Soni Sori, You're A Gun!

Soni Sori was a mother of 3 children.

Soni Sori taught at an Adivasi school in Sameli gaon, Dantewada,  in south Bastar.

Soni Sori was alleged to be a Naxal conduit, collecting ‘protection money’ on their behalf from mining corporations operating in the area.

Soni Sori was arrested in Delhi in Oct ’11, by Crime Branch, Delhi Police acting on a request from Chhattisgarh Police. A request. How sweet, how considerate!

Soni Sori told the courts that she feared for her safety in the custody of Chhattisgarh Police. She was transferred to them in Dantewada, nevertheless.

Soni Sori had stones pushed inside her during interrogation; in the vagina and the rectum, one after the other till they could push no more. In addition to the usual stripping, assault, electric shocks; that’s par for the course.

Soni Sori was acquitted of 6 out of 8 charges against her by Apr ’13 for lack of evidence. An interim bail was granted in Nov ’13.

Soni Sori’s head and back injuries were caused by a slip and fall in the bathroom, the Chhattisgarh Police told the judiciary. They bought it.


The cops tried to establish that Soni Sori was in psychiatric trouble to discredit her complains of vicious torture and abuse. They were checked in their tracks by vigorous action of NHRC and NCW.

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For a start, let us all come together and sing ‘Saare jahaan se achhaa’,

Saare jahaan se achhaa,                                                                                                

Hindustaan hamara hamara..

Aren't we all be proud of our great nation and its secular, socialist, democratic values? All the endorsement is on Primetime television.

It’s poignant what happened to Soni Sori, shocking even. But 34 years of sticking around in the Republic has prepared me to absorb such blows. An ‘oxygen-deficient’ stunned for a couple of hours, subdued for another day or two and on with life. I was not doing too poorly but this little nugget upset the cart,

The officer under whose watch this happened, Dantewada SP, Ankit Garg was awarded a Gallantry medal by the President of India. A gallantry medal from The President of India to a senior cop in whose custody 5 men held a woman down and pushed stones inside her.

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Naxal conduit or not, what kind of a man does that and goes on to accept a gallantry award for it? Can it be tied to a behavioral profile?

Is it fair to expect precursors like cruelty towards animals and bed-wetting into early teens? Is he a psychopath or a hyper-obedient imbecile of the ‘Sir, Yes Sir’ kind? Did he hum ‘Nanha-munna rahi hoon’ to himself as a kid, I wonder?

Nanha-munna rahi hoon, desh ka sipaahi hoon,
bolo mere sang Jai Hind, Jai Hind, Jai Hind..                                                                               

Jai Hind, Jai Hind.

Does he make love to his wife? Does he go down on her? Does he tenderly wash his daughter, if there’s one, after a pee? And is he not a raging schizophrenic if he can do that and go to work and push stones up another woman’s privates?

Or heavens forbid, did I get it all wrong? Maybe he knew adivasis as tough, outdoorsy people and their ‘one with nature’ lifestyle. So he arranged a rock dildo for Soni Sori. Maybe he was only trying to ‘tickle’ her; like uncles who ‘tickle’ young nieces.

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Okay now, enough of this sentimentalism! Let’s talk numbers young man.

Do you know how much is the bauxite in Orissa’s forests worth? Just the bauxite in Orissa’s forests alone. Should you not care? We need it for our anti-Pak missiles and swanky BMWs; every yuppy seems to want one these days. They’re more sought after than Nirvana.

(Buddha is struggling to maintain noble silence.)

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Technologists are offering solutions to amplify rainforest-cover manifold using cutting-edge video editing and replication software. Sales packs come in categories of 100nX and 1000nX, with further gradations.

‘We gained extensive experience during M’s campaign. We’re very sure of the value we are offering. We used crane-mounted cameras then. For forest’s raw footage, we will mount them on choppers and take them for a spin.’ They say with a confident, self-assured smile.

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Soni Sori contested the 2014 General Elections from Bastar on an Aam Aadmi Party ticket.

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The Cancer Express - Bhatinda to Bikaner (I)

Between the ages of 25 and 30, I lived in Europe and Australia for a few years. Invariably, during grocery-trips to the supermarket, I would pass a beautiful boutique store with finely wrapped fruits and veggies. A dainty blackboard on an easel announced the prices in chalks of various color, surrounded by fresh lilies; a neat mark-up over what the supermarkets charged. These were the stores selling 'organic' produce. I guessed a restructured supply-chain or a marketing gimmick accounted for the premium.

Few years on, now back in India, ‘organic’ and I met increasingly infrequently. And on the few instances we did, it was through the hippy types who spoke of unconditional love, hugged a lot and decorated their living spaces with diyas and flower-petals. They did not have much traction on me and I found no reason to revise my opinion, completely uninformed though it was.

One evening an unlikely link in a friend’s mail led me to www.navdanya.org. Would it sufficiently capture the enormity of this event if I told you that I did not sleep that night? The health benefit to the consumer is obvious and widely spoken about but that’s just scraping the tip of the iceberg. The socio-political and economic ramifications of the practice of organic and ecological farming are immense. It’s a universe in there. I felt naked and wondered if the hippies actually knew all this!

As a young kid, I once heard the narrator of a theatrical thriller challenge his audience to wonder if they woke up one morning to realize that everything they’d been told was a lie. It sounded amply fantastic then and was out of my system as quickly as it had come in.

I have run into, confronted and researched many ‘worldview-altering’ perspectives since, varying in shock-value from rude jolts to hand-held, baby-step transitions. The rudest jolts came from unpacking..

the Indian State’s position and machinations in Kashmir (The most horrid human rights violations of our haloed defense forces and foxy intelligence agencies. The free and fair elections in the most heavily militarized zone in the world. Could someone tell a less obscene joke?) Not quite the plot of ‘Mission Kashmir’. Alas!

..the burning of the Sabarmati Express outside Godhara station by a mob of yet untraced ‘Muslim men’ (no one knows where they came from or disappeared and how logistics were managed within 10 minutes of the mini-brawl at the station) The inquisitive amongst the readers could Google ‘false-flag operations’ and  follow it up with some critical thinking.

..the Dec 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament by ‘Pakistani terrorists’ and its mastermind Afzal Guru, who had to be killed to satisfy a nation’s collective conscience (Reportedly, cops at the Delhi Police Special Cell put chilly-powder and petrol up his behind and administered electric shocks to his ‘willy’ to manufacture, not extract, a confession. Is that how they get their name, the Special Cell? Wonder if the chilly-petro farts did not arouse the magistrate’s suspicion, even if he entirely missed the sparks flying from his crotch.) False-flag?

..what exactly is going on in jungles of Central India, the Red corridor? Ever heard of the Operation Green Hunt? And who are the Maoists? Who’re the Naxals? Are they one and the same or is one a subset of the other? Are they manic, marauding murderers or the most impoverished, abused and dispossessed people of this country; among its most fragile communities? 

Trick questions?

Somehow they do not sit too well with the image of Bharat Mata in all her bridal splendor lest we take a cue from the ferocious tiger with blood-dripping jaws instead.

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‘What if everything you were told was a lie?’

A decade and a half after I first heard it, I am afraid there’s disturbingly little fantasy in that statement.

It’s not a pleasant feeling when the weight of its reality settles on you. It hits you like Tyson’s signature three-punch combo that starts with a liver-busting body-shot just under the cage. In reflex, the opponent’s defensive arm drops a couple inches, as if to sooth the searing pain. The critical bastion compromised, a disorienting hook lands on the face, possibly spilling some blood. The quickly deepening crisis is sealed by an Orwellian upper-cut to the chin that unhinges the head, moving it in spooky ways as you go down.

I am sure one’s better off in the long run nevertheless. Even a step closer to enlightenment some would say. One could not possibly hope for Nirvana while being oblivious of the actual costs of 24-hour electricity and fresh water supply to your pad!

'You did not think there were brownie points for crooning along at the local joint on Sufi Night Wednesdays did ye? Ye fucking bastard!'

‘What’s the harm in a few Swadeshi beers? Ooh la la la.. le le yo.. ye sob-story, party-pooper’, they retort flaming with indignation.

Only that, like sugar mills and Cola plants before him, the ‘King of Good Times’ is stealing water from communities whose share is being diverted to beer factories now. There are areas in Beed and Osmanabad districts of Maharashtra where the sole purpose of the existence of 2-3 members per family is to fetch water. 7 days a week, no Sundays. The queues are over a kilometer long. Could Stephen Covey (RiP) suggest a 9^th habit for them to be more effective cause the first 8 are not helping. Or will Sri Sri suggest a variation of the sudarshan kriya for them to feel less anguish in their ‘water-boy’ lives?

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Okay, let’s talk ‘solutions’ folks. What options have we got here? (in Hollywood CIA style, Sound: Tan Tanen.. Tanan)

I am listening to Krishnamurti, 'On Meditation’. 'It mean nothing; it’s just a silly game unless it touches and transforms every facet of your life', he says. He suggests bringing an immense amount of attention to everyday living. I borrow the concept and extrapolate.

In attention, the fact that someone’s getting raped, murdered, amputated, decapitated, flogged, enslaved, dispossessed so that we can have more, would not go unnoticed. That’s a fair start. Can imagine it translating into more equitable choices; by which, I certainly don’t mean more kapaal-bhaati.

Beed, Osmanabad, Dantkaranya, Niyaamgiri, Rayagarh, Rajanandgaon among many others will have more food/ water/ space per capita and the life-force of sovereignty and dignity to go along. And we could be ‘Covey & Sri Sri’-free! 

Don’t see much value in that?

Hey, are you not pissed about people dressing-up in funky avataars to tell you what to do with your life? What about self-reliance and a mature sense of privacy? Whether they come in $2000 suits or glorious flowing robes; haven’t you had enough with these jokers? The ones in glorious robes are concealing a hard-on any way. A priest recently confessed that to me at a retreat.

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Well, was that a diversion that found a life of its own or an over-indulgence in ‘where I am coming from’? I guess this essay needs a sabbatical.

The long and short of it is that as one peels off the purdaah of status quo, the tale of ecological farming is a fascinating one. With the complex simplicity and earthy romance of natural systems, the issues of food and seed sovereignty that so lucidly expose our pedantic interpretation of life, justice or equality, the uncorrupted evil of corporations like Monsanto and deadly carcinogens like Dioxin thrown in the mix, it’s drama that Tolstoy would doff his hat off to.

I’ll be back.

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