Thoughts on paradise from a near distance
View(s):Absence makes the heart grow fonder. But not from a near distance like this, and not on such a short stint away from home. Instead, the desert time – on a sojourn in an island emirate which your columnist has embraced for this holiday season – has compelled him to ask the customary, traditional, searching questions one asks from afar. The ones which come easily under a partially eclipsed moon that reminds the desiccated traveller in this dry oasis of a tropical islet a meteor’s earth-fall away.
Bear with me, dears. It’s hard to be away from our much loved ancient civilisation and see how much better a modern state with not so great a provenance has fared in so short a time… and not be moved by a profound sense of our potential lost, an almost irredeemable opportunity cost. It’s harder still to savour the tranquil palmy breezes of a natural peace, inclusive progress, and shared prosperity without yearning for a similar dividend for another palm-fringed isle… but perhaps comparisons are odious, if not downright obsequious to one’s host country.
Unless, of course, the sobering combination of distance and propinquity is just what the spin doctor ordered. Unless younger nouveau riche societies with no past to shamefully hide away and deny vehemently at the same time have more to speak into the region’s future than older cultures who can’t quite shake the albatross of ultra-nationalism off our nation’s back.
Dare I dream, then, under this desert sun, of a time and place where devotees of different tribes and tongues can worship in spirit and in truth without fear of a few ugly angry priests of the moon wreaking havoc on sheer difference as much as mere indifference? Can I hope that the incidents past and present – one, the threatened disrobing of a woman of another faith; another, the shameful hate speech threatening a similar fate for a man of the same cloth – are only, as they say, “sporadic events”? Every truly pluralistic society will experience some small conflict now and then – in theory – and we can only yearn that this is a wrinkle in the fabric of the peaceful society we were becoming again – in practice, one painful but liberating step after another.
Have you, members of our multi-cultural, multi-lingual, multi-religious nation, been enjoying the riches of our hard-won peace dividend this past week and weekend past as the sun sails from one cosmic house to another, seemingly ignorant of earthly strife? Has the ethos of the last ten days or so savoured of treats from a tolerant island race sharing their heart’s fruit and hearth’s offerings, soured slightly by an aftertaste of bitterness by a few angry men? Do you hear the church bells ring out the glory of the only resurrected one as much as the muezzin summon the five-times faithful to orisons, while dark and furtive philosophers hatch dastardly plots to police, homogenise, and talibanise the blessed isle? Is the midnight-memory of three decades – and more – of darkness fading slowly, to be replaced by the vision of madmen shaking a country by its tail?
And, it appears, as the poet said, that April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain. This year, this month has been a mixed potion of sweet tasting victory at cricket, unifying the nation as always and yet as never before, and also the harbinger of some dreaded defeat at being a civilised society. It will soon be five years after a famous victory, though some of the liberated eating their traditional sweetmeats have a shadow of defeat on their countenances.
But, as always, and yet, as never before, there is a sense of new hope. It may be dulled at home, but being away even briefly stirs those deadened roots with spring rain. There is Vesak for discerning town and touring country, for those who wonder at and want so badly the enlightenment we lack; there is Deepavali by a handful of devout aesthetes to brighten up the despondency of a dead land; there is the joy-love-peace trinity of Christmas past/present/future when the light of the world came in to dwell among us and to enliven all creation. Could it be after all that we have just enough religion to let us love – not threaten or intimidate – our neighbour? However, a few, a very few, with their controlling spectres in the shadows pulling the puppet-strings, perhaps, threaten us all; and if we, you and I and ours and others like us, let it pass, it will come to pass.
I know all of it sounds futile. I can hear you sigh… or snigger. The small dark cloud of a few troublesome rabble-rousers over you has done its worst, perhaps. Fear, and loathing, may poison any well. Here, standing in a square where churches share spaces with a mosque, where a middle eastern grand mosque as much as any great western cathedral whispers that man is dust but truth is immortal, at peace amidst an alien people clutching their gods, but driving carefully, walking on the pavements courteously, getting and spending like nobody’s business but considerately, here, I can dream. And bring back hope.