What do you do when you come across a bitter reality or some statement which renders you speechless, and some thoughts which never leave you?
The strangeness in certain things is so complicated that you do not know why it makes you feel so uncomfortable. Why you do not have a reply to it – and what is it that you can’t even perceive after introspection?
Do your upbringing, surroundings, your books, your education – in a nutshell, everything around you when you were growing up – stop you from coming to conclusions?
Well, the answer is still not known, at least not to me. I am still confused and clueless.
This is an incident which happened when I was pursuing my Masters while staying in a 1-BHK apartment in the southernmost part of Bangalore. After a month full of mood swings, my level of concentration had just dropped to zero. I didn’t (or rather, couldn’t) even attend classes for a few days. During that time, one day, I was standing across the terrace wall with a cup of tea, watching the vehicles going across the NICE Road.
In the apartment beneath mine lived two brothers. I didn’t know the place from where they came. I came to know that they were from Kashmir when I met their sister who came to stay with them for a few days. She was a nice and pleasant girl who used to greet me with a ‘hi’ every time she saw me. But she was a little too shy and seemed just too scared in this fast-paced city.
That very day, when I was busy watching the traffic on the road, she came upstairs and saw me standing. As she was a really sweet girl, she said hello – and soon I realized how talkative she really was. She talked about how bored she was in this city and her nervousness at the prospect of going back alone on a flight.
I told her not to be nervous because there was no big deal in traveling alone. After all, she was a brave girl. In no time, she became even more comfortable talking to me and started sharing stuff about her family.
She asked me how many siblings I had and then told me she had two sisters and two brothers – and that their father was no more.
I was trying to say something, when she started speaking again – “One day, some people from the army came to our house and took my elder brother with them to show them the way. Our father came home and he was immensely scared by the fact that my brother had been taken somewhere. He went out to find out where he was. He was walking in the woods when someone from the army thought he could be a militant and shot him dead.” She added, “He was actually a government employee and therefore, they felt very guilty later.”
“They also asked us what we wanted – what kind of compensation did we need? But we said we did not need anything because what we have lost is gone – and we will never get him back. My elder brother takes care of us now.”
Judging by the politeness in her voice, I was not able to figure out if she was sorry for what had happened or simply satisfied with whatever she has now.
But I did not really understand what ‘compensation’ they talking about- the ‘compensation’ for life, or that for death? I really wonder what cost a human with no life could have had.
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