I have known Nafisa* for the last 10 years. She is a school counsellor who helps high school students work through difficult adolescent issues. I try and do the same through my workshops and programmes.
Every Eid-Ul-Fitr, Nafisa invites me for lunch with her family, and every Eid she reminds me that “On Eid, you don’t need to be invited. You just show up!”
Eid lunches with Nafisa, her husband, Safdar*, and their two bright, very well brought up children are always a joy. On the day, their apartment is full with friends, colleagues and members of their extended family. I look forward to the food and fellowship. Nafisa starts cooking the day before and says, “One of my greatest joys is to see others enjoy the meals I have made.”
Last year had I missed my Eid lunch with them because I was recovering from a complicated tooth extraction. There was no way I was going to miss it this year, and on the morning of the day, I wished Nafisa “Eid Mubarak!” on WhatsApp.
She replied, “See you for lunch.”
She then sent me the location of their new address – they had shifted house from the last time I had visited them – and said, “Few are left that I can invite with this confidence. ☹”
My heart sank as I read those words.
Perhaps I had been hoping against hope that the rising tide of anti-Muslim bigotry and intolerance in the country had somehow spared this very nice family.
Nafisa and Safdar were as warm and welcoming as ever. Their kids had grown a lot over the past couple of years and were delightful to talk to. I could not, however, help but feel something about my friends was a bit different. They laughed and chatted like everyone else, but there was a note of sadness about them.
As we all tucked into a biryani, dal makhani, paneer, kabab and raita meal, I asked Nafisa how she was.
With the host’s smile still on her face, she said, “We had to vacate our last apartment because the landlord wanted to sell it. It was when we started looking around for a new house that we realised that people don’t want to rent out their houses to Muslim families. But we finally found this place and today we are paying a higher rent for a place that is smaller than the one we used to live in before.”
I slowly put down the bowl of sheer I was eating.
“It was a shock to us at first. Can you imagine? I am a school counsellor at a reputed school and my husband works in a multinational corporation. For the first time ever, we felt like outcasts in our own country.”
A long silence followed. I didn’t know what to say, and finally mumbled, “I’m so sorry.”
Nafisa continued, “I have been through all the stages of grief regarding this – disbelief, anger, denial, bargaining – but somehow, I have accepted it. My husband still hasn’t made his peace with this.”
And why should he? I thought to myself, anger welling up inside me. Why should he have to accept this kind of abhorrent discrimination?
“But you know what it’s like, don’t you?” she said, and reminded me of an incident that I had well-nigh forgotten. (Perhaps that is the mind’s way of dealing with difficult memories…) She reminded me of a school in the city that had terminated my contract to do workshops on empathy and kindness with its students, because I had refused to say nice things about Hindutva.
The doorbell rang. Nafisa got up to answer and welcome more guests in. I thanked my hosts and left eventually.
My heart is still heavy from the conversation I had with Nafisa, but I am glad I spent Eid with her and her family. It put me in touch with their pain, difficult as that was. Like them, I too am grieved by what we have become as a society.
But the question is, what do we do when we feel overwhelmed by the hate all around us?
Strange as this might sound, William Peter Blatty, in his hugely successful 1971 book, The Exorcist, offers some answers, whether one believes in the supernatural or not.
When a junior priest asks Father Merrin, the main protagonist, what the purpose and point of ‘demon possession’ is, Merrin replies:
“The demon’s target is not the possessed; it is us the observers. I think the point (of possession) is to make us despair… to reject our humanity: to see ourselves as ultimately bestial, vile and putrescent; without dignity; ugly; unworthy.”
His words resonate, especially at this time when it is easy to despair at the ugliness around us, and at the hold the ‘demons’ seem to have on so many. It is important to remember that while there is a lot of hate and strife, there is also a lot of love and solidarity. All is not lost. All is never lost.
Those who believe in the idea of an inclusive and secular India have a responsibility, very simply, not to despair. Because once we refuse to despair, we start seeing ways of fighting back against the hate and always ways of being a source of hope and support to those who are being discriminated against and persecuted.
In the words of Father Merrin: “We mourn the blossoms of May because they are to whither; but we know that May is one day to have its revenge upon November, by the revolution of that solemn cycle which never stops — which teaches us in our height of hope, ever to be sober, and in our depth of desolation, never to despair.”
*Names have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.
Rohit Kumar is an author, educator and independent journalist. He can be reached at letsempathize@gmail.com.
