George Menezes

I am deeply disturbed by September 11. I am equally disturbed by the totally senseless destruction of the Afghan people most of who ask for nothing more than a few quiet hours for playing with their kids; and who prefer a ‘dust bin laden’ with food than Osama bin Laden with hate.
I wake up nights trying desperately to believe that unlike buildings, armaments and caves, you cannot pulverize hope. The hope of a truly beautiful Muslim people who believe that Allah will deliver them from the anti-lslamic, political jehad of hate, to a redemptive, Koranic jehad of peace in a land that has suffered too much for far too long.
In this mood of hope, I remember all the lovely Muslims I have known and loved. Akbar Subedar, tall, gaunt and handsome in the dark. We played barefooted foot-ball in the now infamous Idgah maidan in Hubli, unmindful of the bleeding of our toes and unknowing that much more blood would be shed there some day.
Akbar was doing his Intermediate Science and had not even procured a copy of the prescribed compulsory English textbook “Romeo and Juliet” which obviously he had not read. For an hour before the exam I told him the pre-Taliban story of love, hate and the willingness to die for a cause.
When the results were declared he had scored more marks than I did and, to my great amazement, never forgave himself for it.
I think of Shabana Azmi, beautiful, talented and generous, who gave those of us living in Bandra the gift of two promenades and with it the gift of breathing space, and may be, a longer life. I feel a seething anger that she has, time and again, to speak to the media about her anguish that Muslims are being stereotyped as anti-nationalists and terrorists and that the voice of millions of decent, peace-loving, indisputably nationalist Muslims is being ignored.
I think of Imtiaz Dharker whose quiet and powerful verse turns me on. In her latest offering, she says, “Close by, a plane explodes, a sweetly offered garland blows off someone’s head. I wasn’t the one who did this. Ask the men carrying holy books. Ask God”.
I think of Muslim musicians, theatre and film people and sports-persons who have worn themselves out to put India on the world map and hundreds of valiant Muslims in our armed forces who have been crippled and who have died. Yet none of them did so because they loved the recognition or the awards and their families, less but because they loved their country more.
Finally and irrevocably, I remember the passionate and gentle and truly secular Meherunissa who gave her heart to me in my teens. She loved me for the poems I wrote and the silly stories I told. And now, I believe that she loved me because in loving someone completely and never expecting to be loved in return she was symbolically tearing a veil she never wore then and perhaps never does now.
Today I want to tell her, and all those who are not afraid to love, just one simple thing. “Love is not a loaf of bread which if you give a piece to someone you have less left to give to others”.