WHEN I MARK MYSELF SAFE
“Marked
Safe”!!!!
I saw this status of a
young boy on FB. This young boy is the only son of one of our dear friends. He
had migrated to this beautiful land of New Zealand barely a couple of months
ago…
He is a Muslim!
A large family of three
brothers, which lived in the same building as I have my institute, has
completely migrated to New Zealand – three brothers, their wives and children…
All men and their wives are working and all children have completed their
studies over there, and are now working there…
They are Sindhis!
Yes, I saw their
status, too, yesterday… ‘Marked Safe’!
When the Bombay bomb
blasts happened in 1993, our son (who is going to be 27 this September) was
just a baby. My wife and I had been on a holiday to the lovely Kim beach… We
had booked the MTDC tent-facility. It was a weekend and there were many guests,
including some from abroad. We loved the quiet ambiance so much that we decided
to stay one night more and leave on Tuesday. We least expected, that on Monday
night the place would look so deserted… It was scary to spend that night in a tent…
At about 11 in the
night, we heard the voice of a woman just outside our tent…
“Who is that?” My wife
asked anxiously…
“Lisa, here,” replied
the woman…
Lisa was a young British
citizen, who was on an official visit to Mumbai. She had chosen to take a short
break… and, she was alone. During the earlier two days, she had come quite
closer to my wife. She was particularly fond of our little son and would have
great fun chatting with him…
So, when we heard “It’s
Liza here,” my wife immediately switched the light on and we both went out…
“What happened Lisa?”
my wife was concerned…
“I am scared to be
alone in the tent,” said Liza fear writ large on her face.
My wife looked at me…
Our baby son was fast asleep. I said, “Don’t worry Lisa… My wife will be with
you in the tent.”
“I feel bad about it,”
Lisa was apologetic. But, then, this young - highly educated and cultured - British
woman was here in our country as our guest…
Who she really was?
Was it safe for us?
Well, those thoughts
did not cross through our minds at all…
The next day morning,
while having our breakfast together (we were the only guests left at the
resort!), Lisa was very appreciative and thankful to us. She spoke more about
her, gave us her business card and warmly invited us to stay at her London home
whenever we planned a trip to London…
It was the month of January.
On March 12 - a Friday afternoon - twelve bombs exploded at several spots in
our city and over 250 innocent people died… The images were being flashed on
the TV screens… FB, WhatsApp, YouTube,
Twitter, Instagram were not yet born…
Late that night, we received
a call on our landline…
It was Lisa from London…
She wanted to check if we all were safe in this city…
Yes, mercifully, we all
were!
Lisa was relived. She,
once again, invited us to stay with her whenever we visited London…
I was so moved by the
blasts, that I expressed my feelings in a small booklet and published it the
following month… I titled it – ‘From the Cold Ashes’!
I had been, always,
inspired by the legend of this mysterious bird, Phoenix. The legend has it,
that it lived over five hundred years before it chose to dive into the fire and
die… only to rise from its cold ashes, buoyant, all over again!
So, in the little
booklet, ‘From the Cold Ashes’, I had used the imagery of this legendary bird…
which died in the fire and rose again from the cold ashes…
I saw hope in the
devastation… Meaning in the senselessness… Life in death!
Why do acts of terror
keep on happening?
Who are these young men
and women that are assigned to kill the innocent people and kill themselves?
What do they believe
in?
Is there a hope?
Well, I don’t know… I
am just a mortal, with my human fears and hopes… Just the way Lisa was scared
that night to stay alone in her tent, thousands of miles away from her home… I,
too, feel afraid whenever terror strikes
anywhere – 9/11 or 26/11… Pulwama or
Christchurch…
Terror has no face! The
terrorists have no religion or God… They are blindly misguided, brainwashed…
radicalized…
I shudder in my soul
every time we thump our chests in the name of our religions or land… Extreme
beliefs are extremely dangerous… They are the potential wombs of terrorism…
The toxic debates that
we witness before we go to sleep…
The explosive messages
that we read and forward so incessantly and so rampantly… In cold-blood!
Where are we? Who are
we?
How different are we
from those who bomb?
If God’s place is not
safe, which place on earth is?
But, I still see hope…
I still refuse to believe that God is dead!
Yes, I do feel the
scare when I say this, too… when I mark myself safe!
Pic.: CNN
Video: Global News
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