To put things into perspective, I have to preface this post by stating that I am not prone to displays of outrage brought on by any contact with visuality in its manifest forms. I don't cry out loud or rage against any machine when I watch the news (hah) or documentaries or films. There's been just one exception to this rule. I saw Parzania. Alone. Late one night. I shouted, screamed, pulled my hair near-out of my head and couldn't bear to finish the movie. This is because it rang too close to the truth; too close to home, for comfort. I lived through 2002, you know.
Today, upon hearing that Binayak Sen's bail petition has been denied, I was on http://kafila.org looking for Shiv Visvanathan's open letter to Manmohan Singh so that I could re-post it in a bid to stoke that all too pernicious thing we call public memory. I found, instead, this little animated film on his extra-legal arrest and a reconstruction of the events that led to it.
I now want to cry again.
I want to rave, rant and shout out loud that what is being done to Binayak Sen is a travesty.
But I'm not stupid. I know it will do no good. I've been emasculated-castrated, and I don't even have balls, me, except metaphorical ones. How on earth did it come to this?
I'm too shaken up to write anything cogent or witty or even half-way articulate. It's all I can do to finish this post here and go simmer in the dissent that is my only consolation as a member of a civil society which is not civil (or civilised, even) proof of which comes from its mournful silence and apathy in the face of this - and every other - siege on the democratic right to a life of dignity.
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