Alien at home

I have confined myself within the room. My relatives, friends insist on my visiting them. I was scared, 1971 flashed through my mind. My mother, holding a pillow, I and other villagers fleeing, rattling of guns , smoke, all so scary. Feeling for life is always the same. I couldn't venture out across the road, if a stray bullet comes my way, a pelted stone hit my skull?

I am on an official assignment for six days in my home country, my young children are far away, things look so worrisome. What to do. How I am going to live when I come back, all storming in my mind. Feeling helpless. All my official programmes were shifted by a day. In my own country when I feel so bizarre how about those dignitaries, officials coming for the Micro summit, players and their relatives, journalists who came to cover U-19 World Cup cricket? Those coming for the first time with the hope that they would set up a business organisation?

Feeling bored, going through the dailies but nothing encouraging to read. News is mostly about today's hartal (March 10). Life is paralysed and threatened, business is halted. Corruption is eating away the wealth, mismanagement and poor governance is harmful, so is hartal. I could not read anything that says we have to rise together against the misrule. We have to build and consolidate a common understanding on all these points. Hartal, work stoppage and violence have become the norms of protests.

Another hartal was declared in the night. We have to travel 170 km southwest along with two of my foreign colleagues. That is now squeezed within tomorrow's programme as I refused to travel in the night.

This is for the first time that I deeply felt the effects of hartal. I was quite sad and sceptical about the burning issues and their general interpretations.