Zaheera’s Jihad

One ballukhan #41 is far more effective in rallying all Indians to the side of justice than many articles by Farzana Versey.

It is time for some hard pill for those murderers-

I would prefer some vigilante executions of those clearly identified by Zaheera than waiting for the courts to pull up with those stupid proceedings. Only then these rioters would think twice before commiting such atrocities in the future.......Deterrence against such acts would be achieved only after the real rioters are clearly punished before the public!!!

jang

{the ``correct`` way of balm comes from people who trust zaheera, and who have her welfare in their heart. }

you can rest assured that this lady does not give a damn about zaheera ... there is nobody on chowk in a position to help zaheera, and this lady knows that...but her goal is never to help these people, it is to get reassurance for her `journalistic` abilities from some rabid pakis who frequent chowk...

dang..i should have realised my mistake.

anyhoo, i wrote this post for rsaxenas sake.

the ``correct`` way of balm comes from people who trust zaheera, and who have her welfare in their heart. her family, her neighbors. as i pointed out unfortunately, in the de-humanizing poverty (FV Please note: this type of verbiage is stylish..) that zaheera probably lives, even the family and neighbors are sometimes preying raptors.

haha - still only 37 posts, of which a few are her own....lady, getting pissed isn`t going to bring up the post count....try something different next time?...maybe you can call for killing of hindu civilians or something?

FV-ji:

Maybe Zaheera just experienced what some other writer described on another board but had that realization come much earlier than 55+ years.

[Dear Dost-mittarji:

This was most touching and relevant. I maintain that history cannot be erased, at least not from memory. I had said this on Mr. Gill`s board and I repeat...I find that those who have experienced the Partition are not so bitter today or do not react as strongly to contemporary happenings of a similar nature, though nothing can be as wrenching.]

Farzana,
Who took away her anonymity? The media? Shouldn`t they bear some of the blame, too, for what went wrong?
I don`t doubt that Zaheera needed help and support, and it doesn`t look like she got it from Teesta Setalvad. But so did all the thousands who lost family, home and livelihood. Indians in general, and the state in particular, can be extrememly callous. It does look like the state has failed Zaheera, and a new government at the centre appears to have made no difference. What is the point in getting on one`s high horse and changing textbooks when this continues to happen to Zaheera?

#32 by waraich:

I am glad you wrote this post. I have mentioned in my article about the need for psychiatric care; people just don`t seem to understand how the victims, and even observers, can get affected.

She has become the poster-girl unfortunately, therefore anonymity from the media would be impossible. Had her identity been shielded right form the beginning, she would have been truly an important witness and a voice. I am not too sure, though, whether such voices really get heard.

Are you aware that today there are very few voices in her favour?

- - -

#31 by jang:

Please do not call issues like these ``re-gurges``...if this is so, then there must be no discussion on Bush, Iraq, Arafat, Sonia, Uma....everything. Besides, as I just said, there are very few voices in favour of Zaheera. So, there is not even a regurgitation.

re. stylised writing, you are the first person to say so...I have been accused of being too emotional and raw. (Comparisons are odious, but I have already said so on the concerned board that criticising what is in other people`s backyard is easier than commenting on what happens in one`s own. Which is why I have lived through the flak, alas, lived to tell many a tale.)...Suddenly my `green tiles` have become alive to you?

Anyhow, advice is not a problem at all.

[(shoud it not be realize?) ]

Should `shoud` not be `should`?! Okay, realise is realise in English. I try and avoid American spelling; I also do not confuse gender (``you da man``)!

waraich:
...couldn`t have said it better myself.

Farzana:
You say:

Anyone who has undergone what she did would begin to be suspicious of people...the `aid bazaar` is a huge conglomerate with incestuous values.

Do you have any shred of evidence at all that the NGOs did it for the money? If so, please do share it with us. A lot of people have stuck their necks out for Zaheera & countless others. Do you think that`s easy? Don`t you understand the kind of people they are fighting? They`re putting their lives on the line here. Whenever you feel like attributing motives to people, take a good hard look at yourself in the mirror.

Yes Zaheera needed some crisis intervention, so did the ones who escaped the carnage yet had their lives inexorably altered forever as they watched the mutilated bodies of once loved ones scattered around them while all they could do was hide or run and hope they didnt end up there. Or did they? a lot of them will suffer from Post traumatic disorder and live out their lives with the dead coming back to haunt them. Yes , and Narendra Modi will continue to sleep in peace in his bed as did Indira Gandhi till her demons caught up with her. The Sikh Pogroms of 1984 ( surely riots is a misnomer, it was all one sided) unfrotunately were the downfall of Rajiv Gandhi as well as in his grief for his mother he forgot his duties as Head of State and feigned ignorance about the mayhem that ensued. And the pogroms in Meerut by the PAC years back, and the Gujarat pogroms, they all continue while we carry on oblivious . The entire world has heard of the Gujarat massacres, yet we justify them almost by the Godhra incident. In a land where Sati is still consecrated, girls killed in the womb till an entire village doesnt have a single girl born for years, where we worship the Mother Goddess in various forms and then callously go out and eve tease the girls of today, after all they ask for it in the clothes they wear? It is an ancient land still caught up in the savagery of ages gone by, the fact that it is an anti muslim or anti sikh riot is only incidental.
What Zaheera is or did go through is something we dont know? She did possibly and hopefully have Narendra Modi tossing and turning in fear for a while but is it just upto her to undo him? Is it not upto us all? America reelected Bush in fear- a nation in war rarely deposes the head of head, they say. Gujarat was at war too and we reelected Modi. Of course even a man held in high esteem like Vajpayee dithered and went back on his criticism of Modi. If he couldnt stick to his words, a man who people look upto as one of great moral character, why should they expect Zaheera, a poor muslim girl from a community where a girl darent even speak up to her father or later to her husband even if they beat her and rape her ( as does happen to muslim and hindu girls as well) to continue to go through what she has day in and day out. IT IS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE STATE TO SEE THAT HER TRAUMA IS LESSENED PERHAPS BY PROVIDING SOME ANONYMITY FROM THE MEDIA, SOME COUNSELLING FROM TRAINED PROFESSIONALS, SO THAT SHE IS CALLED ONLY WHEN ESSENTIAL AND AFTER THE STATEMENT AND COUNTER QUESTIONING ALLOWED TO LIVE IN PEACE. aGAIN IT IS THE STATE THAT HAS FAILED. i SAY ZAHEERA STOOD UP BETTER THAN VAJPAYEE, IF HE COULDNT STICK TO HIS GUNS, THIS FRAGILE POOR GIRL SURELY couldnt.

FV
``Real men do it, they don`t keep count. ``

you da man.

#29 by FarzanaVersey

``And anyway, people who do not live in my country, and are not directly affected by what is happening, should realise that their windows are sealed. ``

(shoud it not be realize?)

this caught my attention. one request..can you write more about real experiences? re-gurges like zahira stories etc are fine, but tough to make a real impact on jaded short-attention-span unreal men. what connects is an honest log without worrying about political correctness .. this is where veeresh comes alive..he may stink to some, and hence he gets much scorn both regarding contents and style, but its raw stuff. your stuff is stylized, but could easily written merely by reading other news items, hence less alive..are you afraid?
(ps. your visit to ladies toilet with green tiles was very alive)

hope you dont mind the unsolicited advice, but this is how i think.

Zaheera should be your problem, not that of Pakistanis...

Re. how I use my time to better support such causes, I know what I am doing...I do not have to announce on the boards here that I am ready to donate for this or that cause. I know it sounds noble and awfully cute...but that is not what one is here for.

And anyway, people who do not live in my country, and are not directly affected by what is happening, should realise that their windows are sealed. Unless contributing to the VHP fund counts as more productive work.

Re. interacts, I am touched and quite amused by how some people think it is so important...I don`t, which is why I also submit poetry...

If you have anything better, just go and act upon it, instead of keeping track of the interacts. Real men do it, they don`t keep count.

Best wishes.

#27, RS Jang out it very well in #25 when he/she says

``everyone is using zaheera..ferzana for her writing career and rest of us chowkies for pushing our views, so be it. ``

whatmore can one sy - 28 posts inspite of the kashmir word thrown in for good measure in the first interact.....may be we are all tiring of the lady...she needs some more flies in the soup ....

this lady must be getting pissed....only 26 posts...few pakis in here to support their fellow countrywoman...what`s going on here