LoC - referring to line of control, the border between India and Pakistan that is not the one legally awarded but one post many incursions and wars when India was not able to push back the invading Pakistan, due mainly to international pressure for India to let go - is a story taken from a collection of stories (Half a Rupee: Stories) by Gulzar, and offered here as an independent read, from part three.
LoC is about how relationships on the two sides are more complex, with not only families that were split apart at partition but old friends that ended up on different sides, and have only love for one another while they are fighting skirmishes and battles regularly or otherwise, especially when there is a politician visiting the border or someone from across the border fires at Indian posts.
Major Kulwant Singh discovers that his subordinate is getting the delicacies he loves from across the border, and what is more from home of the opposing army, where the subordinate's relative happens to be an old friend of the major. But a battle happens just as the major has arranged for the old friend's mother to visit his own family and to be conducted to the shrine at Ajmer; he dies in the skirmish.
Gulzar to some extent and Sahir Ludhianavi to a far more committed extent were leftists - Sahir was about to be arrested for h in his chosen or default home in the other part of India as it was before independence, and had to escape to India as it is post independence, and yet he said it was lucky for Mumbai to have him, rather than admitting he was lucky he could get away and not be arrested to spend life in jail, rather than the respect and fame and prestige and satisfactory work he had during his life in India. Gulzar in that tradition sympathises with a suicide bomber who plans to blow up a prime minister, and writes a story and publishes it, apart from a film or more he made on the topic.
Wonder if they had courage enough to battle for Malala and her ilk. Easy to target a democracy, especially one that does not penalise you for being in minority politically.
Saturday, March 29, 2014.
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