Swapneel, my son, is six-and-half month old. He sleeps with his hands stretched on both sides like wings, his face assuming an almost comical seriousness. He often smiles in his sleep; amused and self-contained in his world, a world where I’m sure (atleast hope) things are quite different from that of ours.
Yesterday, lying by his side, I was reading ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’. The contradiction was kind of strange and disturbing; looking at my child as he slept, innocent like a flower, and at the same time reading about the insane horrors of our own heritage, of our own past.
And then, I came across these bizarre lines:
“Comrade, I did not want to kill you… you were only an idea to me before, an abstraction that lived in my mind and called forth its appropriate response. It was that abstraction I stabbed. But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand grenades, of your bayonets, of your riffle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony – Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy? If we threw away these riffles and this uniform you could be my brother…”
I don’t know which way lies our future... how many more to come.
Lying there, book in my hand and my child by my side, I prayed… I prayed for Swapneel and all his brothers,wherever they are.
- Siddhartha (May 6, 2009)
Yesterday, lying by his side, I was reading ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’. The contradiction was kind of strange and disturbing; looking at my child as he slept, innocent like a flower, and at the same time reading about the insane horrors of our own heritage, of our own past.
And then, I came across these bizarre lines:
“Comrade, I did not want to kill you… you were only an idea to me before, an abstraction that lived in my mind and called forth its appropriate response. It was that abstraction I stabbed. But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand grenades, of your bayonets, of your riffle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony – Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy? If we threw away these riffles and this uniform you could be my brother…”
I don’t know which way lies our future... how many more to come.
Lying there, book in my hand and my child by my side, I prayed… I prayed for Swapneel and all his brothers,wherever they are.
- Siddhartha (May 6, 2009)
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1 comment:
Hey Siddharth... u can evolve as a terrific novelists... each words of yours are so determined....
but what happened to Swapneel and his brothers?
christable Anon/
Beat me Louder, let the music ooze
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