The Voyeur of Tragedies

Au Revoir, L'Ed?*

[Important small print: If you, reader, prefer the more amiable end of the Ed., it would be advisable to skip this missive. the Ed. is missing, as is said amiability]

The Ed. may finally have bid this world adieu. I say this because a part of me finally fled in disgust today. Perhaps because the rest of me was shamelessly barged into people's homes in a bid to create a career on the rusted foundations of floundering lives.

I went in to these homes not because I could help or thought I could try. Far be it from me to actually trouble myself on someone else's behalf. That, said I, would never do. No. I went in because I figured it would probably look excellent on a piece of paper, preferably with a little gilt-edge. Perhaps a tiny signature at the bottom and my contact details on top, as final flourishes.

On commence par le commencement?

Inasmuch as I care to prove my sanity (or inasmuch as I claim title to it still), perhaps I ought to begin at the beginning and take it from there.

Most cities I visit leave me with a bit of their soul. Exceptions exist I suppose; I never did tap into Amsterdam's hedonistic soul, nor perhaps into Berlin's secretive one. Both left me out in the cold and deservedly. I did little to understand or appreciate them and they replied in kind.

Pristine on the other hand, brought back Colombo and then Gangtok in quick succession. Military vehicles, soldiers, that quiet watchful atmosphere, the too bright smile, the nonchalant shrug that hides uneasiness. Perhaps I was the uneasy one in all these cities. I, in my love for freedom and perhaps a bit of anarchy, disliked the restraint of armed forces. I felt the burden of alert eyes and tensely coiled atmosphere.

Pristine Pristine

How then can I explain what Pristine meant or means to me? I suppose it revived me, seemed to jolt me awake. Here, said my shameless self, was an unexperienced experience. Here was something I hadn't seen.

Large swathes of empty, desolate land in a city busy rebuilding itself. Some parts of the city look almost joyful again; they have some inhabitants back, they bustle and chatter to themselves, congratulate themselves on being first to be whole again. Others stand about disconsolately, muttering about half-wrecked houses and abandoned homes.

Yet others are firmly on their way. They look with hopeful eyes at the future and seem to have woken from a long sleep, blinking with sleepy eyes at a whole new world.

And through it all, there are the purveyors of reconstruction. Those so called angels of mercy, who, if you could but see, might really just the angels of death. An entire establishment of angels who glory in what happened to this beautiful country and now wallow in its confusion; enrich themselves and seek job satisfaction in the bubbling broth of a newly hatched nation.

Call me cynical. Call me sarcastic, call me disillusioned or hopeless. Chances are (unless you happen to be my hapless progenitors who obviously had NO idea what they were getting into), you cannot pronounce my haphazard name, so you may as well use another.

Pristine seems to me to seethe; the locals battle within to control both pride (at a new independence) and resentment (both at the angels and at the divisions in their society). What price the Roma when there is 50% unemployment? Is being poor not enough to qualify anymore? Does one need be historically oppressed as well?

Perhaps I feel strongly because I find links with the battles that rage in my own country. In the distinctiveness we take for granted and in the differences which unite and separate my people.

Du Bist Meine Schwester

Or perhaps I'm emotional because the Roma (whether merely weeping or actively suicidal) simply refuse to refrain from forging links with me (for heaven's sake did they have to be from my country AND my state?) and calling me their sister, in german no less. I didn't quite decipher which I liked less; that they used german or that I understand enough of it to divine their meaning.

Or perhpas I'm affected because I was detained by airport police for being Indian (yes, apparently political reality is a tad bit skewed away from favour re:India).

Or simply because I feel I found my calling and it just happens to require me to bust into a man's home and ask how he managed to ruin his life quite as effectively as he did, and did he feel, perhaps, that it may have been his fault?

I sat through some excruciating interviews lately; in Fushe-Kosova I looked into the lost eyes of a boy; plucked from the only home he knew and thrust into an alien land where he knew neither the people nor the language and where he was little more than a burden. To add insult to injury, voyeurs of tragedy (much like me) came on guided tours to examine and probe him, to see where it hurt and perhaps understand quite how much it hurt. Perhaps he would care to demonstrate?

Here again, I sat stony-faced in the face of a man who had no job, nor prospects of one, soon no home and no prospects of another, no money, no help, nobody, nothing. Liar, I thought to myself. He lies, I said. It cannot be as he says. And yet I knew there was only one liar in the room, and it was not he.

In Mitrovica, I marvelled at the city with two parallel governments. At shops where you find both euros and serbian dinars. At the man who ran from country to country to save his family and failed. At the same man who runs a shop in a neighbourhood with no income and a turnover of 3 euros a day.

Snow Everywhere, Peace

And through everything, all I thought was, the snow is beautiful. Look how it blankets the trees and the farms; look how it caresses the mountains and sprinkles the rooftops. Look how it clings off branches, look how peaceful it is. Look how peaceful I am; I can no longer feel the pain emanating from hopeless, helpless people. It even ennobles the graves lining the road.

On another note, I thought to myself how nice an SUV would be (never mind that my feet don't quite reach the pedals, perhaps I'd just get an automatic). Preferably to drive myself, since being driven drives me (ha ha) quite insane, not to mention car-sick.

I could, given time, convince myself that really I'm being quite noble. I'm trying to help, I'm on a mission of mercy.

On quiet reflection and perhaps with a little bit of the glare of harsh truth, I might admit though, that I'm no angel. I'm a voyeur of tragedy.

Welcome to my world. Long live I, for the Ed. (poetically) is dead.

The small print: The Ed. had morals and a sense of rightness which is now missing from us. Perhaps The Ed. will return and we sure hope so. We are quite morose without. We therefore, for the first time in the history of The Bugle, end without signing off.