Fifteen Days in Orissa, a travelogue in the Summer of 2012

Prolog (Contd)

I take a shower and we take a quick lunch.  My nephew has taken the day off to accompany me to visit the British Museum in which I have my personal interest to learn about me and the country of my origin.   I think every young person should be interested in finding their identity, but such luxury is not easily procured.  We take train and reach the Museum about 1 PM.  It's a massive place, buildings are again constructed in some arbitrary way around a colossal courtyard, the entrances to the buildings appear disconnected.  The British culture does like the maze style discoveries.  Various foreign groups were being escorted by guides, which is a good profession to help find your way among the strange array of numbered buildings.  We arrive at the South Asia section and I was pleased with the display.  There were exquisite carvings, beautifully made metal and ivory objects, broken religious artifacts from the temple walls and some complete stone structures completely reassembled on site.  I wonder why people take time to lift items from another country.  I marvel at the beauty and the grandeur of the display.  I have told my children when they were small that we could be genetically artistic in nature.  I look at my hands and don't think I would have patience to create any of the objects I see in display.  Indians think art is a God's gift.  I am curious why God stopped giving gifts.

Here I see objects from my area in India, the Buddhist remnants, old scripted palm leaf drawings, beautiful hard wood door panels, spears, axes, and in that shelf some prehistoric artifacts.  I learn about my history, so I am in England.  Time is limited, museum closes at 5 PM.   

We walk to Covent Garden nearby to wait for another nephew of mine who works as an officer in a Bank.  Because of his responsibility in work, he couldn't take off time and can only see us after work.  His father is a younger brother to me and has been sick with a traumatic head injury for a couple of years now.  My nephew takes care of him with diligence and patience through visits and resources.  Sandeepan and I camp ourselves in a rustic looking food place and order some juice and sandwich.  The second nephew Masoom shows up and we three feel at home in the company.  Masoon is a poised and serious individual, I like his approach to life.  We chat on life, society, people, India and England; we share views.  I listen to them and enjoy their discourse.  Masoom volunteers to escort me to the airport.  I have to take the flight to Delhi in the night.  We take the train and reach the airport at 9 PM.  Now, my time with the maze towards the gate.  This time I have security check, which becomes unusually swift.  I proceed to the gate to take the flight at 10:30 PM.

Fifteen Days in Orissa, a travelogue in the Summer of 2012

Prolog- Contd

I reach London 19th July morning, 7 AM.  London Heathrow Airport is always like a zoo, with a maze of alleys, subways, stairs, "no entry"s, pathways winding miles before anything interesting may happen.  The interesting thing that happens is someone shouting to advise to stay in lane or go to a lane.  Some brown-skinned suited individuals with airport badges also walk around trying to keep order in the enormous traffic.  The traffic converges from all parts of the planet, some may look like coming from Mars!  Attires, hairdos, ornaments, men in tunics, women in cloaks; colorful, strange, a sight to behold.  Somewhere there could be a potential terrorist, a new group that has emerged in the modern world.  London has witnessed terrorism before and it's alert in the morning.  Olympics are round the corner, and London is trying its best to be a good host.

We land up in an enormous hall.  There are two lanes now, one for people who belong to the European Union; and the other for everyone else.  I see a third lane at the end saying Fast Track.  Since I would be in London only till the evening, I thought that lane was right for me.  I asked an Officer and who returned a question what country I had the passport from.  Getting my answer, he directed me to the fattest line, the second one, and I am now the last after a thousand or so tired individuals.  Lines move in the slowest pace, then suddenly a massive Chinese group is escorted to the front.  The athletes have priority,

the Chinese have shown up to acclimatize themselves to London climate.  Money can do good things to a country.  The group makes various noises expressing confusion, but does get done after a couple of senior looking men show up and handle the noise.

To stay in line in airports is an interesting experience.  Some look totally tense, some look resigned, some others give a gleeful "it's the way" look.  Most women smile if you exchange glance with them.  Elderly and youthful men smile.  Ethnic men look away, "no business" type.  The strangely dressed men, who could be kings in some jungle clan, give a look of despair.  They are certainly used to better service in their serfdom.  Most interesting are men with multiple women tagging along; it didn't occur to me that the women could be the man's wives; he has multiple halves.  I had made friends with an elderly group from New Zealand, people returning from a "spiritual mission" to India.  Many such groups from Australia and New Zealand do humanitarian work in the hill areas in India and look for potential people who may convert to Christianity.  They seemed like jolly people, but their reason for "converting" people could be the part of their joy! 

I clear myself out of the jungle and now go through the Customs.  Then I come another sudden open space that happens in all airports.  In Boston, they have made the space friendly with recessed lighting, high ceilings and wall sculptures.  In London it's neon and people; another zoo.  I notice my nephew Sandeepan who lives in London.  He is a part of new breed that is imported from India to advance countries to the electronic age.  With the amount of imports, one would think that India might have reached high edge in electronics, but that's not the case.  Indian boys and girls seem to have to have aptitude for logic and numbers, and work in computers is a god-send to India.  It's a new kind of business, there are many middle men involved; Romney's model to make money sitting in Cayman Islands.  India has entered the power game, some others make money because of it.

We take a cab and reach my nephew's apartment after a ninety minute ride.  I meet his wife, another computer professional, and their new born son.  I love their style and approach to life.  To be a young person of Indian origin is a blessing and curse together.  It's a blessing because of the enormous affection that's germane in Indian society, and a curse because the lock of opportunities to train oneself while growing up.  While one is better than any young person anywhere in the world, the individual remains limited in thinking and constrained in scope.  The British engineered education system in India to create clerks for their administration, the system is still pervasive.  There is happiness if one gets a decent leaving.  There is acceptance of not carrying the royal blood. 

Fifteen Days in Orissa, a travelogue in the Summer of 2012

Prolog

It’s not clear what’s our identity as a human being and to whom we should be accountable.  We are born in a certain family and at a certain location.  For a long time, we get nurtured by the family we are born with and we develop attachment to the area that we grew up in.  So we develop an emotional identity to make us feel at “home” at a setting that attracts us and lets us meet our friends with whom we had childhood association.  A child has a smaller world, and hence most experiences etch in child’s memory. Through enabling the revisit of the memory amidst friendly associates, we feel child-like again.  Possibly the child in us never grows up and the ado and the power we display later are plainly vain and trivial. Living and laughing as a child is the greatest blessing a human being can ask for in life.

While growing up in small town Cuttack, I had another aspect to my life not easily available to many.     My father would hide in low thatched huts in paddy fields a few miles from our home and I would have to struggle to figure a face inside the overflowing beard.  Little did I know that this is a sacrifice people do to build a nation in order to give rights to human beings.  My mother, dainty she was, was right in ally with this drama.  Then meetings would happen, flowers would be thrown, songs would be sung and father would be home for a few months until the next episode began.  I am not sure who controlled these episodes and why my father was volunteering for this adventure, I never asked.  All in the family and all in the neighborhood loved him and I loved him too.  Not many in similar situations had a family or a son.  A son to my father became my identity.

When I learned to read and could read newspapers, I learned that I had certain rights by virtue of the language I spoke.  I would go with my mother or an uncle to the sand bed of Kathjodi  river to hear some of the most prolific speeches made in my language.  I loved the fluency; I loved the sincerity of each of the speakers.  Good language is nectar to a young person of seven years of age.  I saw that with my children, I see that with my granddaughter who just crossed six years of age.  Language is curiosity, it creates imagination.  Seven is the connecting age to the universe.  The sonority of the speech however would not bring father to dinner at home, but to a jail cell somewhere.  The boy’s life gets confused again with a missing father.  Meetings would continue; others would speak; protests would proliferate till someone died through a police gun shot.  These were rebellion days in the new-born democracy, each group asserting identity, asking for security.   It’s not clear if the person volunteered to die or was a bystander.  A sacrifice brings results; Orissa got most of its demands in the new demarcation.

This forms my identity as a human being with the added responsibility of what I do with it.  Does it help me or hurt me?  Do I have a choice?  Should I not feel happy at a place which accepts me?  Why do I go anywhere else?  Is it to feed myself or to evaluate my identity?  Do I compete in the world or do I feel happy to survive?  Do I exploit my identity or do I nurture it?  Do I have a duty towards the people who gave me my identity?  Do I have a duty for that boy who died in creating my identity?  Questions come, but I always suppressed them.  Life doesn’t allow us to answer questions.  Many times we pretend not to know them.  Life creates situations and doesn’t give us enough intelligence to sort out.  Most often we get tired and die before having an opportunity to look back at life.  Many times life looks ugly and we try to forget the past.  Rarely, we gather courage to observe our traced path and check what’s left. By the time we think of our teachers, most are dead.   The design of the universe is not one of gratitude but that of survival.  A slight instability and you lose your ground.  Most look at the ground and possibly five feet around.  To look at a tree is a rare privilege indeed! 

If you keep a thought in mind, opportunity shows up.  So was the summer of 2012.  I lost my father in 2000 and my mother in 2009.  I had to observe my personal family to determine if they forgave me for my less than adequate dutifulness over the years.  I had to gather the spiritual energy in me to look back at the boy of seven in those Kathjodi sands.  I had to extrapolate the enthusiasm that created my identity some fifty five years ago.  I had to meet hundreds of my brothers, sisters and friends.  I have to connect my world to theirs.  I have seen it before, but always constrained with the issues of the family and the problems associated with them.  Most from the Kathjodi sands have disappeared or live the last days somewhere in quiet.  We celebrate my father locally to claim that we didn’t forget.  We don’t have courage to bring all together.  We think somebody else would do, nobody does.   First time ever I visit with unconstrained open eyes.  I want to see, visit, hug, sing and dance.  I want to become a boy of seven.  I begin my journey on a Virgin Atlantic flight from Boston en route to London.   

    

Bijoy Misra

July 14, 2012

Lincoln, MA.

                                                                                                                                                                                … To continue.