Ek revolutionary ki mauth…

I took some time to write about Kanu Sanyal, one of the fathers of what is arguably the only genuine revolutionary insurrection in post-independence India. I took some time to write about his death not only because it was a suicide but also because writing about the death of a revolutionary means bringing in his life as well…

Kanu Sanyal was found hanging in his house, at the same place that saw the break of the Spring Thunder in 1967. The end seemed almost poetic, but then you need a Neruda for to make poetry. All that the old warrior had was a few columns in newspapers, one of whom actually described it his death as the “death of a top Naxal leader”, as if he was still in the neo-Naxalite movement…

In the end, all he had become was a blurry myth and a sad present, repudiated by those who carry his legacy and casually ignored by those who once feared him…the fate of all great men who did not die in the blaze of glory and whom history passed by in search of fresher and more photogenic heroes…

His death came a few days before the Naxalites massacred 76 CRPF jawans in an ambush, the biggest attack by them to date. The government and the Naxals have declared open war, in which for now, the government seems to be on the backfoot.

So, at a time that the Naxalites have become, officially, the biggest threat that this country has ever faced (J&K terrorism pales by comparison), with them having a presence in a quarter of the country, with their tentacles reaching out into urban centres as well, you would expect the symbol of the Naxalite movement to be satisfied. At least, the last thing you would expect him to do is to go hang himself…

But then you got to ask yourself – was he a Naxalite anymore? Maybe in his last moments he would have muttered to himself paraphrasing Marx who once famously said “If that is Marxism, then I am not a Marxist”…maybe he was aware that no matter what he did, the media and the society would fail to spot the difference between what he believed in and what the Naxalites today believe in.

The Naxalism that arose from the simple need to fight for dignity slowly became a movement in which violence, not justice (which is an abstract term anyway) became the priority for maintaining momentum. It became a movement in which poor must remain poor in order for having a raison d'etre for the movement.

If an insurrection goes on for too long, it begins to look like what it intends to supplant. Maybe that's what Kanu Sanyal saw and realized.

When Naxals make pacts with dodgy politicians and when they start to blow up schools, when Naxals become the tipping factors in elections by way of fear, when they begin to claim glorious victory by killing CRPF men who have been pushed to be cannon fodder, maybe he realized that it was a war for its own means – a never ending war in which the people to be killed will be the ones whom he wanted to give a different life all those years ago…

Maybe the end came for him much before the noose tightened. Maybe at the end he had had enough of the power that flows out of the barrel of the gun…

Maybe its time to mourn him as we mourn those great visionaries who dreamt big and tried to live upto that dream, no matter how much the rug was pulled under them.

That takes courage…so does preparing a rope for yourself…

RIP Kanuda…

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Why wait?

The title, of course, takes its name from the famous suicide note of George Eastman when he wrote the reason for taking his life as “My work here is finished, why wait?”

I have often wondered at the irony. Almost all of us blunder around life trying to find a reason for all that we do. Looking as an outsider at the melee that our life, haven’t we all, in secret or in the open, despaired at finding some purpose in what we do. If we have to be a little poetic, don't we wonder for what are all our tears, our hopes, our desires, our jealousies, our camaraderie, our romances and everything that makes up the small jigsaws?

I sometimes feel that our mind and our consciousness boggles at the vastness of our existence, which is why we find comfort in the small mercies of life – a person who loves us and a person who allows us to love him or her, our family (for the lucky ones who have a completely normal family i.e.) and the present circle of friends (which have a higher turnover than ever before) and willingly ascribe our time and thought to targets we set for ourselves – passing the next exam, marriage, retirement and so on. This prevents us from simply breaking apart at the realization of our smallness in the onrush of history.

So when Eastman kills himself because he has finished his work, I have to admire him. It takes genius to know what our purpose is and it takes guts to admit to oneself that our usefulness is over and that’s all that there is to it. Maybe the famed human tenacity is nothing but clinging on and hoping for the unknown, still trying to find purpose in the face of onslaught of death.

Which is when I wonder. If I ever face what Eastman faced at the time he decided his fate, how would I like to move on, bring on the final scene so to say?

First of all I want to do it alone; jumping off a bridge or a building or stepping in front of a train is absolutely out of the question. First of all because I think I would like to greet death in solitude and also because I want an elegant death – if I have taken care of myself while I lived, why the hell would I want to depart mangled or smashed.

Secondly since it’s a very pre-determined objectively thought out decision (I am doing a Eastman, remember!), I would like to prepare myself well, which means I want to kill myself on a full stomach; since I like to eat the good stuff, depending on what I feel like eating then, I would go to the best place that offers it (and if I hesitate, I would suddenly remember saving money makes no sense anymore :)).

I will then write a nice moving farewell letter to all those I love and hope they understand why I must do what I must do. I think I might like to write a poem but will take a call then; if I feel that the whole killing myself drama is getting too melodramatic, I think I will finish with the letter but write a poem anyway and keep that as a backup (what if the original letter flies out of the window or something; I want my last words fame too!!)

And then, I would read “The Gift of the Magi” and remind myself that life is beautiful because people like the two people in the story actually exist (and flatter myself by saying that I am one of them – er almost was!!).

Then when it is late night and everything is silent, I would play Dylan and die. My only wish then would be to die at the exact moment that “Mr Tambourine Man” fades away.

Well, takes all kinds to make a blog don’t it? ;)

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