Martyrs, most certainly...

I met the protagonist of this story when he was relatively young and purely by chance. Like we usually meet protagonists in stories. He was young, bright and desperate, other than that he was just another kid out of school. Those days I used to meet them in bunches. Frankly speaking, he hardly made any impression and I thought nothing of him. I didn't even expect him to come back for the second visit. I think I came off rather rude to him, pointing out the loopholes in his intentions at the very first go. I am not sure if he saw something else in that. I didn't intend to help him anymore than I'd help a fellow passenger in a bus. But he came back and kept coming back. Our discussions took many routes and we started connecting at a deeper level than just a fellow human being. I discovered he was a gifted writer, he needed to sharpen his skills but I was assured of the gift. I still am. He wanted to try his hands in theatre and in films. He wanted to talk to me mainly because of the film part at that point. An old friend had referred my name to him. In this story, that friend wouldn't get more than that line.

He was writing for popular dailies mostly on subjects that needed a young perspective but a populist rhetoric. I don't know how the mainstream newspapers assign these pieces. They are certainly afraid of printing something too radical but the young and rebellious sell better. I have written a few of those too. That's when a senior writer told me "not publishing is not an option". If you keep doing it for sometime, the reality starts dawning upon you. They don't care a fig for your opinion, they want cheap talent to fill the pages. If it attracts a bit of controversy and debate, nothing like it. It's all in good business. He got hooked into it. Such writing brings a kind of fame in the closer circuit of friends and earns familiarity in the not so close circuit in this age of social networking. Words get around, names spread. For a young adult, that's a lure difficult to shy away from. In most cases we look for validity and support in those years. The transition from adolescence to adulthood is so difficult, that most of us never graduate to adulthood long after those rocky years. Beyond the discussion on films and disastrous attempt at making one, our discussions mainly centred around his writings and about the finer skills of getting ideas across. I never made any effort to see his plays, I heard they were good. He did show me some of the videos he made and got me involved in the making of one, I must confess they were nothing close to what I would call a film. Obviously, in the one I got involved into, I contributed equally to the disaster. That's part of my own process to understand I am not capable of making films. So it probably hurt his project more than it helped.

It's during this film, the plot started thickening. As I was getting to know him better, I heard stories of his childhood and adolescent years. I got to know about his home, his love interests and his general view on politics. One thing that fascinated me is his obsession with the darker sides - grief, pain, death. Since most people of his age tend to think everything as a great loss and love to eulogize it, I didn't pay much attention. Little did I know it'll come back to haunt me some day. As the days passed we grew older and grew together. I passed through many events and decisions that changed my life quite dramatically. He witnessed it, we joked about it but neither of us got into a confrontation about it. He on the other hand started getting disillusioned by the hypocrisy of the mainstream media and started writing less and less for them. On many occasions his pieces were severely edited, put on hold or completely rejected. I remember asking him to publish on the social media platforms and he did do it, but that's before he became a social media celebrity. As he veered off to other cities for his education his world started opening up. He started seeing the macro perspective of things beyond his limited vernacular order of being. Meanwhile, his relationships went through many tussles. His morality was changing, so was his sexual politics. His partner(s) often failed to cope. His friends started thinking of him differently. More often than not it wasn't very kind on him. I guess it is during this phase we grew closest. This shift in perspective was too familiar for me. I too had gone through something similar and that had permanently changed my life. I tried my best to help him through. Quite obviously his partners didn't like that. Some hated me, others joked about it.

He came back to his home town at a crucial time. A political unrest was brewing in one of the campuses in the city. Students were protesting against a gross procedural failure of the university authority. He joined the movement quite naturally. In the first few days it wasn't any bigger than an usual student protest inside the campus. One night the authorities sent police to break the protest and all hell broke loose. Police, being the instruments of state power they are applied force, beat up students, molested women and tried to hush it up. From the next morning the various factions of the university community in particular and students in general started galvanizing. He was in the thick of it. He was seen on television leading marches, posted vehemently on the social media and pulled all the strings he could pull to organise protest of various forms all over the world. The protest kept building on with wave after wave of students, teachers, parents, intellectuals and alumni joining. During these days he would suddenly call me in the middle of the day, all raved up about some decision being taken or some latest development, playing his part of the informant on the ground. After a considerably long struggle partial victories came for the movement. Which is so rare in today's circumstance that it started a chain of protests at many other institutions and everybody wanted the people from this movement to join them. It is during this movement, I saw many of my younger friends get politicized. People who wouldn't think of politics in their everyday existence started churning out magnificently well argued articles, brilliant artwork, innovative slogans, learnt to stand up to their teachers and comrades and take affirmative action without losing the restraint. In all it was a defining moment for many who were involved in the fight.

What came after was not unforeseen, but  needs to be questioned without romanticism.  When a struggle of any kind builds up over a period of time and achieves a considerable part of its goal, there is a great energy that builds up among its participants. This energy is the force that drives so many people towards a common purpose. Problem is once that purpose has been achieved, or at least an impression of achievement is gained it needs to be dissipated or channelized through creative outlets. This anti-incumbent force of a movement against a system is primarily destructive in nature. It is very much needed to achieve the goal but has to find a different purpose after. Often the participants of such movements feel a great depression after the goal has been achieved. Most of them, do not wish to fight a longer but inglorious battle that must be fought on an everyday level. It requires personal sacrifices without any achievable goal in sight. It is indeed a frustrating situation. Imagine you practised for months to execute a perfect shot to the opponents goal in football and when the match is at a decisive juncture you execute it beautifully. You're the hero right there but the problem is it doesn't last. What do you do after that? May be you can execute it as beautifully in a next few matches, but it never feels the same and you must keep trying the same shot just to get that feeling. Protest as they say is a lifestyle choice. You cannot protest part time. You either stand up against everything that's unfair, or you don't stand up for anything at all. However, it doesn't have to be that way. I do feel in a society where short lived shouts have become a norm, restraint must be practiced with equal importance.

So after the movement he kept on protesting. He joined a few other protest groups but didn't stick. His theatre dreams were difficult to rejuvenate at this point. His friends had scattered and many didn't agree to his methods anymore. He always was a good student and never had much difficulty with that. His friends often weren't so lucky or willing. They started looking for career options that were more economically sound. He obviously had other plans. He was realizing that a collective idea of theatre or performance will not be easy to exercise. In one of the art events in the city I invited him to watch a piece of performance art. It was quite a striking piece of work and it did hit him hard, I think. His interest started growing in that direction. It was a form well suited for him. It doesn't need a group, doesn't need much make-up, dress or prop and the audience is free. What is more challenging is that it is suitable to make startlingly spectacular acts at the expense of the artist's body alone. On the downside, there can be an immediacy to these acts and may not require much preparation or thinking. Certainly doesn't need much afterthought or continuation once the spectacular act has been performed, documented and made 'viral'. The form is immensely powerful and that's why must be questioned more often. Blatant dismissal or uncritical praise often fails to serve the purpose.

Soon he found his supporters. Just the fact that he was willing to say things no one else would dare earned him fans and friends. He took on the films he were watching around him, staged protest on gender issues, created pieces mocking the system. The city he lived in and loved so much has no dearth of people who would love a hero, and what better hero than a young rebel ready to give it all for a cause? He stopped calling his works art. He asserted the point his actions were reactions to what's happening around him and he would consider them his work rather than any other label. His followers were all over the web. He found some people influential enough to support and guide his works. He found new loves. Soon he was getting everything a hero gets in a cursed country that's in terrible need of a hero. I was losing touch with him. I often did not support his actions, I missed the discussions we would have about finer points of a means versus ends debate. From the early days he was a ball of raw emotional energy. I was emotional too, but age had taught me the value of reason. I had learnt to weigh every action before it is executed and wasn't a great believer of immediacy of them. I never was the activist type and have often been accused of being an armchair critic. I am not against action, but the reasons behind those actions matter to me. Clearly our views started differing. While I liked many of his works and rooted for him, sometimes I would keep my distance.

So far, most of his work was being spread on social media and it didn't affect his family life. His parents were mostly unaware of his spectacular life of a contrarian. He already had a scholarship and visa for a foreign degree, they were happy about that. He was in a complicated relationship with one of his mentors and more than one persons were involved in that. A week before he was scheduled to leave for a different country he staged a protest in front of a political party's office. His message was too subtle for the mainstream media to decode and the general public to get into a discussion. It so happened that another group of students were being roughed up by the police in a nearby campus and his immediacy of action propelled him to the venue. The spectacle reached a new level. He was all over the popular media very soon. His parents and neighbors came face to face with a glaring reality too hard for them to digest. Soon the media and the police hounded his house. His parents forced him out of the country before all that drama started unfolding. His social media account was deactivated. His partner left him for someone else. Well, that's probably not connected, but it happened at that very opportune moment. All of it broke him. He couldn't deal with the fact that he had to flee his city like that, he was aching for the trouble his parents were going through, he couldn't come to terms with his love life. He remained incommunicado except a few while his supporters expressed their solidarity in ingenious forms. Far from the land he was in, he was being given a hero's farewell.




I wish the story ended here. I wish I didn't have to get into the complex and unsavory analysis I will indulge into now. After a period of pause, he came back to the virtual social life. He continued to voice his concerns around issues. After a point he resumed his 'performances'. This time, he was video taping them and spreading it over the net. Most of the time he was doing these inside his room with the material available to him. I was observing some disturbing trends in his actions now. His command over knowledge and logic played less and less part in his work. His emotions were immediate and violent. His responses were being applauded for their raw outburst and drastic quality, but I could see the lack of thought they are building on. At this point, he had started depending on spectacularity of self-torture than provocation of public reaction. I wondered if the young writer who wanted to communicate radical ideas with fellow readers had stopped communicating at all. Pain is a great medium of protest, but it is also the ultimate resort of protesters. I wonder if every protester starts self-immolating on every thing we don't agree to right now, who are we fighting for? I wonder if his advisers, guides and supporters ever thought about the dangerous line he's walking on. A fellow scholar committed suicide as a last resort to communicate his ideas of life and against the injustice that he had faced. It pained many of us and we want justice to be served. He decided to follow the path of the martyr and announced the same on social media. It concerned many and people intervened. He was taken to a hospital and treated for suicidal tendencies. Clearly, such intervention is not a great thing to go through. Supposedly, he's back and stable for now.

Over the last few months preceding this attempt, I have seen him talking only to his supporters and bashing his opposition. I have seen his letters tangled as he is drunk almost every night. I have seen him getting into legal trouble almost voluntarily where such drastic action wasn't needed. I wonder if his sense of reason and logic has been completely stripped off by his supporters. He doesn't realize his class position and his upbringing will never allow him to stand in the same barricade of the martyred. He doesn't feel the need to commit to an ongoing and ideologically time tested struggle that does not ensure results but does promise a lot of frustration on the way. I do see the connection between the suicide of his teenage girlfriend, the film with a bunch of young guys on a suicidal mission that influenced him to make his film, his story line that ends in a violent suicide and his attempts increasing from self-torture to suicidal ultimatums. While I do understand the value of such actions in the course of any protest, I fail to see the value of ultimatums in what is to be a struggle over hundreds of years. Change to me is about little victories and big defeats. Societies do not move by isolated drastic actions but by mere perseverance of survivors who refuse to give up. In this time of spectacles, it is easy to appropriate isolated drastic personal actions into sensational news items, but it is almost impossible for the media to even begin to address something that is long drawn without no immediate goal. I do not wish to deny the martyrs agency over their action, but agencies like egos are a product of what the person wants and what the circumstances allow them. It is upon the supporters, fans, friends, fellows and definitely the critics to take responsibility of their role in the making of a martyr.

I, for one, do not wish to write an obituary for the young.

Disclaimer: This is a work of part-fiction. Any resemblance to any event(s) or person(s) is purely strategic.