Preserve

 

What merits expression? The only person who used to read these with any sort of regularity and tell me about it was my sister. Now they are in jail. Nothing I do seems to be enough to get them out in post-rule-of-law India. It has always been beyond me what motivates them to consistently put themselves in harm’s way fully aware that this is state is by design hostile to people like them.

What is the point of writing anything at all? I have spent most of this year looking for something to look forward to. The closest I have got is looking forward to Wafi getting out of jail; they were already not in jail to begin with. Even prospective joy is about restoring status quo ante, not improvement in any real sense. On the contrary, even after they are out, things will not be as they are before. Like I’ve said in previous blogs, the wrong kinds of documents will now follow them, and follow them for a long time.

Running around trying to find empathy in a city predisposed to rudeness and hostility is not how I expected to be ending this year. That while breathing poison. If I were to take stock of this year, if 2024 me were to meet 2025 me, I think he would shoot me. In all honesty, I would not be disinclined to make sure he aimed at my temple.

I watched ‘The 400 Blows’ Today. The movie is an incredibly sincere look at the alienating experience of childhood, an experience exacerbated by the wanton disregard with which every adult Antoine interacts with treats him. It reminded me – apart from my own childhood – of reading Catcher in the Rye. It also reminded me of The Holdovers, a movie I watched on Christmas Eve a couple of years ago (and will probably do so again this year). There’s a line that has continued to follow me: “You can’t even dream a whole dream, can you?” I don’t think I can. There is hardly a worse feeling than articulating a desire and never getting it. It is safer not to want, not to hope, to accept that you’re someone life happens to, and try not to militate against it at the expense of your well-being. But Wafi is not like that; they refuse to take wrongs sitting down. Freezing for a few weeks in the hard prison floors is a price they are prepared to pay. They turn the wheels of history; I might be lucky enough to read about it one day. Or luckier still, 2024 me might be waiting around the corner.