have met many people who come back to see their village and their place. They have many emotions but yours are the saddest eyes I have ever seen.”

I barely smiled and nodded.

The noise of a weather beaten auto rickshaw,scissored through our conversation and turned to stop by my side. A young thing that barely had stubbles asked me where I wanted to go.

I stopped in front of my “tharavaadu”, (mansion) its majesty calling out to me from a distance…its ornate roof never known to bend before anyone…just like Achen.

“Kolethey kuttiya?” (Are you the daughter of the house?”) queried the rickshaw driver curiously standing at an odd angle with his mundu stuck somewhere between his legs.

I nodded nonchalantly trying to fish out money from my purse.

“No…I don’t want your money. I have heard that your birth is a cursed one. I have just brought my vehicle. Sorry.” He narrowed his eyes, gave me one last look and turned his vehicle off down the road while my frozen look disappeared with him .

“Ammmmmmmmaaaaa…” the cherubic girl shouts and twirls around in her green and maroon bordered pattu paavada, all of 6 years and wet with delight as her silver anklets joyfully chime to the feel of water and to her imaginary dance steps…Wait till Amma sees that she can shout and go around in circles as well….

A young lady’s voice rings out from the insides of a palatial “Tharavaadu”…. the beckoningly orange brick roof that over the years has disciplined the virgin rain to run down it’s inviting troughs and curves before obediently diving into the bubbling water and the gamut of pebbles below. The lady soon comes into view beside one of the huge white pillars of the house…. her wet hair loosely tied into a knot…. the end of her black margined mundu and veshti tucked at her waist taut enough to give a peep of her slim fair waistline….

“Indutttyyy…” the young woman steps out into the rain and calls out for her daughter as she loosens the end from her waist and covers her head in a mock attempt to keep the rains away…She finds her 6 year old beside a bend coconut tree dancing to some imaginary tune…It is only a moment’s displeasure that she can show, before she also joins her daughter and the rain in their very special world….”You are my blessing” are the last words she whispers into her daughter’s ears…

No, Amma…. your daughter is a curse. I murmured my voice choked for words.

And then it rained.

That’s when I stopped short for words.

I sat on the wet ground and grabbed a handful of mud and made a sloppy pancake…not perfect oval ones like Amma’s soft hands would make…

“Promise me that you’ll always come back to me wherever you go.” she would whisper holding a muddy hand before me….”

“Promisssseee Ammmaaa…” I would slap both my chubby hands into her hand and yell back in glee.

My manappam stayed long enough for me to catch a waft of the fresh earth before the rain let it slide gently from my fingers leaving just a shade of muddy brown.

All of a sudden like the afternoon burst, my emotions gave way and I felt icicles from my memory prick me and bleed me all over….

And then I cried. Loudly…louder than the rain god….louder than the fate which took the 6 year old’s parents away…louder than the drone of the drugs that swam in my stomach….louder than the silent hatred and sarcasm that raised the girl into the woman…louder than the pain of my existence….louder than me….

“Am back amma….I have kept my promise amma…” I shouted as I thrust my face into the muddy spread, which gave way to shout my sorrow, but embraced me close enough for me to hear the song that can come only from a mother’s lips….

And I saw the little girl run indoors straight into her amma’s arms… sucking a sliver of dry tamarind slyly between her lips and her head buried in the fragrant bosom…

I was home…and amma waited for me….

I had a haircut

I had a haircut.

Now I can imagine the mundanity you attach with that statement, And for those who bother to read further on you may have a nasal snort of “Oh-its-the bad haircut story-again” already made because it’s only about bad haircuts that one tends to write about. Nobody’s haircut story ever written starts with “ I had an excellent haircut”, for excellence is seen and admired and re-cut again.

But the ones written about are the ones who have literally lost hair over lost hair!!!

I have always been a victim to the ways of the inexperienced. Does that make me experienced? Never! For the impulsive Sagittarian hates the word “experience”. It makes her feel old and predictable….

And now the experienced scissor tale of inexperience begins….

BEFORE:

Luscious long black hair upto my waist…. I stood as a symbolic modern representation to all that’s good and true about Kerala…including the heart-stopping plait that can sway only to the tunes of shapely hips and the sickle curve of a strand of hair that can only hide behind a well-shaped ear lobe….

AFTER:

Small naughty curls bouncing in all possible directions…I stood as a symbolic representation of all that was Greek and true about Medusa and her head…including the heart wrenching tad of a strand of hair that notoriously hugged my forehead and the riot of curls that rode over the rest of what was once my head.

IN BETWEEN:

“Mmm…no not the Beckham one…Vic or Dav.” I mumbled as I leafed through page after page of what seemed like an endless book of “The latest” in haircuts or the lack of them. Beyond those series of photos and beneath the head that hardly swallowed them in, there lay a nagging disturbing thought; the kind that doesn’t appreciate new things always.

I was in a new city and I detested the prospect of surrendering my crown and money to somebody who couldn’t make out the difference between either but when you have an important meeting to attend the next day and the ends of your hair look more frayed than your nerves...desperation and impulsiveness become siblings.

Considerations conceived promises, became pregnant as trials and gave birth to a heady argument. After a mutual questioning of basics in profession and ethics, I stormed out distraught and certainly visibly dishevelled.

NEXT DAY:
“First day at work” was no better what with colleagues giving shocked looks from slivers in the cubicles. The silence was unbearable. I finally pushed my desk away and yelled, “Did somebody press the MUTE button in here.”
Trrrring.Boss.

“First you come in looking like something the cat dragged in last night and then you scream the roof down, who the hell do you think are lady?” was what I expected.

What I got:
“Now, now Indu…I know the last week has been real trying for you what with you single-handedly leading the project. But no amount of stress should make a man inflict bodily harm on himself.”

Poised liquidy convincing eyes looked at eyes wide open with mouth to match,

“Boss, are you trying to say that I PULLED out my hair b’cos of the stress?”

“Well, dear,um…er…not in so many words but …er…” Boss places his “Best Entrepreneur Award” plaque before him and slinks somewhere behind it.

For the second time that year…. I stormed out!

TODAY:

Weeks later, here I am pasted by sticky gel and cornered by bob pins. Not to mention smothered by sympathetic looks and feeling like something out of a recycle bin with all the helpful suggestions pouring in…Nobody dare disturb as they see me hurriedly thumping at my keyboard with an urgency like never before….

“I had a hair cut.”