The meaning of life ...

A friend is heading to Amritsar, to the Golden Temple.

"Will you go to Jallianwalla Bagh?" I asked.

"Of course, yes."

"Thanks. Include me when you observe a moment of silence there for the tremendous sacrifice they made so that we can now enjoy this life" I said.

"I am getting goosebumps thinking about it."

"I hope to make it there someday" I said.  I meant it.

The afternoon at Jallianwalla Bagh almost a hundred years ago was one of the darkest of the darkest moments of the British Raj, when civilians who had gathered at the park were mercilessly gunned down.  And to escape from the bullets, some--men, women, and children--even jumped into the open well there and died.



When watching Gandhi, the movie, thirty years ago, it was not his assassination that made me emotional, but the awful events of Jallianwalla Bagh and the protest at the salt works, where they line up to get beaten by the police, and the injured then rejoin the line after getting first-aid treatment.

If you want to see a grown man cry, just play these two scenes for me, when I feel even slightly vulnerable.



Those events were not fiction. They were powerful events, propelled by non-violence and non-cooperation. Even now it seems unbelievable that the Raj was defeated not with guns but by Indians getting beaten up and killed and jailed.

I know I owe all those people big time. In my atheist framework, it is not the gods that I thank but real people like the ones at Jallianwalla Bagh.  To think that they made that kind of an ultimate sacrifice makes me feel guilty sometimes wondering if the life I lead now does even a little bit of justice.

After that interaction regarding Amritsar, I have been flipping through the e-pages of Gandhi's autobiography and, yet again, I am reminded of Einstein's homage:

Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth

During the sabbatical weeks in India, I did go to visit the Gandhi Memorial in New Delhi. As I neared it, after a rather tiring walking around, a police officer stopped me and said that the memorial was closed to the public.

It seemed rather odd that a memorial to Gandhi would not be open to the public.  So, of course, I had to ask him for the reason.  In retrospect, I would have been better off not knowing why.  I, and a few others, could not go near that memorial because a foreign dignitary was scheduled to visit and pay respects.

I viewed from a distance and wondered at the tragic irony.  That is life!