Hazaar Chaurasi Ki Maa. It is all about the young revolutionary Brati who is found killed and his mother Sujatha’s quest for the reasons which had made her son opt for the path of violence.
Govind Nihlani’s film (1998) brought back those harsh memories in a big way (remember Jaya Bhaduri as Sujatha?) and C.V. Murali has gone into the subject with a quiverful of questions. What are the causes that transform mild-mannered, well-to-do and gifted youth into pitiless gun-toting terrorists?
Dreams Die Young seeks answers. Murali prefers a crisp, matter-of-fact style, as if his finger is already pressing the trigger of an AK-47 focused on the target. We open with the prestigious Keck Laboratories of California Institute of Technology where Rajat Sen is a tenured professor. A mere one thousand words later, we are back in time to watch his growing up in the Kolkata of the “seventies and a pardonable flirtation with terrorism.” The infirm idealism of adolescence leads to inevitable nightmares. Rajat’s education regarding the movement really begins with his driver, Nemaida: “All these young boys from decent families, boys like you, are being brainwashed and are leaving their homes to kill and be killed.”
Youth with dreams
Rajat, Arindam, Romen, Ranjit, Nabanita: youth with dreams of creating a classless society. Peer pressures. Conversion lectures, textbook style: “We need to cleanse the system of these people who have created it — the politicians, the landlords, the industrialists, the police and the contractors — they are the people who drive the system today … The end justifies the means, if in the bargain some innocents are killed – so be it. Today the world looks at us as if we are terrorists, but we are not, we are fighting for freedom, fighting for a cause which was left unfinished when the British left our country. The terrorists of today are the freedom fighters of tomorrow.”
Not surprisingly, none of the youth in this tale turns out to be an adorable revolutionary. They can only kill or be killed. Nabanita alone comes thorough as a competent planner. Probably this was the novelist’s intention. Violence can only beget more violence. It is the case of the tiger turning into a man-eater. Nabanita and Romen are thus poisoned by blood.
The twist in the climax is well-produced. As also the last turn of the screw when Rajat learns of Romen’s betrayal of his trust. It is educative to know that blood is thicker than water! Rajat and Arindam are among those who escape and go forward to become seminar-stepping scholars.
Meanwhile we must close the book listening to the distant murmur of Rabindranath Tagore’s vision to awake in the land of true freedom. The Great Sentinel’s dream lives on.
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