Eechara
Varier was a bloodstained tree. He lived for
a cause that would never be attained. He would
not retrieve his lost son. Rajan was a singer,
par excellence. He sang into the emergency
days of India during 1975-1977. He was the
son. He was a perfect son who did not want
his father and mother weeping or mourning
anyone. But the Police took him. Police had
at the time powers that in normal times are
not kind or amiable.
It
was only recently that Udaykumar was rolled
to death at a Thiruvananthapuram Police Station.
Human being is a joke. Humanism is a joke
to the Police. We are not talking of Abu Garib
or Gondonomo prisons. Imperialism could reach
any extent. We never expected a postcolonial
democracy could become this much cruel. And
Emergency came from Indira Gandhi who learnt
from the Bunch of Letters, Glimpses of World
History and the Discovery of India. Her father
wrote these for training her in the art of
democracy. She learnt otherwise. In the course
of her wrong understanding Eechara Varier
lost his son. He was a warrior who lost without
fighting a battle.
And
thus Eechara Varier heralded the fathers and
mothers that would mourn the untimely deaths
of their offspring. It is no death; it is
killing of the cruelest sort. Man will die;
it is a certainty. But who gave these Toms,
Dicks and Harries the authority to assassinate
young men and women in the name of governance?
Jayaram Padikkal and Pulikodan Narayanan were
mere tools, very sadist ones. Laksmana and
Madhusoodanan Nair were pawns in the hands
of kings ornamenting the Cliff-houses and
Rose Houses. They are a big zero without uniforms.
Crimes in uniform attires are crueler and
sophisticated than the ordinary crimes we
see in our suburbs. Police has all media to
carry out the crimes and camouflage them.
Eechara Varier was in the process of realization
that nothing exists in truth under the so-called
bourgeois democracy. He met Achutha Menon
the then chief minister who belonged to the
Communist Party of India, a high sounding,
but people-less conglomeration. He opened
his palms and at one point howled to Eechara
Varier whether the chief minister that he
was to go and search for the latter’s
son in the bushes and dense forests of Kerala’s
interior. He was all rage, writes Eechara
Varier. Certain names that are involved in
the case of Rajan missing are too pornographic
to mention in these columns.
Thus a father was roaming about in the gorges
and streets of Kerala for his missing son;
his wife had gone insane; he was a helpless
man. Always he reserved a banana leaf of food
for his missing son. But the son was rolled
to death in an anonymous prison, burnt, and
his ashes were thrown to some wilderness of
the liking of the criminals who committed
the murder.
Civilization would shy of the incident. And
Eechara Varier died of sorrow and old age
a few days ago. This is no obituary of a normal
pattern. Let us ask a question: is there none
to hear the forlorn parents and helpless children
in our democracy? Is it still meant to be
sold out to the coffers of the international
banks and multinational corporations? The
usual moral wrath expressed only at times
of calamities and atrocities would not suffice
to recollect the struggle of Eechara Varier.
A spoonful of activity would be necessary.
Eechara
Varier was a bloodstained tree.
