"Must multitudes perish before the heaven begins to tremble?" laments the main character in J.M. Coetzee's The Master of Petersburg.
The plea of this grief-stricken father siphoned a tornado of deep anguish when I first read the book a few years ago. This character, He, was almost deliriously rummaging about in Petersburg in the pretext of his son's death. Most likely it was his process of coming to terms with his son's death. But the agony of this tormented father had reached nowhere near the closure of "coming to terms." It was rather colliding with the death itself. That indescribable anguish, helplessness, was for me bottled in that plea: Must multitudes perish before the heaven begins to tremble? Had I met him, this fictional character, at that time, I would have just sat next to him and cried: cried in loud roars, tears flowing down the cheeks, water coming out of the nose. I would not have cared what he thought, I would not have cared even if he walked away at the absurdity of a total stranger.
But that would have changed now. Had I met this man, He, haggard and smelly, wandering around in the streets of Petersburg, I would have still sat next to him and cried my cry. But I would have wiped my tears and nasal discharge and told this man, "Mr. He, if you lose shame and are capable of reckless cruelty, even the trembling of heaven would mean nothing."
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On a recent flight back home from overseas trip, I was next to a Nepali worker in one of the middle-eastern countries. During the flight, a flight attendant came distributing the embarkation card so that it would be easier for the passengers to move through the customs at the airport. When it was my neighbor's turn, he stretched out and said, "vegetable." He thought she was distributing food and he wanted the vegetarian dish. "No, no, it's not food, it's the paper for the airport, just take it," I told him in Nepali. He gave a sheepish smile, I passed along the paper to him.
Water and Vegetable were the only English words this gentleman used during the flight. With his limited capacity to understand and communicate in another language, he might have felt indignation in the events like above. But this is the indignation that millions of Nepali migrant workers endure in strange countries, in an attempt to make a living for themselves and their families. Maybe unknown to them, they have indirectly been helping to make a living for the whole country as well if we were to look at remittance statistics of this country.
When the government and rebels were busy slitting each other's throat, tying people to tree and planting knives at them, and lighting fires in the villages and homes, the wrecked country was kept afloat by the sweat, toils spent amidst the indignation and abuses of strange countries. Even now, when the bureaucrats and politicians are busy talking high talks, the actual progress is happening at these daily lives, driven by a simple desire to make a livelihood for themselves and their families. Do not these toiling lives deserve some respect from the country?
Apparently not, according to our bureaucrats and government officials who actually live on the taxpayers' money. The Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) recently arrested a few customs officials charging them of abuse of authority. Retaliating, the customs officials have started sending back workers home from the airport giving ludicrous reasons. Hundreds of workers have been turned back from the airport. Remember, these are the people who have taken loans and risked everything to be able to go to one of these countries. What the truth is in terms of legitimacy of CIAA's action and customs officials' grievances is a complex matter and we will never be able to find answers from afar. We know, the world of facts and truths might be quite disconnected from that of rhetoric, rumors and speculations. The only way to figure out would be a griding exercise of objective fact finding conducted by pure intentions. That is a different matter. If they have a capability to do that it is welcome.Otherwise, they have no moral authority to desecrate the risks that a common person has taken to earn a livelihood. And what is absolutely clear is that hundreds of people are being treated with ruthlessness, the same people that fund their luxury and livelihood. Where is the shame? What a ruthless cruelty?
I can go on forever rambling on this outrage. But the wise Coetzee would wrap the entirety of this atrocity in a few sentences: In From the Heart of the Country, he writes--
The innocent victim can only know evil in the form of suffering. That which is not felt by the criminal is his crime. That which is not felt by the innocent victim is his own innocence.
The plea of this grief-stricken father siphoned a tornado of deep anguish when I first read the book a few years ago. This character, He, was almost deliriously rummaging about in Petersburg in the pretext of his son's death. Most likely it was his process of coming to terms with his son's death. But the agony of this tormented father had reached nowhere near the closure of "coming to terms." It was rather colliding with the death itself. That indescribable anguish, helplessness, was for me bottled in that plea: Must multitudes perish before the heaven begins to tremble? Had I met him, this fictional character, at that time, I would have just sat next to him and cried: cried in loud roars, tears flowing down the cheeks, water coming out of the nose. I would not have cared what he thought, I would not have cared even if he walked away at the absurdity of a total stranger.
But that would have changed now. Had I met this man, He, haggard and smelly, wandering around in the streets of Petersburg, I would have still sat next to him and cried my cry. But I would have wiped my tears and nasal discharge and told this man, "Mr. He, if you lose shame and are capable of reckless cruelty, even the trembling of heaven would mean nothing."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On a recent flight back home from overseas trip, I was next to a Nepali worker in one of the middle-eastern countries. During the flight, a flight attendant came distributing the embarkation card so that it would be easier for the passengers to move through the customs at the airport. When it was my neighbor's turn, he stretched out and said, "vegetable." He thought she was distributing food and he wanted the vegetarian dish. "No, no, it's not food, it's the paper for the airport, just take it," I told him in Nepali. He gave a sheepish smile, I passed along the paper to him.
Water and Vegetable were the only English words this gentleman used during the flight. With his limited capacity to understand and communicate in another language, he might have felt indignation in the events like above. But this is the indignation that millions of Nepali migrant workers endure in strange countries, in an attempt to make a living for themselves and their families. Maybe unknown to them, they have indirectly been helping to make a living for the whole country as well if we were to look at remittance statistics of this country.
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| Source: Chandan Sapkota's Blog (http://sapkotac.blogspot.com/search/label/Remittances) |
Apparently not, according to our bureaucrats and government officials who actually live on the taxpayers' money. The Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) recently arrested a few customs officials charging them of abuse of authority. Retaliating, the customs officials have started sending back workers home from the airport giving ludicrous reasons. Hundreds of workers have been turned back from the airport. Remember, these are the people who have taken loans and risked everything to be able to go to one of these countries. What the truth is in terms of legitimacy of CIAA's action and customs officials' grievances is a complex matter and we will never be able to find answers from afar. We know, the world of facts and truths might be quite disconnected from that of rhetoric, rumors and speculations. The only way to figure out would be a griding exercise of objective fact finding conducted by pure intentions. That is a different matter. If they have a capability to do that it is welcome.Otherwise, they have no moral authority to desecrate the risks that a common person has taken to earn a livelihood. And what is absolutely clear is that hundreds of people are being treated with ruthlessness, the same people that fund their luxury and livelihood. Where is the shame? What a ruthless cruelty?
I can go on forever rambling on this outrage. But the wise Coetzee would wrap the entirety of this atrocity in a few sentences: In From the Heart of the Country, he writes--
The innocent victim can only know evil in the form of suffering. That which is not felt by the criminal is his crime. That which is not felt by the innocent victim is his own innocence.
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