Asif Khan Inc.

Would You Erase Me?

Mumbai Under Siege. More than 24 hours since the first blasts made that ever-returning feeling of terror make its comeback once again on the soil of Mumbai, the echoes of which would be heard for a long time to come (and should remain in suspended reverberation, not drown away in the babble of ‘life goes on’, as it has happened till now), and with a nation brought to a practical standstill with governance literally on its knees, the situation is still not completely under control.

It therefore quite naturally feels ironic for me while I was going through this particular picture which I had taken at a friend’s place on a random evening a couple of days back. Some of you might recognize what the complete card says and from where it was taken; that’s not the point however. What just stood out in that picture for me were (i) the word ERASE - a word which is short and crisp, and very powerful, and (ii) the pair of eyes which were ‘torn’ out from a smiling face. Qualities which could easily make this a powerful image, and of course made this a special one in that collection.

Looking at it now, I can’t but help ask myself the question ‘Would You Erase Me?’. After all, there have been countless incidents over this past year (and I have seriously lost count, which I realized when speaking with colleagues at work today), and many more such in the past years, the intensity and impact varying with each incident. Nothing though comes to my memory which would have achieved anything even close in magnitude to this (yes, we did have the attack on the Parliament, although most people I know wouldn’t really mind a few MPs less, specially now after we have had the cash-for-votes case this year).  Each time however, the power of resilience so inherent to the human spirit has kept us moving, with a smile on our faces, even as we turn a ‘somewhat’ blind eye to the past in a bid to embrace the future.

So, would you erase me, is what I have to ask of them, this time around. And would we continue to smile and move on, turning a blind eye is what I have to ask of us.