Karnataka   

The home and the world

What and where is home?

As one who lived as a student and two forgettable locust years as a teacher in Bangalore in 1953-59, the city was never home for this transient. Once upon a time home was the crumbling ancestral house in Kataripalya (described rather unfairly in an entry in Wikipaedia as “a place notorious for anti-social elements”) in Kolar. I never returned to live in that house after 1953, though Kataripalya and Kolar have resonances that refuse to fade away. If home is where the heart is, home for nearly half-a-century has meant Guwahati (spelt Gauhati in those days) in Assam, where one found both heart and heartbreak. Home is also the larger environ of which Guwahati is a part, a world that is usefully though inaccurately known in the rest of the country as the northeast. For anyone who makes a home in Guwahati, the universe of the northeast also becomes a home.

What follows is a summary of a report that appeared in “Sangai Express,” an Imphal daily, on July 19.

On Wednesday, July 18, Pheiroijam Parijat Singh, a CPI leader and Minister of Health and Family Welfare in the Congress-CPI coalition Ministry headed by Ibobi Singh, was on his way back to Imphal after inspecting some primary health centres in Bishenpur district. His vehicle was stopped at the Wango Sangang checkpost of the 7 Assam Rifles, where a young man wearing shorts, a T-shirt and sandals, who later turned out to be one Major Nikhil Thakker of 7 AR, questioned where he had gone and the purpose of his visit.

The officer also asked the Minister to get out of his official car. Disembarking under protest, Mr. Parijat Singh identified himself as a Minister of the State Government, all to no avail.

Some questions: Do such things happen in other States where too insurgencies of a kind prevail? If this is the experience of Ministers and legislators, what could be the experience of ordinary people with the armed forces, in that world that is also India that is also home? Finally, what should these people think of that world that simply has no space or time for a mention or to reflect upon for their travails?

M.S. PRABHAKARA

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Kidney racket accused give names of private hospitals
Disband Mohammed panel: KSU
‘Jalapatha Utsav’ a hit
For a better deal
For their colleague’s sake
Rs. 35.9 crore to develop 32 villages
Survey puts flood damage in State at Rs. 5,000 crore
Mixed response to bandh call in Kolar
‘Donate eyes’
Appeal to lift ban on ‘sea cucumber’ fishing
Official to review literacy campaign
Bangalore Walkathon
Extended
The glory and fall of Kannada cinema
Centre to release reports on status of women in PR set-up
The home and the world

Copyright © 2007, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu