Excerpts from my diary.

Since Bangladesh was recently in news and there are discussions raging around whether' too much democracy' is harming India, i once again leafed through the pages of my diary of teen years and this is what emerged.

It is mine no doubt but yet seems like some one else's . It was all so long, long ago .It is a middle class teenagers narration and observations. If it brushes any one's sensitivities ,please excuse that teenager for doing so.

16 th August 1975--Saturday.

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Mujhibur rehman was shot dead yesterday. I feel awfully sorry for him.

Indira Gandhi is always in the news , ie on TV and in movies. It is sickening. But dad supports her like hell, saying that only with her guts emergency was brought and discipline is being maintained. But the rest of us are critical about her measures which she brought about only when her position was in jeopardy.

The general trend of youngsters today is to criticise i Gandhi where as the middle agers especially the office goers support her ,not only because of loyalty but also because they are scared to lose their jobs.

Let us see if India at least develops in these conditions.

28 th august 1975.

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I am now in the 2 nd year of my graduation at a ,New Delhi college..I have been chosen as the group leader of NSS.Being one is interesting.What is more interesting is the classes i take for the deaf students in a school nearby.

Last Tuesday I had gone there.As both ,the students and i were tired of the usual questions to be asked to them like what does a cat eat or where does a parrot live ? i decided to frame a new one. So I wrote on the black board'Who is Ghandhiji?and asked the students in sign language to draw the person.

One small girl came up and drew a flag and a lady with short hair similar to Mrs . i. Gandhi . I controlled my laugh and explained to her by signs and writing on the board that she had drawn i Gandhi and not the father of the nation.

One cute little boy was over enthusiastic to answer my Q .He sneered at the drawing of his classmate and then wiped it out and started to draw a figure ,very fast.

I saw to my amusement that the kid had drawn in all seriousness ,Gandhi as a person wearing flared trousers ,sporting a drooping moustache with lovely long hair and side locks.Other kids started to laugh and each of them clamoured to rectify the defect.

Finally they drew a bald man with side locks, huge spectacles in shirt and dhoti holding a thin stick and clutching our flag.They all looked pleased at their handiwork.Kids are fun.

Today during the tutorial period at college we all had a heated discussion about Sheik mujhiburRehmans death and the cold blooded massacre of his family.

I was shocked to hear from nearly all my class mates that they preferred the entire family to be wiped out since the surviving members would suffer from lack of political and social status.

I disputed their contention hotly and accused them of being cold blooded creatures.I pointed out that as long as there was life there was hope.

I had the support of only one girl who also felt that killing the entire family down to his 9 year old son was a insane and hateful act.

Yet i felt that the other girls did agree with me deep inside . Whilst i was speaking from my heart they were being calculatedly, logical.

9 th November 1975--Sunday.

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As my chithi [younger sister of my mother]had asked us to come over to her place for lunch, dad , harind and i took a bus and reached her house by 12.30

After eating chithi started to tell us about her visit to Berlin and Moscow as a representative of a women's organisation.

When she told us about the concentration camps i felt revolted.It seems that all delegates to Berlin are taken to see this particular camp which is 2 hours journey from Berlin.It is a huge sprawling camp which had on one side neat and beautiful cottages of SS officers and some distance away the quarters of Jews.

12 to 13 Jews were huddled together in a tiny bed made of grass in cold winters as well as in summers.

Then the guide took them to a spot where the Jews were taken on stretchers and shoved into hot ovens,very much alive, so as to get rid of them in the quickest possible way.

Then they were shown the place where young and healthy jewish women were taken to conduct experiments. The SS doctors injected various cancer spots on the body of those healthy women especially on their torso and uterus and let the cancerous cells survive till such times these women were completely disfigured.

At this juncture chithi told me the revulsion she and her friends felt at the sadism of those Germans and found It hard to control their vomiting on that spot itself.

Then she told me that young German children were brought to this camp and shown the manner in which Jews were tortured.When she asked one of the parents as to why they were torturing the impressionable minds of their innocent children,they replied that they were teaching their children to hate war by showing them the horrors of war.

Then my aunt narrated about her visit to Moscow.She proceeded, that as a youngster she was a staunch Communist and it had been her life ambition to visit Russia the land of communism and continued that her very first visit by itself shattered all her ideals and dreams.

She said that she found it strange that there wasn't a single happy face to be seen on the roads. Nobody talked or grumbled or criticised the govt unlike India.

It seems that there are no radio's but only mikes in each street giving announcements from the govt.Even for small consumer goods there were long queues and people stood patiently in the horrible cold awaiting their turn without a single murmur of protest .And if the stock was over ,people returned without uttering a single word to show their disappointment.

Chithi was baffled by this sheep like behaviour and greatly resented this denial of freedom. She longed to be back in India where even in emergency it was much, much more free country than Russian that she was totally disillusioned with communism.

to be contd....