Hail the Rosenstrasse women!

A young princess is asked to choose the man she would like to marry. She chooses one only to be told on her return from forest that the man she has chosen to marry is destined to die in a year. But she marries him anyway. A year later, 'the day' arrives, and her husband is taken away by the just lord of death. But the young wife decides to take him on to save her husband. And she does so, using peaceful means. She confronts him with her knowledge, her logical reasoning and her dedication to her cause. And she wins her husband back.

Did it really happen? Very unlikely. But we do remember, read and tell this story countless times -- we have been doing so as long as we can remember. A story written thousands of years ago lives on. Savitri is our hero.

Take a Savitri and multiply her 6000 times. Put them all together in one city. Have the lord of death take away their men (1800 of them -- because not all these Savitris are married to those men; Some of them are just women relatives of the men) -- the men who are destined to die not because of what they did but because who they are. As the most unjust and cruel lord of death prepares to grant those men their death, the women folk take him on, using peaceful means. No arms. No violence. Not all 6000 at once. In ones and twos initially and numbers picking up slowly. By the end of the week, the lord of death relents. All 1800 men released.

Unbelievable? Most certainly. Unlikely? Very much so. Did it really happen? Yes, it did. In1943. In Berlin. Do we know or remember it? Obviously not.

As the Nazis prepared to round up the last of the Jews in Berlin (the Final Round up, during Fabrikaktion), they picked up 1800 Jewish men, most of them married to non-Jewish women, and prepared to transport them to concentration camps while telling the women that they were being taken to labor camps. As they were held temporarily in a building on Rosenstrasse, Berlin, prior to transportation, some women got wind of it. One by one, they showed up on Rosenstrasse. And a peaceful protest, to save their men, began. Women started streaming in everyday. By the end of the week, 6000 women had taken part in the protest. A totally unorganized, totally unarmed, totally peaceful protest. They took on the very brutal SS, no less! And they won their men back. No shoot-outs, no killing. All the 1800 men were released. 25 men who had already been sent to Auschwitz were also recalled and released. And most of them even survived the war.

This was one of the very few open and successful attempts at protesting the actions of the Third Reich.

Why am I writing this today? Because it was today, February 27th, back in 1943, that the Rosenstrasse protest began.

Not sure if Gandhiji ever heard of this incident, but he definitely would have smiled had he heard it.

The Absurd

I am a sucker for stories within a story. I have always loved them! Sub-stories weaving in and out of the main story, the little events narrated by the characters that sometimes seemingly have no relevance whatsoever to the main story or sometimes adding depth and a different dimension to the characters, sometimes a deep life message molded into a small story that gets a thinking reader pondering. I guess this is one of the main reasons I love our epics, especially the Mahabharata. The Mahabharata is one awesome example of story telling that required tremendous talent and imagination. And the way the sub-stories in Mahabharata appear every now and then without EVER suggesting anything that might contradict other sub-stories or the main story itself is really amazing. And all the characters just fit in so perfectly that it is absolutely impossible to refute the belief that Mahabharata did in fact occur.

But, that is not what I set out to write here. I went off tangentially -- maybe I was too consumed by the sub-story concept that I started planting something else in the post I intended to make here! :D

Some stories just shock you. They surprise you with the chillness that life keeps throwing at you from time to time.

There is one such sub-story that keeps coming back to me all the time, not from the Mahabharata, but from one of my most favorite books, The Stranger, by Albert Camus. The story is so absurd that I don't know what to make of it -- it just is a chilling reminder of how seemingly mundane things can turn tragic.

Here is that story. It is in the first person of the protagonist who is doing time in prison.

Between my straw mattress and the bed planks, I had actually found an old scrap of newspaper, yellow and transparent, half-stuck to the canvas. On it was a news story, the first part of which was missing, but which must have taken place in Czechoslovakia. A man had left a Czech village to seek his fortune. Twenty-five years later, and now rich, he had returned with a wife and a child. His mother was running a hotel with his sister in the village where he'd been born. In order to surprise them, he had left his wife and child at another hotel and gone to see his mother, who didn't recognize him when he walked in. As a joke he'd had the idea of taking a room. He had shown off his money. During the night his mother and his sister had beaten him to death with a hammer in order to rob him and had thrown his body in the river. The next morning the wife had come to the hotel and, without knowing it, gave away the traveler's identity. The mother hanged herself. The sister threw herself down a well. I must have read that story a thousand times. On the one hand it wasn't very likely. On the other, it was perfectly natural. Anyway, I thought the traveler pretty much deserved what he got and that you should never play games.

Don't know what to say.

The Rhythm of 'Eternal Rhythm'

Last night was one of those nights when my older sister and I have really long conversations on phone talking about everything under the sun including life in general, philosophy, the old times, her kids and her usual motherly concerns. It was one of those times I get to advice my sister, because, after all, I have all the theories and no parenting experience whatsoever (if you don't include Caesar, that is!). During the conversation, which went well past midnight, I narrated an anecdote to her, the anecdote I had read in Nikos Kazantzakis' Zorba The Greek, back in 2005, the book I happen to be rereading now (I don't know why I do that, but I do reread a lot of books I like). I had blogged this story on my other blog, which has been down for over a year now (because it used to run on one of my personal Linux boxes which I had to shutdown for maintenance). The title I had given that post, back in early 2005, was 'Eternal Rhythm.'

Barely 6 hours after I narrated this anecdote to my sister to reinforce a point I was making, I get a scrap from a good friend of mine all the way from Belgium. Along with her usual 'Good Morning' greeting, she wrote: "Your 'Eternal Rhythm' storyline was very touching!" I fell off my chair when I saw that scrap from her. Did I call Bijapur or Belgium last night!?!? My friend had NOT seen my other blog at all! I had never even talked to her about that post! How in the world did she know it!?

Anyway, since it will take some time for me to revive the other blog, and since this particular story came up in a peculiar manner today, I thought I would post it here too.

So here it goes:

I remembered one morning when I discovered a cocoon in a bark of a tree, just as a butterfly was making a hole in its case and preparing to come out. I waited awhile, but it was too long appearing and I was impatient. I bent over it and breathed on it to warm it. I warmed it as quickly as I could and the miracle began to happen before my eyes, faster than life.The case opened, the butterfly started slowly crawling out and I shall never forget my horror when I saw how its wings were folded back and crumpled; the wretched butterfly tried with its whole trembling body to unfold them. Bending over it I tried to help it with my breath. In vain.It needed to be hatched out patiently and the unfolding of its wings should be a gradual process in the sun. Now it was too late. My breath had forced the butterfly to appear, all crumpled, before its time. It struggled desperately and, a few seconds later, died in the palm of my hand.

The little body is, I do believe, the greatest weight I have on my conscience, for I realize today that it is a mortal sin to violate the great laws of nature. We should not hurry, we should not be impatient, but we should confidently obey the eternal rhythm.

When an idiot asks stupid questions...

"Sizu, tell me something. I walk you 3 times a day and let you out in the backyard to do your thing twice (very early in the morning and very late at night), pick up after you, then wash your feet and mouth with warm water and dry you with a soft towel. I do this whether it is raining or it is 90 degrees or -35 degrees like last night. Not to mention putting on your beautiful boots every time we step out in cold winters.





"As soon as we are done with this procedure, every single time, you run to the kitchen and sit by the cabinet where your treats are kept. You don't move from there till I give you your favorite treat. Once you get your treat, you dash off to the living room where you happily munch on it. And then you expect me to play with you for at least 5 minutes.

"I might miss my meals but I make sure you never miss yours. I fill your water bowls with fresh water twice a day without being asked. I clean your eyes, clean your ears, brush your teeth & coat, pay a groomer to give you a bath and do your nails and take you to dog park for your workout, etc. Like Seinfeld says, if Martian creatures were watching us dog owners here on earth (at least in the US), they wouldn't buy our claim that humans are the masters here.

"Now, there is definitely something wrong here, don't you think? I walk you, I clean you up, dry you up and all that, basically I am the one doing all the work for you. Don't you think you should be giving me the treat, and not the other way around?"

As I lay in bed, Sizu licked my face for 5 minutes, snuggled up to me under the blanket, and dozed off to sleep on my arm.

"But I do get this all the time from you, even if I screw up with any of the tasks I listed above! I get this even without asking for it!"

"Lick lick lick..." And back to sleep.

All my stupid questions had been answered. :)

Bangalore is where I want to be this week!

Received this email this morning and was thoroughly disappointed that I am not in Bangalore right now, more so because Bgm Parveen Sultana is performing and she is one of my most favorite Hindustani singers. I am posting it here for the benefit of those lucky ones in Bangalore who might stumble onto my blog in the next couple of days. If you make it to the Utsav, please let me know so that I know it was worth taking the time to convert this mail to a jpg image and post it here! :-)