The Independent Price

“I have come again,” says my grand uncle as he enters the kitchen, the most happening place. He took the village bus. I have always admired his adventurous Naga spirit. Ours is the first house he picks whenever he comes on such visits. Maybe because we share the same vein of Naganess.
His already old knees have started to ache again. The patellae are reporting cases of anatomical breach. Therefore, he has to get some orthopedic attention. And I will, once again, hear him say, “Tali, ‘the independent price’.” He was a village functionary during his younger days. Like many of my beloved Naga grandfathers he was also beaten up. His knees became the contact point of Jawaharlal Nehru’s extravaganza –or should I say so. That is what he means by ‘the independent price.’ It took me a while to understand his use of words this way. Nagas love metaphors and similes and there is a class in those expressions. And all that I see in him is me –a Naga.
Every time he comes for a round of treatment I am reminded of another pain [of my people] and the silent deep panting for hope and peace thereof –nothing else matters. Will anybody hear? A profound question indeed. And that is the singular cry that cuts across the land. Travailing precedes the birth of a nation, they say. I have learned this as I saw him writhe around on the bed in agony many times. How long? That is the only question that seems to be around during such times. For the moment the pain may linger but everything under the sun has its term. This is why he is who he is and I am, he says. I couldn’t agree more as I see the same pattern in a different form. Much is expected as much as much has happened down the decades. And as much as the patellae and the pain are undeniable, redemption too is undeniable. It’s a reality.
Will I see it in my lifetime? That’s another question my generation thinks about. My grand uncle’s lifetime has passed. He is already dead now. He didn’t see it in his lifetime. But he knew it was coming. And it is coming.
So, generations come and generations go. But they won’t vanish just like that. There is more to being humans and more still, to being a people.
The 93-year old Mr. Yamaguchi is still alive having survived both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. I saw his picture just a few days back. The beauty of being a people is not skin deep, though beauty may be skin deep. And there have been no instances of not pursuing the beauty of being a people down the ages so far. Therefore, this pursuance is only human and divine perhaps. There seems to be no contradiction. Nothing can be more appreciative than this pursuance by a people for a people being a people and, human of course.
A Challenge
Populism breaks down because it undermines freedom in the process. Populists self-destruct. Incidentally, the whole globe suffers from this. A nascent nation can embark upon a standard against populism and be a globe changer too, having changed itself in the first place.