Tuesday, March 5, 2013

From ‘Motiba's Tattoos. A Granddaughter's journey into her indian family's past’ by Mira Kamdar


To be an exile is to endure the unstoppable pain of separation from a land to which one is forbidden to return. To be the descendant of exiles is to be even more completely severed from “home.” With the passing of generations, the homeland becomes a mythic place outside real time or place, the abode of unknown ancestors longed for, yet fundamentally unknowable. Nothing remains of the ancestors’ world or, worse, faint traces, tantalizing hints, uninterpretable signs that point in vague directions as tracks half effaced in the sand that double back on themselves. The children of exiles are the trustees of a home they can never know.



Lo, soul, seest thou not
God’s purpose from the first?
The earth to be spann’d,
connected by network,
The races, neighbours, to marry
and be given in marriage,
The oceans to be cross’d,
the distant brought near,
The lands to be welded together
- Walt Whitman


Kali Yuga ......
Property alone will confer rank; wealth will be the only source of devotion; passion will be the sole bond of union between the sexes; falsehood will be the only means of success in litigation; and woman will be objects merely of sensual gratification. Earth will be venerated but for its mineral treasures, dishonesty will be a universal means of subsistence, presumption will be substituted for learning …. Thus in the Kali age shall decay constantly proceed, until the human race approaches its annihilation

- Vishnu Purana

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