Dear friends,
Watching news about gruesome wartime stories in these awful moments of history always evokes my own past memories of living through religious riots in the early 1990s in Mumbai—an event which gave me major impetus to leave my birth country of India for America. Only of course, to ironically encounter 9/11 on American soil a few years later and live with the realization since, that yes, no place on earth really is safe from extremism anymore. We just have to work instead on creating safe spaces within our own personal world and finding inner peace and balance in what can be an extremely chaotic world.
The Persian poet Rumi’s words on perfecting the inside in an imperfect world always resonate with me:
“Yesterday, I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, I am changing myself.”
I felt like sharing this essay that I wrote back in 2012, published in Baltimore’s Urbanite magazine, as a small insight into how violence in society uproots our life and our psyche, and has far reaching implications in life. Of course, in no way do I claim that what I experienced was anywhere close to the current brutality in the Middle East. But it was devastating nevertheless on many levels. And sadly, the question I ask myself at the end of the essay— “Are we really that different, I wondered? Can religion be such a dividing factor and beget such violence?”—is salient even today. It has in fact become a punctuation of life itself, as extremism in the name of religion continues worldwide.
Here's Pavwallah for you, from Urbanite, June 2012, No. 96.
“PAVWALLA, literally meaning "the bread man," was a neighborhood figure in the century old Dadar Parsi Colony community in Mumbai, India. Clad in his habitual cotton kurta that fell loosely above a checkered dhoti, a rectangular piece of cloth tied at the waist, pavwalla navigated his rickety bicycle every morning through the maze of dusty asphalt streets that meandered through this community of aging concrete buildings.
Clutching a roomy poplin tote bag containing pav squares and rounds, he ran his frail 60-year-old frame in and out of buildings and up and down creaking wooden staircases, delivering bread with ease of habit and a zest for life.
Occasionally, his oval face topped by a taqiyah, a short rounded cap worn by observant Muslim men, broke into a smile that revealed teeth stained brown, most likely due to the regular use of local tobacco. That morning, the pavs fell haphazardly onto the asphalt, a few stray pieces landing on the sidewalk, as an angry mob of Hindu men grabbed him by his kurta, lifted him out of his bicycle, and threw him onto the road, beating his stick-thin body in many different ways. Pavwalla delivered bread to the predominantly Zoroastrian and Hindu neighborhood where I grew up. As it were, a fraction of Hindus and Muslims were angry at each other that December of 1992, following the demolition of the 16th century Babri mosque by Hindu karsevaks in the holy city of Ayodhya, considered to be the birthplace of the Hindu deity Rama. Riots. People burnt alive.
When pavwalla was attacked, I promptly ran into my apartment, a few yards away. I was likely ordered indoors by my mother, who like many first-floor residents of this middle-class neighborhood, rushed to noisily slam shut and lock multiple doors and stubborn windows flanking the centenary apartments. Solid wood, steel, and wrought iron clinked and thud together in frenetic synchrony, an attempt to blank out the world outside.
Indoors, I prayed our pavwalla was OK. Homebound for weeks with no college, and businesses, transportation, and life in general shut down, I often thought about pavwalla. Are we really that different, I wondered? Can religion be such a dividing factor and beget such violence? I still ask myself these questions today, living 8,000 miles away in America.”
Meaningfully yours and peace,
Anu Prabhala
I remember that terrible time, and your writing captures it so well.