Independence

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

When men go off to be heroes, do they even realize what it does to the women they leave behind?

Best of all she expresses no opinions, and who does not like that in a woman.

Here is a country teetering on the brink of independence. Here is a man in a tearing hurry, rushing that country into emancipation without preparation. Here is a stranger hacking the land to pieces. Here is a leader in a gold silk jacket and a rose in his lapel, claiming his tryst with destiny. Here is celebration, tricolour flags being hoisted for the first time. Here are people fleeing. Here are people slaughtered. Here are families scattered and lost. Here are women with their breasts cut off. Here are babies roasted on a spit. Here are death numbers to shake even the most stoic heart. Here is the man hiding the most malignant secret of all. The country is India. The man in a rush to return to England to further his naval career is Viceroy Mountbatten; he pushes India’s independence ahead by ten unsteady months. The hacker is Cyril Radcliffe, barrister; he has never before set foot on this continent. In five weeks he will carve up 175,000 square miles into three pieces. The leader who trysts eloquently with destiny is Nehru; he will be helpless to stop the blood-trains rolling in terrible silence to their destinations. The flags raised in jubilation are saffron–white–green; at their centre is the Ashok Chakra, eternal wheel of law. The man with the secret is Jinnah; he has tuberculosis and cancer; the doctors predict he has a year to live. If he had divulged this, one million lives might have been saved.

Humankind would be better off, she thinks, if there were no religions.

Death, even if it touches us in passing, transforms.

No matter how her story ends, she refuses to believe that a woman cannot have the joys of home and also a place in the world.

Birth and death: serpents swallowing each other’s tails.