THE DAY INDEPENDENCE DAWNED

Times of India front page on that first Independence Day

Glancing back several decades ago. 

HIROSHIMA DAY

It took place seventy-one years ago. They dropped an atom bomb on Hiroshima this day – the 6^th of August. The devastation and other effects are vividly portrayed in the Peace Memorial at Hiroshima.

My visit to the Peace Memorial at Hiroshima had a powerful effect on me and I wrote this piece that sleepless night.

NEW CLEAR

chandrashekhar  sastry

It was to be my first visit to Japan and I was excited.  I would be able to meet up with an old friend Zuenkosan who, many years ago, studied Tagore in the Shantiniketan University.  She used to amaze me with Bengali haiku sung in the style of Tagore’s music.  I remembered her delicate face more like a fragile flower, her carefully done coiffure, the jet black hair shining in the sun, the small paces with which she ran up to the Arts Block and the stately pirouette when she turned. 

On a hot June afternoon we marched with thousands of demonstrators.  We sang with thousands of demonstrators; we sang of our dread of Strontium 18, its insidious effects routed through milk and the threat to our children of the future.  We sang against the tests in Pokhran; we sang against the callous calculations by the eggheads computing the megadeaths to be produced by that infernal flash of hellfire and by its radiation.  We sang of Life, of men and women marching together; we sang that we shall overcome.

We were young and joyous and we had an inexhaustible faith in a future free of the threat of nuclear weapons.  We were sure we could make that future happen.  We were in love with Life. We danced in joy, in celebration of the meaning of Life; we would negate the Bomb and its colossal killings for it was the mindless expression of tired and tyrannical old men who have not loved and who know not the meaning of Life. 

Whenever I thought of Zuenko I remembered our long march.

~

I had some business in Hiroshima. The porcelain faced people, the staccato language, fairy-tale surroundings and novel mannerisms, sometimes gauche, often graceful had me conveyed into a different world.  On the Sunday, Zuenkosan offered to take me around Hiroshima.  The skeleton building directly below the bomb that exploded in the sky, inexplicably spared destruction though every other structure had been razed, the stream where thousands had gathered seeking relief, on to manicured greens, characteristically landscaped clumps of trees, patches of flowerbeds and elegantly planned gravel footpaths; we were approaching a slight knoll.

“A memorial to the very young soldiers.”

“The Kamikaze?”

“Yes, have you heard of them?”

   I nodded.  Schoolchildren trained to fly bombs with wings grafted on in a cruel symbiosis to produce homing missiles.  Did this bring about a karmic retribution?  I quickly dismissed the banal thought.  A huge bronze bell, gifted by India, had Sanskrit inscriptions and a little further, set in a slightly depressed arena, the Peace Memorial building stood elevated on stilts.  Zuenkosan would not enter.  I was to be guided by a taped commentary.

   Nothing could have prepared me for this experience.  Half-tone blowups in compelling compositions screening an awesome range of destruction and brutally raw vignettes of corporeal suffering.  I moved mechanically, too hurt for expression.  Among the viewers no private whisper, no ‘look at this’ nudge, no pointing finger, no gasp of surprise.  Misshapen bottles, giant beams grotesquely twisted like straw, molten stone, an oversized black fingernail grown like a sprouting bean, radiation charred clothing, all the debris that an unearthly, hellish, indiscriminate fury had in a moment’s unleashing inflicted on Hiroshima.  Statistics, numbers affected then and numbers continuing to be affected long after that infernal lightning flashed overhead.

Out onto a verandah, released from that prison of memories that mankind should never erase, I found in a visitor’s book:

“Why?~

“Never again”

“I feel so ashamed.”

A litany of sorrow, anger and contrition.  I understood why Zuenkosan had stayed back.

She was strolling below as I came down and silently joined her in her aimless ambling.  The beauty of the surroundings appeared more intense; the falling leaf, the waving flower atop a tall stem, blue sky and billowing clouds, the smell of mown grass, the caress of a warm sun and a child’s tinkling laughter.  Slowly the present forced itself on me but it was a good half-hour before I could speak.

~

Zuenkosan had called me home for dinner.  The taxi I hailed was given the slip with her address written in Japanese.  It sailed through the city passing several streets with the cherry blossom abloom.  Zuenko had always studied, admiringly, the Shantiniketan flowers; the hibiscus, the lotus in the pond, the fragrant jasmine and shephali. When I reached her house, I was captivated by a beautiful creeper with purple flowers on the trellis. She opened the door and smiled a welcome.  It was the first time I was seeing her in a silk kimono. She looked statuesque.

I found myself unable to talk about the Peace Memorial but said how moved I was by the experience.  She gave a wise nod but made no comment. I had removed shoes and sat effortlessly on the tatami mat. A small photo album had photographs from Shantiniketan. Some of them had me in the picture.  After a little bustle between the kitchen and the room, she too sat down.  The tempura she served was simply exquisite.  The light batter teasingly veiled the bare-flesh pink of the prawn.  It gently imploded in the mouth thrusting forth the succulent prawn even as it crisply receded in the background. The sake` with its keen rinse cleansed the taste buds, arousing them in anticipation of another morsel. 

Shabu Shabu was a more sophisticated affair. Seaweed was steeped in a bowl over a flame, little pieces of vegetable and fish, even thinly sliced Kobe beef laid out. A variety of sauces was found in little porcelain bowls, besides the mandatory horseradish and the soya.  We spoke of food, of her studies in India and of my visit to Japan.  At the end of the meal, the bowl of seaweed into which the morsels of food had been dipped and cooked, served as a drink.  It ummarized the whole meal, little flavours of each portion coming up for review.

~

Zuenkosan knew that I had visited the huge factory on the other side of the hill, which produced airplanes and armaments during the war. 

“No more planes and armaments,” she said, “The treaty forbids Japan.” I mentioned that the factory now specialised in machine tools. 

“It hardly matters,” she went on, “Our Forces for Self Defence are very strong and we can deal with the neighbouring countries quite easily.”  Her eyes had narrowed and her thin lips had firmed. 

“We have all the knowledge and the technology necessary to produce missiles and to produce nuclear weapons,” she said, clearly, firmly and, I thought, stubbornly.

“I am sure you have,” I acknowledged.

I thanked her after the meal, immeasurably sad at her remarks.  Her reactions to my mention of the large factory on the other side of the hill were so puzzling.   She was very different from the Zuenko who studied in Shantiniketan.  I was glad she went into the kitchen to make coffee, as I sat musing. It pleased me that she remembered my distaste for green tea. The coffee was strong and the aroma lavishly elegant and refined.  At my first sip the tender old feelings flooded my mind. 

“Zuenko,” I said,“Life is many-splendoured and love is a beautiful emotion.   Do not let the wash of hatred or vengeance sour them.” I stretched out and held her hand.  “Do you remember we marched in Calcutta a few years ago against the Indian government’s atomic bombs?” 

She turned to me; her eyes were misty.  She was sipping coffee, eyes fixed on me.

“Don’t look back and feel bitter.  Don’t look ahead and feel fear.”  I knew it sounded hackneyed. She was placing the cup down and I saw her hand trembling. I arose to say goodbye, adding: 

“I will not accept, my dear, that we have failed.  Together, we have to produce another Buddha, another Prince of Peace.”

As I raised her hand to my lips in farewell, I heard her whisper, “Don’t go yet.”

I was silent for a while. “Yes, Zuenko, ‘We shall overcome’ was not idle prophesy. See, it is happening.”

Her eyes met mine and she smiled as she daintily recited an extempore haiku in Bengali:

She marched out of step.

His hand waved fingers twitching

She fell in step again

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