last night i woke up in the middle of the night. instinctively i was going to go downstairs to make sure both kids were alright. till consciousness flooded in - the house is empty. the only thing piercing the stillness was a faint sound of the music system downstairs. it was playing the ballad of kevin barry. like our khudiram bose (and that melody “ekbar biday de ma”!), kevin barry was yet another teenager hanged by the british for fighting to free his country. (in the media/PR driven world, the crimes of imperialism are so unceremoniously forgotten.) this popular ballad was one of the songs i used to sing to ishan in his childhood – to get him to fall asleep. heres the deep baritone and mellifluous voice of paul robeson singing kevin barry ... its a pity he sang only two verses. till the other day, i didn’t know that kevin barry was also born on january 20. i had cut his umbilical chord at his birth and held him in my arms. and sixteen years later, in that bloodied icu, i was the one who finally had to ask the doctors to stop their frenzied attempts at revival – ishan was gone! an image nothing can erase, never seems to blur - and even after five years feels just as unreal. ishan would have turned 21 today … https://youtube/watch?v=rgBNgePWZRw
Posted on: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 19:40:46 +0000
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