Every day, my six-year old daughter, who is a first
standard student in the GUPS, and I leave home together at 9 a.m.
Leaving her in the school, I go to the bus stop to catch my bus to
office. One day, I waited longer than I had to wait, but the bus was not
coming.
Then somebody who knows me came up and
asked, “Didn’t you know? There is a hartal in the panchayat area where
you work. Somebody stabbed to death somebody yesterday late in the
evening.”
The hartal was called by the political
party to which the deceased belonged, thinking that the other rival
party murdered him. (Later, when the culprit was nabbed, it turned out
that he also belonged to the same party and both the killed and the
killer were goondas).
Three days later, again buses
are not seen. A man was hacked and admitted to hospital. A hartal is
being observed en route to my office. I travelled around the hartal area
and reached office and in the evening took another route to home.
Instead of 7 km, I had to travel 40 km!
Again, two
days later, when I reached office everybody was coming out and the peon
was locking the entrance door! A party was observing a district-wide
hartal and it was on a communal issue.
Fortunately,
my wife was on leave as my daughter was suffering from wheezing and the
child was not sent to school. (All my colleagues were calling to their
homes to know whether their children had returned home from school.
Everybody was out of his/her home and stranded on the way!) We sat in
front of the office till the evening as refugees and somehow managed to
reach home.
The other day, my colleague, who comes
from another part of the district, called to say that he could not come
as there was a hartal in his area in protest against the murder of a
murderer.
These instant hartals deal with local
‘issues’. After having had to ‘celebrate’ three instant hartals within a
week, I was surprised to hear the news of a grand hartal (Statewide)
planned and declared three days in advance! It was against the proposals
for protecting the Western Ghats.
On the eve of the
grand hartals, there are long queues in front of Beverages Corporation
outlets and a heavy rush is seen in poultry shops. People are collecting
the necessary ingredients to celebrate the hartal.
If
you think hartals are anti-democratic and the people suffer greatly, no
political party will agree with you. Each one of them says the hartals
they observe are for the public good and those protests called by other
parties are against the public interest. Often, people are not bothered
even to know for what ‘cause’ the hartal is being observed.
When
a hartal is observed, people including foreign tourists are stranded at
railway stations. Being forced to spend the whole day in a public space
without having anything to do, anything to eat, anything to drink is
something traumatic especially for children and women.
But,
the following day, the party that had called the hartal would claim
gleefully that it was a great success. The main factor that makes
hartals a success or grand success or medium success is the mastery of
the parties concerned in the art of vandalism.
If
you are my fellow citizens who live in other parts of our country and
are interested in seeing God’s Own Country, you are most welcome. But
keep in mind that you are coming not only to God’s Own Country but to
Hartal’s Own People too. We celebrate hartals. Take care, we are not
like you; we are God’s Own People, and we will be happy only if we make
the people like you suffer at least twice a month because we believe
that all other States in India are Satan’s Own. We are God’s Own.
That
is why we are killing people every alternate day and observing hartals
to protest the killings. That is why we want to destroy the Western
Ghats; that is why we are destroying all our rivers; that is why we are
making all our cities more and more stinking ones, that is why we are
bulldozing all our hills and filling all our wetlands. I think you know
that of all Indian States, Kerala is the most developed, the most
literate, the most what not! We are having great esteem of ourselves and
consider all other people unintelligent and socially underdeveloped. If
you take exception to our considering you so, we will call a hartal to
protest your objection too.
(The writer’s email: lsevsuku@gmail.com)
