The ignorant sky is beginning to weep now in the emotional aftermath of dying sun. And so, darkness
& silence establish themselves in the forest after a long day. The pouring
rain has been piercing into the wounds of my chest as if to clean my soul deep
inside. However, my tangled body gets a proper rain bath, performing its own last
rites in the battle field.
"O death, won’t you
come? Won’t you come soon and set me free?"
I think I had decades to think
about how my end would come. Dying alone in this desolated mangrove, giving my
chest to bullets, is what i had already pictured myself. I wonder though how I still
breathe with five shots. Nonetheless, death gets only familiar for a man who
readily wore cyanide capsule around his neck to commit suicide in case of
capture by enemy, anytime.
I have seen them all -
Power, charisma and fame, yet it should not end like this, “So little done, so
much to do”, you know. But the reality is that it’s all over for us, along with the
dream of achieving our statehood. I had just led my last brigade of soldiers to
fight, whose strewn bodies are now coloring the rain water into red.
Ironically, I have somehow managed myself to die as the last fighter of this decade old rebellion
movement. Perhaps a leader should finish what he starts. Isn't it?
The loneliness & defeat are all over me, as I
have been lying down here shot into pieces. I have got one foot in the grave for almost a day now. The dead bodies
strewn across the bushes makes me fear if my best friend is dead already. They
gradually let it slip that someone must lost a husband; someone lost a son; someone a
father, and numerous are themselves. The glimpse of corpses does not fail to
remind me the awful truth of how my wife & children might have been
murdered by now. They don’t deserve to die, nor do any of these of people for
that matter.
What I've done, my lord? Why all of a sudden this rush of sorrow is flowing through me,
ripping my heart out?
I never felt anything like
this, even when I sent my brother to be a suicide bomber, or when sending
children & women to bleed in the front line. Perhaps the fact that my lung
is now guaranteed no more than a few breaths has finally opened me to my human
terms that I had abandoned long time ago? It’s interesting what thoughts come
to your mind in the last hours of your life.
Still, there’s no better
place to review your life than in your deathbed. To settle it once and for all,
with all honesty and transparency. It’s a special place finally where you find the
idea of possessing power, material and fame goes totally meaningless. Not till we are lost do we begin to
really find ourselves. It’s ironic, isn't?
“O my poor soul, tell me
why do we do the things that we do?” "I know that deathbed confession is
too little, too late. But the reviewer inside me demands answer".
As you know, the question is that how I
came in to this world as an innocent human, except that only now leaving not
quite the same.
Why am I hunted down now like a dog? I am dying now like a beast.
Why? “Is it my fate?” “Is it an accident?” “Is it a chance?” No. No, it
is my choice. I chose
violence for our freedom struggle. I made up my mind that only with gun I could
take them down. It's just that i didn't know then that
violence doesn't determine who is right, only who is left.
“Why didn't we
hit them back?” I furiously asked my father as a 12 year old boy, seeing my
minority community was unfairly targeted by the army. I remember thinking, “I
should go and kill the person that did this”. I remember the hatred building up
in me. To realize now, it is all coming down to that moment. You know, all my life can be
attributed to that single thought by which we established ourselves, by terror,
physically and physiologically to get our rights back.
A man is what
he thinks all day. And I thought for all my life that revenge, hatred & anger are
the only way to solve any problem. I made up my mind that our rights, culture
& independence are much more dignified than our existence itself. We
considered martyrs as god. So Humanity came only after our principles. I, the
leader, wanted freedom in unhealthy and obsessive way.
Life & its
situations are your thoughts, unfolding step by step whether
you like it or not. You are made or unmade by the thoughts you choose
& encourage. They are factual
data, verifiable to every single event in your life.
It is the nature of thought to find its
way into action. As the result of
what I have thought & done in the 30 years of the bloodiest civil war, I
had knowingly or unknowingly started making my own way to this graveyard,
finally where I struggle even for a lungful of air now. Your thoughts decide your character only which leads you to your life's circumstances. Thus I now walk out of my life leaving
a case study of how the forces of thought and elements of the mind decide &
mould your character, circumstances, and destiny.
Man is a growth by law,
and his life functions by the logical system of “cause and effect”. One is
always the result of the other. The circumstance of a human being dying like a
beast is not a coincidence or fate. It’s because I lived like a beast which grew
out of my ideology. Reality is a product of our thought, decisions &
actions.
As a thinking animal, you
live, you die, you love, you hate, you reject, and you embrace because of the
excuses and decisions you make. Nothing is meant to be. Everything that happens
in our life does have a logic reason whether we want to see it or not. I know I
could easily have been that father who walks his daughter to school every day.
Moreover, Life and its circumstances are not what
make you. Instead, it reveals to you what
kind of person you really are, and what kind of life you have lived so far. It just
measures you by the way you react to it.
When I started to fight
the enemy, life threw me two choices: Either die taking
revenge on him or live defending your own people’s lives. I decided to free ourselves by having our control over the enemy. Thus i chose guns &
bombs, thinking it could kill only enemies. But when you make any
choice you have to live with its consequences. You take the responsibility for
the outcome. Sadly, the outcome now is that how my whole community has been flatted and
how our entire families are wiped out.
All the time I was blaming
the outside conditions for the problem I had inside me. Indeed, the relentless
suffering from the enemy drew all my people against a common foe.
But my enemy alone doesn't decide the final choice of weapon I take
to fight him. It’s my ignorance to an extent. As a man, we have the power to determine
what we think & act about in all our predestined life.
In the end if you see, the
enemy is after all an excuse for the circumstances you are in. If you ever want
to differ from your enemy it’s only by means of your attitude towards him &
his events. We might have been hunted like animals, but we never should have
become one of them. He wanted power & control, and so did i. And he wanted them by killing his opponents, and so did i too. It was like trying to solve a problem by the same thinking which was used to create it.
We might have been
mercilessly annihilated by the enemy now, but who had set it up for them
perfectly? The problem is not how he intends to kill you but how you let him to
do that. It's about how you can save yourself. You cannot expect your enemy to be kind because he ain't Buddha or Gandhi but a human turned beast. You never really have an effective
control anything other than you. As a human being you create your
storms and sun shines.
The truth is that you are
buffeted by circumstances so long as you believe yourself to be a creature
affected by outside condition.
Of all creatures, human
alone jeopardize his own life, while all others succumb to fate. As a
creative being, we have key to every situation in our life. Of all the
creatures in the universe, man alone has the ability to choose or create or
master the condition he needs to survive. His control over his life and its
events is decided by how he uses his mind to its potential. This ability is
part of what makes him human. Only five sense animals need to adapt to their
environment they are provided, in order keep them alive and safe. They cannot create their life.
Man
can survive any condition as he thinks. His only disability is his attitude.
I now realize that it’s
the job of thinking leaders not to be on the side of executioners. All war
is a symptom of man’s failure as the thinking animal. Without my rational mind,
I willingly believed what I wished. To be honest, I had chances to stop the war
a long before now. The millions of my people were ready to follow me even to
death only because they wanted to live safely. But I dragged them to my violence solution thorough the emotions of patriotism and pride, which are way overrated by any culture. My people didn't think, nor were they allowed to, before they took
weapons. But then any mediocre
idea that generates enthusiasm & adrenaline rush prevails longer than any
truth that doesn't.
Honestly, I should have
searched freedom & peace in my mind and its thoughts, not merely in
boundaries, or power. Without my violence ideology, Hundreds of thousands of my
people would have had at least their life even if not the so called independent
land. They had only started killing my people, but I factually asked them to continue
it by killing theirs.
You know, I have got
struck now on the regrets of things that I should have done, and the things
that I never should have done. The principle of
military never harmonizes with peace. Taking weapon to defend you from beasts
is different from finding arms to avenge one. You should fight for the
existence, not for revenge or control because when you take revenge you dig two graves.
How could I rise up to
peace when I still dwelled into the thoughts of killing people? You know that
you would not go any higher than you think. We don’t attract what we want, but
what we are.
The fact was that that I
took gun to release my people from the enemy. But only gradually did I realize
that I used it to acquire more power. I was the sole leadership to tell my
people what to do.
Until the ambition in mind ends,
peace never begins. The hungry for power & control became a stumbling stone to my self realization.
To know that how the tens
of thousands of people are now being killed for no living reasons; To think
that how the millions of people had to live as refuge years after years, whose
struggles of getting daily food and water was often hopeless against the
minefields and crossfire; To think that how those children forced to learn guns
& bombs instead of bicycle & science; To realize that how the years of
our freedom efforts resulted into martyrs graveyards now; I understand that the
violence can’t even be a choice in pursuing your life.
The war was not worth it. It was a battle fought by forgotten soldiers over nothing.
Now having seen all these
turmoil and hardships, I realize that non violence is not a bad way at all to fight for
freedom. At least, you would be able to be alive to enjoy it if you
ever achieve by it. At least, you would live & die like a human. A true victory is winning your freedom without having victims.
Whether you are ascending
above to humane perfection or descending below to the beast level is purely the
choice of our thoughts, what you think. I realize now, looking back, I did not
fight my enemy, I fought myself, the enemy was in me. My thoughts were the
weapons drenched in the poison of emotions.
If only I had watched,
controlled and altered my thoughts upon others, and upon my life, and
circumstances, linking cause and effect, many of our lives would have been alive to rise up when the sun shines tomorrow, instead of serving a
feast to eagles & foxes now.
“As you think
so you are; as you continue to think, so you remain”.
As they call themselves
the thinking creatures, I hope that the mankind will one day find enough reason
and sense to settle their differences without cutting throats. Peace cannot be
hunted like this. It can only be created in mind.
