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AN AMERICAN BOY
To my mother who taught me that life is beautiful
PRELUDE

“I remember what a friend of mine once asked me in all earnest: ‘Every day we read in
the newspaper or hear about the “War on Terror(ism)”. Who are these terrorists?
Wherein their origin(s)? This question really shocked me! I was myself in search of an
appropriate answer! They are our own people, whom we sometimes create through
political and economic isolation, or they could be fanatics, sometimes sponsored by
hostile nations, trying to disrupt normal life through terrorism. In the Ramayana, the
battle is between the divine hero Rama and the demon king Ravana. It is a long-drawn
battle that finally Rama wins. In the Mahabharata, the battle at Kurukshetra is a battle
between good and evil, and Dharma wins. The battles are many but finally peace
triumphs.

In our times too we see good battling evil- for instance, the Second World War. It seems
to me both good and evil will survive side by side. The Almighty does help both to
varied degrees! How to minimize the evil through our spiritual growth is a question that
has persisted throughout human history…

I can recall the ‘Battle of Kalinga’ which claimed the lives of at least 300,000 people with
an equal number being wounded. Victory had been obtained at heavy cost…And
Emperor Asoka looked down at the horror he had created, a horror of bloodshed and
more gore…At that moment that was to go down in the annals of history, Ahimsa
Dharma was born…The remorseful King embraced God’s command to propagate love
for human beings through this doctrine!

Asoka said, ‘Friends, there is one thing I have realized, there is no victory in causing
suffering. Triumph is a peaceful kingdom…’

The Great Albert Einstein once famously remarked, ‘You know, in the West we have
built a large, beautiful ship. It has all the comforts in it, but one thing is missing: it has no
compass and does not know where to go. Men like Tagore and Gandhi and their
spiritual forebears found the compass. Why can this compass not be put in the human
ship so that both can realize their purpose?’

Sage Ashtavakra had once propounded that the business of life ought to be peace and
prosperity, and not exploitation and conflict…

Just like Nature! Nature gives without reservation, like the mango tree- people throw
stones at it, break off its branches, but it still offers its shade to the weary traveler, and
its fruits to the hungry!

Then wherein we…?

The history of the world shows the forces of good struggling hard to make life better for
mankind while we human beings show a terrible capacity for destruction…Thus we
have Gandhi on the one hand, striving relentlessly towards Non-Violence, while on the
other hand, millions die in the Second World War and Pearl Harbor and the atomic
bombing of entire cities. Several thousands perish in Bosnia-Herzegovina…a war rages
in the Gaza Strip between Israel & Palestine…

And on 11 September 2001, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York
City fall and innocent lives are lost…In India, in the Bhopal gas tragedy, 30,000 people
die as the result of the carelessness of a multinational company, and Chernobyl and the
daily Violence in the Kashmir Valley…

Where are we going? Are we doomed to destroy ourselves?
No, we have to find an everlasting solution…

In the modern era, there are few such examples, of those who embody the qualities that
come from realizing the nature of the mind… ‘Atmabodha’…We are too much
preoccupied with ostentatious displays of wealth and personal freedom!

Actually, how humane or civilized or compassionate or tolerant are we? There is still a
long way to go…

Abundance and spirituality are not mutually exclusive nor is it wrong to desire material
things…Nature too adopts full measures; you would observe that if you looked around
you! Inside a garden, there is a profusion of flowers. Even better still, if you looked up,
you would see the vast Universe stretching into infinitude, unbelievable really!

All that we see in the world is an embodiment of energy, as Sri Aurobindo says.
Therefore it becomes wise to appreciate that spirit and matter are both part of
existence, are in harmony with each other, after all, it is the realization that it is wrong to
feel that it is shameful or non-spiritual to desire material things that matters…”

‘How do you love when you don’t love?’
PART I

LIGHT
The White Man Shall Battle People in Other Lands…

The greatest period of danger is in September 2001.

“I can foresee a war coming, there will be innocent loss of lives and in the end we will
achieve nothing. The war will emanate from the Western nations and will be the end-
result of man’s greed and miscalculation.”




“Why don’t I feel like an American?” I was all alone in my room.

“Like David, like Michael, and Virginia, even Astad and Chang, like my friends, the way
they feel…too, and Amy.” Amy was someone he truly respected.

“Mama, Mom, how’s Amy, I mean?” His father abruptly left the room.

“Is something the matter, I mean wrong?” I asked mother.

“Well, my child, your father has advised me not to tell you.”

“Not to tell me WHATTT?”

“These are troubled times, my son; your friend Astad was arrested and forcibly detained
along with several others in a police raid on seven counts of conspiracy. Letsss…go
back to the US, son, I mean you should come back home with us. You’ve been unwell.”

“Amy, I want to know about Amy. I’m sorry about Astad, but Amy is my best friend.”

I was getting a bit worried.

“Son, Amy had come to India to study and research rural development, during the same
time that you arrived in India. During fieldwork on one of her tours, she had enquired
about the peasant uprising from her supervisor, who happened to be a leading
Sociologist. ‘It’s not an interesting subject,’ she was told. Amy had clearly been puzzled
by her superior’s answer. ‘No, not at all, you Americans are very inquisitive. And yes,
young lady, I…advise you to stay away from all this. You don’t want to enquire about
that. It’s not a point with any research potential. Maybe we should continue with rural
development, because that’s what you came here for in the first place.”

Reshma Mirchandani handed over a few torn leaflets to her son.




From what he could see, Aman was flabbergasted.

It read “injustice perpetrated on American scholar”.

The Indian Mirror. (The date was not clearly visible).

“A young American scholar visiting India to study rural development was found brutally
murdered…”
He did not want to read any further.

(He remembered her kind words: “Healing is possible as in survivors of violence in
areas of conflict. Change towards justice can occur. Values of the heart are as central
as those of the mind…”)

Aman suddenly felt low. After crying like no man of his age would ever cry, he begged
his mother for a Prozac.
CHAPTER 1

                              THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE

…From the moment the sperm makes contact with the ovum, under normal conditions,
all subsequent development to birth of a living newborn is a fait accompli…Following
that initial contact of sperm and egg there is no subsequent moment or stage which is
held in arbitration by the mother, or the embryo or fetus. Nor does the male make a
second contribution to the birth process. Humans develop in a continuum in which every
stage overlaps and each one blends one into the other. Indeed, all of life is contained
within a time continuum. Thus, the beginning of a new life is exacted by the beginning of
fertilization, the reproductive event which is the essence of life…

                           (These are the beginnings of life)




                                   Monday afternoon,
                                       1 March

                                       12:32 P.M.

Reshma Mirchandani was expecting. The baby was fine…Both mother and baby were
doing well. Then, what was bothering her?

Outside the cabin window (of the elite Seinfeld Center for Reproductive Medicine in Los
Angeles), Reshma could see a group of white cops beating up a black motorist and
detaining several others for reasons that were beyond her comprehension and indeed
audibility, she was in an airtight cabin. The blinds were not drawn so anyone could see
right through.




“And what might you worry about?” Lucy, the cabin attendant for the night asked her.

“O, they are only some black fellas’ detained on ten counts of felony and aggravated
assault.”

Lucy was clearly racist.

This was America. “I have a dream,” Reshma remembered Martin Luther King Jr’s
famous words. This was also Abe Lincoln’s America. And Kennedy’s America.

Actually, there were two Americas, she thought. Not North and South America, or
Central America. But one ‘exotic Venice-of America’ (and the private lives and private
wealth of ‘The Big Apple’ and ‘The Big Orange’) and one of black neighborhoods, inner
cities indeed “Ghettos”…
“Push, come on push a little bit more,” the baby was coming out. “I can’t,” and as she
caught a glimpse of hubby Himesh behind the glass separating the labor room from the
outside world, “I hate you,” she said.

But Reshma actually didn’t hate the experience.

On the other hand, she was enjoying it. She had felt extremely sexually stimulated as
prior to being taken to the labor room; she and hubby Himesh had locked themselves in
a passionate kiss.

Reshma’s first experience of birth was of hearing her mother tell her how she was born.
Her mother’s story was one of pain; humiliation and a final need for surgery. Then
Reshma and hubby Himesh decided to see a number of television programs about birth.
This was in the years 1980-81. Reshma had found these images of birth exciting and
moving, but it was the emergence of the baby, which touched her. So she had
absolutely no preconception of labor as a sexual act when she was to become a
mother.

It was an entirely typical hospital birth of the time-disinhibited by Pethidine, Reshma lay
in the lithotomy position, pubis completely shaved, being enthusiastically exhorted to
push with every contraction. In between contractions, she begged for her legs to be
taken down from the stirrups (they were not, it was unthinkable). As the baby came
closer to delivery her cries became more intense, and, after the birth, changed with
dramatic speed to gasping, relieved acceptance as she repeated, ‘Oh Baby, Oh my
baby’. The rhythm of her response to the contractions and the sudden release and
change seemed orgasmic to the would-be mother. Hubby Himesh meanwhile waited
anxiously outside the labor room. Inside the labor room, Reshma was able to
experience tremendous sexual arousal, a feeling reiterated by Ina May Gaskin who
famously encouraged women and their partners to ‘smooch’ to augment labor, advice
further reiterated by Caroline Flint. And Reshma and hubby Himesh had smooched
when she was being taken to the labor room. Late in second stage, Reshma was
begging the student midwife to ‘please hurry up’.




“Come on, take deep breaths, just once more, the baby is almost out,” and as the baby
emerged, her gasps seemingly more pronounced changed to “O baby, my baby!”

It was a boy!




In a faraway land called India, in a remote Himalayan hamlet called Pahargaon, an
innocent man called Bhumi Gaddi had suffered a violent death by stoning at the hands
of a reckless mob. The reason was he had refused to subject his child bride to
intercourse on the first night out of sheer compassion.

Soothsayers had earlier predicted that Bhumi Gaddi would be reborn across the seas in
a fantasy land called America and come back to Pahargaon one day as an alien. Bhumi
Gaddi was cremated, but although his body died, his soul was to live for ever. Like
wearing new clothes, the soul would transmigrate to spiritually implant itself in the womb
of another virgin which in this case would be

Reshma Mirchandani.

“Son, I carried you to term through difficult circumstances. Your birth is auspicious not
only for two proud parents but for everyone. May the Good Lord always protect you and
take care of you. It is a beautiful gift of God; this ability to conceive and give birth, it
takes generations of “Karma” for both parents of a child.”

That night, Bhumi Gaddi appeared in Reshma’s dreams. Reshma was never to mention
the matter to anyone, but in her heart of hearts…she knew that

Her son was born to be a Messiah…
CHAPTER 2

                     THE CITY OF ANGELS: WHAT’S IN A NAME?

“Curfew lifted from the city of Los Angeles,” ran the headlines. The Los Angeles Post,
The Los Angeles Mirror, The Sun…it was all over. Evidently, there had been a lot of
rioting following the detention, and an enraged mob had lynched three white policemen
and injured several others during the period Reshma was admitted and hubby Himesh
had decided to conceal the matter from her.

What intrigued the proud parents was the fact that the curfew had been lifted the day
their son was born! This was a stark fact and something they were proud of that too.




“Jai, we’ll call him Jai,” said his grandmother. “No, we’ll call him Sanjay,” “San-jay,” said
his aging aunt. “Rimesh, son of Himesh,” his father added.

“Aman,” Reshma quietly emerged from the room. “Aman,” for peace…” “My son was
born on the day curfew was lifted.” Reshma was beaming.

So, at the insistence of the mother, the newborn was named Aman…




Aman Mirchandani grew up to be a fine boy. Born to NRI steel magnate Himesh
Mirchandani and Reshma Mirchandani, Aman was sent to “Daffodils”, an up market
Montessori when he was a little child. Very different from the average child, his teachers
often predicted he would grow up into something different. He was caring, empathetic
and compassionate quite unlike most other children from similar family backgrounds
and never ceased from walking the extra mile. After all, he had Reshma in his blood.

It was never difficult teaching him though. He was never a problematic child. He was
keenly observant and believed in speaking his mind out.




At the age of 19, Aman Mirchandani was sent to Stanford University to study Law, and
his chosen specialization was Human Rights Law. For the first time, the young mind
was exposed to the vast array of rights, civil and political and economic, social and
cultural. The scholar chose to write his dissertation on the meaning and concept of
justice. The boy had a curious mind which often wondered why there was no peace in
this world, why did so many people go hungry, was food the major cause of social
ferment, and whether guaranteeing the rights of the child would mean everlasting
peace?

The young mind decided that the best way to find answers to the questions that
intrigued him was to travel. He had the funds and he had his mother’s blessings.
Besides, there was no other way.
He decided to travel to India… India had always intrigued him, he was stranded
between two cultures and to him this was the best opportunity, after all, he was an
Indian…born in America.

Or, was he an American?

“I am an American citizen. I was born in Los Angeles. It was important to my mother
however that her son not forget his roots, meaning Indian culture though off course I
had always been taught that there is only one culture and one language and one
religion: Humanity.”

“I went to an up-market school where I studied French, German and English. I grew up,
confused not knowing which or what to call my home. I wanted to travel to India. In
America, I felt like the hybrid genre. ‘Split Identity’ call it. I remember having read the
accounts of Western travelers, how ‘at home’ they felt in India, that it was their ‘spiritual
home’ but my own confusion often prevented me from understanding what they had
meant.”

“Spiritual home to me then implies a place where one journeys and feels roots that are
imperceptible, indefinable. I do feel connected to the history, the people, the place. I
have never been there. And though India is not my birthplace, something draws me to
her.”

“I AM AN AMERICAN BOY LIVING THE INDIAN DREAM.”

Aman could recount his grandmother narrating to him:

“If you were a scholar you could study exotic flora and fauna or equally exotic customs,
dialects, peoples, and Gods.”

“India for the past fifteen centuries has been subject to the kind of imagining I am
doing…playing the role in men’s imagination which exotic planets play now in present-
day science fiction, far away, hardly attainable and replete with wonders. I too have my
share of imagining about India. My life seems to have been enormously affected by my
concept of India, and still is. Like a lover finally thrown back upon himself, I have to go
out in order to know where to discover what I was seeking. And that, off course, would
be within myself.”

“I am sure that in the process, I would find my answers.”

His father was busy typing something on his laptop. While his mother cried. They had
come to see him off at the airport.

“My mother believes in giving away money to charitable causes. For mother, India
would be perfect for a humanitarian ‘Karma’. What amusing play of Karma caused her
own son to adopt to travel to India of his own choosing?”

These were his last thoughts before he boarded.
CHAPTER 3

                    (THEME PARKS & YANNI) ONE MAN’S DREAM

                                        Mid 2001

Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport, Kolkata. Aman Mirchandani arrived
by British Airways. It was well past midnight. He had no option but to stay on at the
airport for the night.

Aman was now looking at the airfield. There were airplanes of varying shapes and
sizes. “Japan Airlines”, read the airplane closest to the terminal. “So this would probably
be going to Tokyo, or Hokkaido or even Hiroshima or Nagasaki. To the ‘Land of the
Rising Sun’. To the land that rose out of the ashes. To the United Nations University.”

Aman wondered why there ever was a World War II. Or a Pearl Harbor. Why Hiroshima,
why Nagasaki? Why so many innocent lives? And think of the ones that had survived
the radiation.




“Please show us your passport!” Aman was fast asleep. “Show us your passport,
please!” they repeated. “Show us your Passport.” Aman took out his Passport. They
saw he was American. And so did the sniffer dogs.

This should not have happened. At an international airport. They immediately
apologized to him. But Aman said nothing.

Thereafter he took a cab to the hotel. There was a problem here. He did not speak
Bangla and they never got his American accent.

“So this is the ‘Land of the Buddha’, Aman enquired at the hotel reception. “Saab, we do
not know what Buddha you are talking about. We know about Buddhism and that’s it!”

The young boy did not know whether to feel amused.




The Consul General arrived at 10 a.m. sharp. Briefing started as scheduled. “Mr.
Mirchandani, you have to be extra-careful in these troubled times. We will be moving
you from the hotel to a guesthouse where the Consul General’s Chef will cook for you.”

“And yes, please don’t get yourself into trouble, Mr. Mirchandani.” The Consul General,
who had first arrived with a word of caution left with a word of caution as well.

Those eyes did not comprehend the enormity of the matter. Those eyes were innocent.
Those eyes had seen a more enlightened and educated system. Those eyes had never
seen bloodshed. Those eyes had dreamt of peace…
CHAPTER 4

              INDENTURED SERVANTS AND DISOBEDIENT MASTERS

                                      11 June 2001

“…Once upon a time there was a great chain of being. At the top was God, and at the
bottom were all the inanimate objects. (Actually, hidden below the bottom – in a kind of
underground lair – were the Devil and his minions). Humanity appeared at different
points in between: kings were below angels, vassals below lords, apprentices below
craftsmen, and wives below husbands. And all this was divinely ordained…

From out of this compost grew English common law. Over time hallowed principles were
codified into social rules, and extremely detailed treatises were produced setting out
how people on different levels must relate towards each other. This common law
controlled the parent-child relationship, the husband-wife relationship, the guardian-
ward relationship, and the master-servant relationship...”

(Excerpts from “Of Masters and Servants” by Peter Hall-Jones)

Working as cooks and servants in private households is a common job for young to
middle-aged men and women, women especially. They start in the morning and
generally earn Rupees 2000 monthly (approx. $50.00; the Consul General’s Chef and
her husband, a chauffeur earned much higher, for obvious reasons). Meals are
included. The change of diet that these women have made them vulnerable to obesity,
high sugar, high BP and so on. These are relatively new illnesses for these
communities, so there is a need for both preventive care as well as medicines.

“My experience with cooks and chauffeurs back home in Los Angeles has been very
different from my experiences in Calcutta (Kolkata). In this short span of time ever since
I arrived, I have seen children of low-income communities whose parents leave their
children to work in the city during the day, sometimes working in 3-4 homes for about 2
hours in each home.”

Aman made a few notes. He was trying to ‘discover his purpose in life’.

“Saab, your tea is getting cold.” Aman looked around for the voice. There was innocent
humility in that voice. It seemed the “servant class” in India had been trained for such
humility. There were limits that one couldn’t cross, you know. Most of these servants
were migrants from rural India. Poverty and lack of jobs often resulted in this mass
exodus. They migrated with their wives and children. While the men found some work,
the women (and very often, children) worked as domestic help, cooking, cleaning, and
washing the dishes and so on and so forth.

“This is our story, Saab.” Aman could see the crestfallen look on his chauffeur.

There existed a vast urban-rural divide, and Aman actually thought about it. So, there
was a class divide, he thought. There was indeed humility in these voices. And there
were many.

But there was no human dignity.
CHAPTER 5

                        9/11 (THE RETURN TO INNOCENCE)

Reshma wondered if Aman was safe. She had heard of United Airlines. She had heard
of the Pentagon. She knew that on that fateful day, two airplanes had crashed into the
World Trade Center. She knew her Aman was an innocent child.

“We lost Alicia and Chris in the attacks on the World Trade Center. Their bodies were
found in the debris. Many of my business associates were inside the Center. O God,
when will the world stop warring?” Himesh Mirchandani burst into the room.

Reshma wondered why Aman had not called up. She hoped her child was safe and
secure.

The phone rang. Reshma picked up the phone. “I hope you are fine, Mama. I don’t
understand why there is so much of violence in the world. Please take care.”

Reshma knew Aman was still a child.
CHAPTER 6

    THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS: THE RIGHT TO LIVE

                                        October 2001

“If we are to reach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against
war, we shall have to begin with children. And if they will grow up in their natural
innocence, we won’t have to struggle, we won’t have to pass fruitless, idle resolutions,
but we shall go from love to love and peace to peace, until at last all the corners of the
world are covered with that peace and love for which, consciously or unconsciously, the
whole world is hungering.” (Gandhi)

Aman looked at Parvati’s daughter. She was seriously thin and emaciated for a girl of
her age, and wondered what the Government of India was doing to feed and protect
India’s growing child population. India had acceded to the Convention on the Rights of
the Child of the UN. Aman wondered why the Indian Government had failed to honor its
obligations even after it had ratified the Convention.

After all, no state can achieve peace until it has realized the rights of its children.




“Mama, I remember my university days. We were studying ‘Rights’. There were Civil
and Political Rights and there were Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. There was
the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Mama, God has created me for a purpose in
life, and I must fulfill that purpose. But I do not know where to begin. I’ve started off with
India. Perhaps I’ll wind it all up with a degree in International Humanitarian Law from the
University of Groningen.” Aman beamed over the phone.

(The IELTS goes online and the cash-rich, money-strapped get to go to the University of
Groningen. The rest get pushed into “Heavily Indebted Poor Country Initiatives”)

“Aman, my child, be careful and work to discover your purpose in life,” Reshma advised.




“Mr. Mirchandani.” The US Consul General’s voice was grave and purposeful. “Have
you read the teachings of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda? Not that I expect you to, but
if you are in India… Well, you should read Tagore and Gandhi as well. As a matter of
fact, I will be making a short business trip to Vishva-Bharati University, Shantiniketan.
Would you like to come with me?”

Deep inside, I found myself saying “Yes”, and that was indeed my response to the
Consul General.

I packed my bags and prepared to leave (the very next day!) to Shantiniketan. Aman
had never heard of the place. He knew from his friends back home that India was the
land of the Ganges, snakes and the Taj Mahal. To him it was almost unbelievable how
little he or his friends knew about Tagore who he was told had won the Nobel Prize for
Literature…
“Would we be crossing Sonagachi?” I innocently enquired of Raja, the chauffeur.

They were not yet ready to leave.

The Consul General had been held up over “official matters” related to the attacks in the
US.

“Saab, rich people don’t visit Sonagachi. And why would they? They visit the Taj
(Bengal). What would they understand, the life and the pain of a commercial sex-
worker?”

Aman was clearly embarrassed. He dreamt however that one day, sex-workers would
be recognized in society and given their due as citizens, that the lives of their children
would dance to a different tune as during holy festivals… He dreamt of a day when
there would be no trade in human beings on earth.

“So, what is the root of the issue of commercial sexual exploitation?” Aman once again
enquired of Raja.

“We are poor. I have a job. But most poor people are ignorant of their rights and
privileges. The state does nothing to feed or protect us. Under the circumstances, most
of our innocent rural folk have no alternative but to sell their wives and daughters,
mostly to pay off their debts. They talk of women’s rights in the cities but refuse to truly
understand the situations in the villages.” Raja clearly had an element of anger in his
voice.

I looked around. Clearly Calcutta (or Kolkata) was poor. Desperately poor. Perhaps
Calcutta was by far the poorest city in the world. Aman could see entire families living
(or existing), cooking, cleaning, washing and relieving on the sidewalks. He could see
children begging on the streets. “Why blame the Government? Fie on my (elitist)
education instead.”




Aman left for Shantiniketan with a heavy heart. Something deep inside pricked his
(noble) conscience. The Consul General spoke of the attacks on the World Trade
Center, he spoke of the Pentagon, and he spoke of the “War on Terror”… but Aman
was silent. The entire journey, he said not a word. He was rather uneasy, and kept
glancing sideways… rather looking out of the window of the car.

Those images shattered him…of thin, wasted and emaciated children standing and
waving by the roadside, little innocents tending cattle, little innocents traveling on foot
with pots on their heads and little innocents serving tea at ‘Dhabas’… So, West Bengal
was after all a very impoverished state, should be very low on the Human Development
Index, he thought (but said nothing).
They reached Bolpur Station where Raja halted for refueling nearby. Aman could see
the beautiful hostel building that some social activists had constructed for the welfare of
tribal girls and women as they set off on the final leg of their journey to Shantiniketan.

He could now feel a sense of serenity within. Shantiniketan was truly serene and had
begun to put his mind at ease once again.

There were trees, there was the breeze and there was the university. There were young
girls in colorful ‘saris’ rehearsing for the Annual Convocation.

Aman checked into his hotel room and partitioned the drapes. It was wonderful outside,
and the grass outside his room was an exotic green.



Meanwhile, the Consul General had given him some literature to read.

-“I am trying hard to start a school in Santiniketan. I want it to be like the ancient
hermitages we know about. There will be no luxuries, the rich and poor alike shall have
to live like ascetics. But I cannot find the right teachers. It is proving impossible to
combine today’s practices with yesterday’s ideals…”-

-“There are men who think that by the simplicity of living introduced in my school I
preach the idealization of poverty which prevailed in the medieval age… should we not
admit that poverty is the school in which man had his first lessons and his best training?
Even a millionaire’s son has to be born helplessly poor and to begin his lesson of life
from the beginning. He has to learn to walk like the poorest of children, though he has
the means to afford to be without the appendages of legs. Poverty brings us into
complete touch with life and the world, for living richly is living mostly by proxy, thus
living in a lesser world of reality...”-

-“The school was conceived as a state of creative unity where the student’s minds
would be free from blind superstition, where they would respect human beings
irrespective of caste and creed”-

-“There was a unity among us when the Indian mind was actively engaged in thinking.
But now there is division. The large branches no longer find themselves connected to
the root. The separation of limbs is dangerous for the body. Likewise, the Indian mind is
now divided into the Hindu, Buddhist, Jaina, Sikh, Muslim and Christian branches. They
are unable to receive anything from the composite whole or give back anything to the
composite whole. Our ten fingers must necessarily be together to make an offering or to
receive an offering. Therefore Indian education must be a collective of the Vedic,
Puranic, Buddhist, Jain and the Islamic minds to fill the Indian heart. We must find out
how the Indian mind has flown along these different streams from the past. That is the
only way India shall realize its unity within its diversity. We must understand ourselves
in this connected way…”-

-“… in every nation education is intimately associated with the life of the people. But for
us modern education is relevant only in turning out clerk, lawyers, doctors, magistrates,
munsiffs and policemen, the few favourite professions of the gentle folk. This education
has not reached the farmer, the oil-grinder, the potter. No other educated society has
been struck by such disaster. The reason for this is that our universities have not been a
growth from the soil… When a truly Indian (or, for that matter, of any other nationality, I
should add) is established it must from the very beginning implement its acquired
knowledge of economics, of agriculture, of health and all other everyday sciences in the
surrounding villages. Then alone can the school become the centre of the country’s way
of living. This school must practise agriculture, dairy-keeping and weaving on the most
modern methods. And to obtain its own financial resources it must adopt cooperative
methods bringing together students, teachers, and the people living around…”-
-“I have proposed to call this ideal school Visva-Bharati…”-

“So this is the incredible Shantiniketan of Tagore” (I was not familiar with the first name).
And why has the kingdom of the Nobel Laureate (meaning West Bengal) been reduced
to such…?” For the first time, Aman tried to find the answers in the serenity within.
CHAPTER 7

                WE ALL NEED THE SUN…WE ALL NEED A MESSIAH

                                   17 November, 2001

“Al-Qaeda militants have hijacked four commercial airlines and crashed three of them
into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon killing nearly 3000 people. America has
declared a War on Terror.’’ As CNN reported, Aman’s mind traveled to Africa. There he
was in India, trying to find his answers by generalization initially after which he thought
he would narrow down to the basics.

Despite the fact that the countries of Africa had ratified the UN Convention on the Rights
of the Child and even implemented a regional treaty, the African Charter on the Rights
and Welfare of the Child, many child rights issues remained unresolved.

Child soldiers, child refugees and displaced children, how would Africa cope? Aman
was crestfallen.

Drought, famine and disease had decimated indeed millions. In addition, children faced
the threat of HIV-infection at birth. Child sexual abuse was rife.

Aman switched on the television set. The report said that by 2010, two million children
would be orphaned by this pandemic in South Africa alone…

So, there was still a mammoth task waiting before realizing the African dream…

Aman switched off the television set. Politics did not interest him any more. And least of
all the Politics of War. He was only trying to find the answers to his questions on the
world’s primary problems. But the answers if at all were evading him.




“Saab, if you don’t mind, can I tell you something?” I could sense a degree of reluctance
in Raja’s voice.

“Go on, I don’t mind.” Aman was surely different from the rest.

“Saab, you have a…golden heart, Saab,” Raja fumbled.

“Go on.”

“Saab, I am trying to get my little girl into school. I want to send her to a good school,
but I need help with the fees, then her uniforms and books. Saab…I promise to repay.”

Aman was at first unable to come to terms with the helplessness of the man. He did not
feel the way most people felt, as if they were doing something out of the ordinary for the
children of their servants and chauffeurs. He did not at all feel like a Messiah.

(Although they need a Messiah, he thought)

“Alright, how much do you need? Don’t worry, I’m with you. God is with you.”

(I was unable to trace how and why I had used the word ‘God’)
Raja fell at his master’s feet.
CHAPTER 8

                                      THE US of A

The 21st century began with the United States as the sole superpower in the absence of
the Soviet Union, with China becoming a potential superpower. The debate over finding
a solution to global warming, fossil fuel pollution and alternative energy raged in the new
century after most of the 20th century was marked by industrial expansion.

With the Cold War over and terrorism on the rise, the US and its allies turned their
attention to the Middle East. Almost 3000 people were killed in the attacks on the World
Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and in rural
Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight
175 crashed into the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, American Airlines Flight 77
crashed into the Pentagon and United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into a grassland in
Pennsylvania. The US had subsequently declared a War on Terrorism.

On October 7, 2001 the US and NATO had invaded Afghanistan and overthrown the
Taliban government. Troops remained to install a democratic government, fight a slowly
escalating insurgency, and hunt for Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

“International Peace and Security cannot be achieved like this. Force is never the
answer to force. What way are we different, the so-called civilized nations of the world,
no as a citizen of the United States” and then again, “my mother has always taught me
respect for and belief in other peoples’ ideologies. I cannot be a mute spectator to such
gross violations of the principles of justice. God forgive them for they know not what
they do.”

As a strong ray of light penetrated his eyes, Aman suddenly felt weak in the knees…




“We have to rush to India” Himesh Mirchandani cautioned, “Aman is admitted. And…”

“And what?” Reshma was clearly nervous.

The glass bowl crashed to the floor and into tiny pieces. “How are we to reach my
Aman? The security situation is so volatile, anything can happen any time.” She felt
faint.

“I’m arranging for two emergency tickets to reach us to Indian shores as soon as
possible,” hubby Himesh had always felt invincible.




“Ladies and Gentlemen, please fasten your seat belts, we’re about to take off.” The
Mirchandanis were traveling to the country of their birth following a gap of 21 years. The
last time the couple was in India was a year prior to Aman’s arrival in the world…
CHAPTER 9

                                       ‘IN’ ‘JUSTICE’

“He doesn't know what justice is but he knows what justice is not.” (Plato)

                                      3 January 2002

“Doctor, what is wrong with me?” Aman innocently enquired.

“Nothing much.” Dr. Samuel Trehan was more than adept at handling enquiries from
patients.

“Doctor, I have to complete my dissertation.”

“You most certainly will, but you cannot…”

“I cannot what, Doctor?”

“I’m afraid I cannot tell you this until your parents arrive,” Dr. Trehan’s voice was grim,
as if there was a serious conflict ahead which he could foresee.

(That perhaps Nostradamus couldn’t)

“That reminds me, Doctor, I have just written something, would you like to see it?”

“Sure, why not, I would love to.” In all the years of his life so far (he was 54) leave alone
his years in Medical school, Dr. Samuel Trehan was yet to read anything of the kind.

It read ‘injustice’.

“Of all calamities suffered by this Humanity in the modern times, war and conflict,
poverty and destitution, epidemics and pandemics, ignorance and neglect, terrorism
and militancy, deforestation and pollution and innumerable other perversities, injustice is
the most painful of all. This matter has many views, as we really do not know much and
we admit even less. What is justice? Where can you find it? Can judges be fair? No
question of this kind can get a satisfactory answer to the quest of justice suffered by the
poor and the destitute. Justice belongs to the Almighty and one can investigate only
different forms of justice in human society and efforts made by institutions to improve
them.

One must understand how the world works, what is the operation of the principle of pair
of opposites, the basic laws of human evolution and the laws of Manu. One can study
the principles of justice in order to facilitate the peace process. Inequality is often seen
as the source of injustices, we do not understand that we are different so that life may
prosper despite apparent injustice.

Tremendous announcements of the modern era of the violent happenings: Bush’s
‘Infinite war’, daily massacres between Palestinians and Israelis, police dragnets in the
slums of Rio and Buenos Aires, guerrilla combats in Colombia, merciless plundering by
the IMF, destructive corruption in communication media…these are wrong. To illustrate,
no law, only individual intervention can regulate unjust and dirty TV transmissions.

In these times, Humanity is on the brink of a world catastrophe, and men run the risk of
experiencing one of the biggest injustices of all times. We must remain just ourselves in
the face of injustice. Weapons of Mass Destruction, atomic, biologic and corrosive
bombs are distributed everywhere. One can start a war without knowing if one can finish
the same. It is true that injustices have been committed against innocents in New York
City, but let us learn to renounce revenge. People now anxiously wait for a change in
international relations towards peace.

Humanity can usher in a ‘New Human Revolution’. War and Peace can go up and down
on the pans of movable scales. The destiny is in the hands of a powerful man, if and
when he learns to renounce revenge.”




“Saab has been admitted for quite some time now, I must go and see him”, said Raja.

“Have you given a thought to the loss in terms of wages” Parvati cautioned. “We have to
get our little girl into school, and besides…”

“Do you forget what Saab told me, “Don’t worry, I’m with you. God is with you.”

“So let God feed us, do you remember what happened in the village last year?”

Raja looked at his wife. Parvati’s eyes were heavily moist.




In January 2001, an entire village community was neglected and facing starvation in the
village of Kurtuli. Many villagers were on the verge of death.

(There was a ‘Hunger Alert’ from the Permanent People’s Tribunal on Human Rights,
Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law in Asia. Many villagers were on the verge of death)

The hunger situation was terrible and shocking. At least 754 landless laborers belonging
to the Hira indigenous community in Kurtuli suffered from starvation and malnutrition.
Many were driven by circumstances to eat poisonous plants and roots and leaves to
survive. Villagers were also lacking several other basic facilities – water, education,
primary health care facilities and electricity.

While the government discussed the matter, the death toll rose to over 800 as villagers
continued to suffer. Most of the dead were children, pregnant and lactating women and
senior citizens.

“I wish I could tell Saab…about hunger and government inaction and neglect and caste
discrimination and landlessness and debt and added to it sometimes the government
threats and intimidations…in our country, then Saab could write and publish a report on
it in America. The American people are far more educated and enlightened, you know.”

Raja tried to take those memories out of Parvati’s mind. They had a big laugh together.
CHAPTER 10

                                 ONE WOMAN’S DREAM

                                       January 2002

“Eggs for Everest: One Woman's Dream

Eleanor Roosevelt once said: The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of
their dreams”.



The boy’s health had weakened. His parents had arrived from America. But the doctors
were not saying anything about his condition.

“Mama!” Aman had to be assisted to raise himself off the hospital bed. Hospital
attendants rushed to support the boy as he darted towards the mother.

Aman collapsed on the floor.

“What’s wrong with him, doctor?” Mrs. Mirchandani was extremely uneasy.

“Well…” “I’ll tell you, Mrs. Mirchandani.” The orthopedic surgeon intervened. “Actually,
although his heart and lungs and kidneys and liver are in shape, his legs have
weakened and are no longer able to support the body.” “I’m afraid…Aman may become
confined to a wheelchair for life although we are yet to be sure.”

“We are investigating the cause of this condition. We have seen his blood pathology
reports. An X-ray will be done soon.”

“Aman, my son, there are often trying times in life. Big or small, such trials only test your
fortitude and ability to hold on. Very often, such trials motivate you to perform and could
be the beginning of a New Human Revolution in your life. In such crucial moments, only
one’s firm determination to prevail can genuinely work wonders.”

Reshma knew she had to keep her son alive. To her, little Aman was a prodigy who
could change the world.




“There are struggles in which a solitary individual transforms the world. (Many of them
were confined to a wheelchair).

When Rosa Parks refused to obey the bus driver’s order to give her seat to a white
passenger, and said “No”, the bell of change tolled triumphantly for African-Americans
in the United States. This now famous event took place on Dec 1, 1955, in Montgomery,
Alabama, when Mrs. Parks was coming back home following a hard day’s work in the
tailoring section of a department store.

The bus driver shouted, ‘Aren’t you going to stand up?’ ‘No’, she replied. ‘Well, I’m
going to have you arrested,’ the bus driver declared. ‘You may do that,’ was Rosa
Parks’s calm response.
Do you know what happened next?” Aman Mirchandani had never before seen his
mother like this.

“This incident led to an explosion of anger among the Afro-American population in
Montgomery. A bus service boycott was organized, led by the Civil Rights activist Martin
Luther King Jr. 30,000 Afro-Americans who used to ride in the backs of these same
buses joined together in solidarity, walking and using shared cars instead.

Mrs. Parks lost her job, and she was besieged with threatening phone calls. There were
false rumors, and Dr. King’s home was bombed. But the nonviolent movement pricked
the conscience of America and the world. A year later the US Supreme Court declared
segregated busing unconstitutional. From that moment, the Civil Rights Movement
gained tremendous momentum ushering in a new era towards equal rights for all
American citizens.

A single word and one woman’s dream had changed history. How do you…?”

Aman was fast asleep. The day’s excitement had induced a state of tiredness in him.




“Now the trumpet summons us again…” Reshma was sifting through some of her
son’s writings that she had found in the cabin closet.

“…a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out,
rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation’s struggle against the common enemies of
man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself. Can we forge against these
enemies a grand and global alliance, North and South, East and West, that can
assure a more fruitful life for all mankind?”
                             -President J F Kennedy, USA,
                               In an address to the nation

“Our world’s future hangs precariously…Lopsided development and rampant
Consumerism have widened the chasm between the world’s rich and the world’s poor…

Numbers do not matter. We are too much preoccupied with them. The time has come in
the history of nations to liberate their peoples from centuries of illiteracy, ignorance,
inequality, disease and war.

For instance, a part of global spending on arms can be diverted to the social sector.
Why at all spend so much? I understand there are countries that do not have a defense
budget. I for one do not understand much of fiscal policy or bulls and bears. What I do
understand is the language of the poor and the marginalized, the language of the harsh
realities of staying alive till the next moment, the next day, the language of survival.

It is not just one planet; it is one home, one family. Is this utopia?

Let us challenge our limits in our endeavor (however small it may be) to bring about a
happier world.

Let us help shift development attention away from economic growth as the main index
of progress to look more closely to what is happening to the poor in terms of equitable
distribution of income...
I was only…. looking at the world through my eyes. Only when we work together hand
in hand can we create a better world to live in.

And so they all say…
                           If I can stop one heart from breaking,
                                     I shall not live in vain.
                            If I can ease one life from aching, or
                                         Cool one pain,
                       Or help one fainting robin into his nest again,
                                     I shall not live in vain.
                                                                         Emily Dickinson”

There were scribbles here and there.

Reshma was clearly astonished yet she loved what her eyes saw. She looked at her
child. Aman was fast asleep.




“Saab”, Raja stopped dead in his tracks when he saw the Mirchandanis inside the
cabin.

“Who are they?” Reshma enquired.

“O, this is Raja and that’s Parvati. He drives my car and she cooks for us.” There was
an innocence in his voice completely free of (class-based) discrimination. Himesh
Mirchandani was visibly upset. He left the cabin.

“Namaste Madam.” “Namaste Bibiji.”

“Namaste.”

“So I understand that you have made friends in India who are helping you write your
dissertation,” Reshma lightly quipped.

“Mama!”

“Son, I carried you to term through difficult circumstances. Your birth is auspicious not
only for two proud parents but for everyone. May the Good Lord always protect you and
take care of you. It is a beautiful gift of God; this ability to conceive and give birth, it
takes generations of “Karma” for both parents of a child.”

“What is ‘Karma?’’ Aman immediately jotted down the term.

For her own part, Reshma noticed how much of a ‘scientific thinker’-open to every idea,
her son was ‘blossoming’ into.
“We’ve got the X-ray report.” The orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Sunil Gupta darted into the
room. “But we’ve got to get an MRI done before we can comment.”

“We have decided to shift Aman out of this hospital into a private nursing home in south
Calcutta. This decision was taken jointly by Aman’s mother and me and here…” “A few
well-wishers from America” Himesh Mirchandani added.

“And this is Dr. Richard Weisz who has come with us.” Himesh Mirchandani had the
magnetic charm of an NRI steel magnate settled in ‘elitist’ America. There were years of
maturity, though struggle in his voice.
CHAPTER 11

                  WANTING RECOVERY- A VERY PATIENT PATIENT

                                        February 2002

Aman Mirchandani was lucky.

“In the poorest countries, as many as a fifth of children do not reach their fifth birthday.
Diarrhea kills approximately 1 million children every year in India. You see, the poor
cannot afford elitist private nursing homes, and primary health centers are virtually non-
existent. Doctors prefer to steer clear of the rural areas. Coughs and colds kill
approximately 600,000 children each year in India. Many millions of children have been
orphaned by AIDS. Leprosy is more common in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Orissa
and West Bengal. And TB often kills.”

“Please come to the point, Doctor!” Himesh Mirchandani had no time for such

“Nonsensical stuff.” As he called it.

“Oh, yes, Mr. Mirchandani, our team of doctors here suspects a case of traveler’s
malaria. I’m afraid your son has been misdiagnosed.”

“That, that…that’s not possible; a rich man’s son cannot have malaria.” Himesh
Mirchandani’s voice had sunk. “That’s a myth, there are certain misconceptions.” Dr.
Ghandhy was extremely polite; there was profound humility in his voice.

“Can Dr. Weisz investigate?”

“I’m afraid he cannot. Our Indian doctors are better-equipped to handle tropical
medicine. And besides, we have to start him on intravenous therapy immediately.”

Dr. Ghandhy was right.




Aman’s ordeal started four days afterwards. His fever was not subsiding. He had lost his
appetite. He had chills and a persistent headache. And there was diarrhea.




Aman occasionally used insect repellants. But it seems he had been bitten by a
mosquito.

He had most likely been bitten by one during his recent visit to Shantiniketan. Aman had
often ventured out of his five-star hotel room and taken long walks outside despite being
cautioned by the hotel authorities.
Doctors had previously misdiagnosed him and said that he would remain confined to a
wheelchair for the rest of his life. Dr. Ghandhy, a Professor of Medicine, a specialist in
Tropical Medicine, had research interests in leprosy, travelers’ research done in India,
Diarrhea, parasites and health. A Visiting Professor at John Hopkins Medical Center,
Dr. Ghandhy carefully assessed Aman’s condition in the Emergency Room where the
boy was confined to his bed.

It was difficult ascertaining the cause. And the effect. Was it malaria? Besides, he had
been misdiagnosed. He had been put on an intravenous drip to relieve his dehydration.
There was also fatigue like symptoms that doctors were unable to contend with. Then
why crippling him permanently for life?

Why had doctors declared that his liver and kidneys were in shape? Why the MRI?

During the next few days, Aman became weaker and weaker…




At the nursing home, he weakened further. His fever was fluctuating; his BP was
alarmingly low, and both his pulse and his breathing rates were abnormally high. The
laboratory tests suggested that his liver and kidneys were also not functioning well.

Himesh Mirchandani had flown in a doctor from the U.S….who knew practically nothing.
Because malaria was eliminated from the U.S. in the late 1940s, it was unthinkable for
Dr. Weisz that an American traveler could develop the disease.

In the developing world, however, most travelers would see a physician, or stay in bed
or be rendered incapacitated in their work, or hospitalized during or after the trip or in
the final instance, air-evacuated. One would die…

Problems could include traveler’s diarrhea, malaria, respiratory tract infections, Hepatitis
A, animal bites risk for rabies, Hepatitis B, Typhoid and HIV mostly transmitted through
casual sex...




“They hurt” as the needle pricked his skin.

“Mama, these repeated injections for blood tests hurt” Aman was almost on the verge of
tears.

“I understand. But learn to endure, my child. What is life without pain? Birth itself is so
painful. Besides, you are grown up… and you have to go a longgggg… way!” The
mother tried to relieve the child’s suffering.

Luckily for Aman, his parents had shifted him to a reputed private clinic in the city whose
(Indian) doctors were to immediately put malaria high on their list of potential diagnosis.
They were suspecting that sometime during his travel to the countryside, Aman may
have been bitten by a mosquito carrying malaria parasite.

The clinic pathologists promptly took blood samples and did a blood smear test. An
enlarged liver and spleen was apparent during the physical examination.
Once diagnosed with malaria, his case was treated as a medical emergency. They gave
him Quinine through a constant intravenous drip for rapid delivery, and antibiotics.
Aman also received multiple transfusions of blood cells and platelets to correct the
damage done to his blood by the malaria parasites.

For several days his body struggled against malaria. Aman used to wake up in the
middle of the night shivering and sweating profusely and complaining of nausea, muscle
aches, fatigue and general malaise. His skin had turned frighteningly yellow and he was
clearly anemic. He would complain of severe cramps. They had given him a bed pan.

Finally after ten days in the ICU, he started getting better, eventually regaining better
health.

By now, he had recovered a little strength in his joints (following an initial wrong
diagnosis) and was put on a strict diet regimen and complete rest.

He was discharged after a lengthy sojourn in the nursing home.

Everything was now back to normal. Dr. Ghandhy assured the boy that there was
nothing to fear, but that he should rest, take an appropriate diet. As for the weakness in
his joints, Aman was advised complete rest to recover his full strength. He was told he
needed to gain back the weight he had lost while he was sick.
CHAPTER 12

                          THOUGHTS OF ORDINARY PEOPLE

As the car stopped at the traffic light, the kid knocked at the car windowpane.

“Mama, what compels them to beg even in the extreme weather conditions?”

“O, this is just another group of harassed victims.” Himesh Mirchandani was cold but
thoughtful.

“Or worse, the ugly face of civilization, of a bonded life.”

“Civilization…ugh?”

Aman could now recall his law school buddy Nathan’s words:

“I think it’s a crying shame when a person can’t even walk down the street without being
accosted by some urchin that feels compelled to beg you for your spare change. Every
one of them has the same story, about being disabled or whatever. But most of them
are just lazy bums.

Recently, I was in Toronto, Ontario, where this problem is worse than I’ve ever seen in
any US city. You would find a beggar on literally every corner. Only the other night,
while on my way back home, some homeless reprobate crept up on me and scared the
hell outta’ me. I yelled at this miscreant about not scaring folks in the dark, begging and
not doing some constructive work.

The next thing I knew I had some progressive Canadian standing next to me asking me
why I was harassing the homeless kid! Seriously! Suddenly, there would be a flurry of
‘Can-adians’ each firing a missile at me with ‘You arrogant Americans have so much
money; why not re-distribute wealth…’ all that blather.

I asked the bum how much money he needed to keep warm, to which he said ‘Keep
warm, I just wanna go buy a pack of cigarettes!”

“But we just turn our backs on them by saying what can we do? Child begging is the
bane of modern India.” There was clearly an element of empathy in Reshma
Mirchandani’s voice. She actually felt for India.

“They often expect compassion in the midst of a tragic life, poverty and pain. This life is
often preferable to a life in a brothel or the drudgery of field work or work inside
factories. Helpless as they are, their lives are often more tragic than most of us of the
elite could ever imagine…They have no choice. Irrespective of fever or any other
disease, these innocent flowers often have no option but to dance to the tunes of their
ruthless employers. Sometimes, in order to have charity, you have to have the people
who are to be benefited by charity. I see no organized system of charity.”

Himesh Mirchandani looked at his wife. He knew he had never known her.
CHAPTER 13

                              2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY

The year 2001, with late 2001 being a difficult one for the Mirchandanis, the year of the
snake in the Chinese Zodiac, had been an eventful year.

Noah, a gaur, was born, the first individual of an endangered species to be cloned. An
earthquake in El Salvador had killed at least 800 and left thousands homeless.
Impeachment proceedings against Philippine President Joseph Estrada, accused of
committing plunder, had ended prematurely and triggered the second EDSA People
Power Revolution or People Power II.

On January 20, George W. Bush had succeeded Bill Clinton as the President of the
United States.

UN war crimes prosecutor Del Ponte had demanded that Serbia hand over Slobodan
Milosevic. The Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident had occurred.

In February, Iraq faced a disarmament crisis as British and American forces carried out
bombing raids, attempting to disable Iraq’s air defense network. On the same day, the
US and the UK had bombed a Baghdad suburb, killing three.

Former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia President, Slobodan Milosevic had surrendered
to Police Special Forces, to be tried on charges of war crimes.

On April 7, Timothy Thomas, a 19-year old Afro-American had been shot by a police
officer in Cincinnati, sparking riots in downtown Cincinnati from April 10 to April 12.

And in Terre Haute, Indiana, Timothy McVeigh had been executed for the Oklahoma
City Bombings. An American missile had hit a soccer field in Northern Iraq (Tel Afr
County) killing 23 and wounding 11.

And on September 11, the world stared in terror as 3000 were decimated in an attack
by militants on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in rural Shanksville,
Pennsylvania respectively. America had subsequently declared a ‘War on Terror’.

On September 18, the 2001 anthrax attacks commenced. Federal officials announced
the first anthrax attack in the US in October. An Office of Homeland Security had been
created in the United States. The US had invaded Afghanistan (with other nations
participating) in Operation Enduring Freedom.

In December, the Parliament of India had been attacked killing 14. On the 22 nd Hamid
Karzai had been sworn in as the head of the interim government in Afghanistan.

Kofi Annan and the United Nations were awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.




Meanwhile, the Second Congo War continued into the early 21 st century. A 1999
ceasefire quickly broke down and a UN peacekeeping mission, MONUC, failed to
control the fighting.
Aman sifted through the year’s reports on his laptop.

“Al-Qaeda terrorists hijack four commercial airlines and crash three of them into the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon in the United States killing nearly 3,000 people.
The US has declared a War on Terror. ”
(Dated September 11, 2001)

Militants, terrorists, blah, blah, blah… Who were (or are) the actual terrorists?

The US and NATO had “invaded” Afghanistan. Troops were remaining…

“So the lives of Westerners are important. (And so they are). Are the lives of innocent
African and Asian citizens any less important? Innocent little children in the developing
world die daily of preventable causes. Then why this big uproar over September 11?”

Aman was thinking deeply as he rested in his armchair. He made a few notes.
CHAPTER 14

                                AMY, MY BEST FRIEND

                                       March 2002

“Why don’t I feel like an American?” I was all alone in my room.

“Like David, like Michael, and Virginia, even Astad and Chang, like my friends, the way
they feel…too, and Amy.” Amy was someone he truly respected.

“Mama, Mom, how’s Amy, I mean?” His father abruptly left the room.

“Is something the matter, I mean wrong?” I asked mother.

“Well, my child, your father has advised me not to tell you.”

“Not to tell me WHATTT?”

“These are troubled times, my son; your friend Astad was arrested and forcibly detained
along with several others in a police raid on seven counts of conspiracy. Letsss…go
back to the US, son, I mean you should come back home with us. You’ve been unwell.”

“Amy, I want to know about Amy. I’m sorry about Astad, but Amy is my best friend.”

I was getting a bit worried.

“Son, Amy had come to India to study and research rural development, during the same
time that you arrived in India. During fieldwork on one of her tours, she had enquired
about the peasant uprising from her supervisor, who happened to be a leading
Sociologist. ‘It’s not an interesting subject,’ she was told. Amy had clearly been puzzled
by her superior’s answer. ‘No, not at all, you Americans are very inquisitive. And yes,
young lady, I…advise you to stay away from all this. You don’t want to enquire about
that. It’s not a point with any research potential. Maybe we should continue with rural
development, because that’s what you came here for in the first place.”

Reshma Mirchandani handed over a few torn leaflets to her son.




From what he could see, Aman was flabbergasted.

It read “injustice perpetrated on American scholar”.

The Indian Mirror. (The date was not clearly visible).

“A young American scholar visiting India to study rural development was found brutally
murdered…”

He did not want to read any further.

(He remembered her kind words: “Healing is possible as in survivors of violence in
areas of conflict. Change towards justice can occur. Values of the heart are as central
as those of the mind…”)
Aman suddenly felt low. After crying like no man of his age would ever cry, he begged
his mother for a Prozac.




“Mamaaaaaaa…it hurts.” Doctors (Psychiatrists) at the Pinewood Private Clinic in
Kolkata (West Bengal, India) had put him on electro-convulsive therapy. Reshma and
Himesh Mirchandani watched helplessly as their precious child was brought out of the
emergency room.

“I hate it, all this traditional Western Medicine. They only address the symptoms without
addressing the root causes of the problem. Look… now they have prescribed sedatives
for him.” There was an element of anger in Reshma Mirchandani’s voice.

“My child...” Aman looked partially sedated.

“Mr. Mirchandani, your son is yet to recover from shock. I have prescribed some anti-
depressants and a couple of sedatives. He should be…” Dr. Banerjee could not
complete his sentence.

“We think he’s disturbed psychologically.” The doctors were unanimous.

“My son is definitely not insane, are you saying that? Look at his writings.”

Reshma Mirchandani had to be helped out of the room. Her last words as she left the
room were, “O, my child, my child …”
CHAPTER 15

                          IF WISHES COULD COME TRUE

“The world was not very different in those days…you know, my child.” It was one of
those sessions between Aman Mirchandani and his mother.

“Ahmad Shah Abdali never invaded Bihar… in fact he did not even invade Awadh, a
richer province which sits between Delhi and Bihar. In 1757 he invaded Punjab and
captured Delhi in January, defeated the Maratha general Antaji Mankeshwar in
February, defeated the Jats in Mathura in March ransacking that city, fought the Naga
Sanyyasis in Gokul, while his troops burnt, slaughtered, and raped all over that region
south of Delhi.

But all this bloodletting created a cholera epidemic, my child… which began killing
hundreds of his soldiers on a daily basis. So in April 1757 Abdali hastily withdrew from
India.”




So, Slobodan Milosevic was NOT the only one, I thought…It had been carried down the
ages by people as ruthless as Klaus Barbie and Adolf Eichmann…and the Khmer
Rouge’s Cambodia…When the Khmer Rouge ruled the country in the 1970’s, more than
a million people died of Starvation, Disease, Torture, and Execution…It has been
reported that Cambodians have still not recovered from the horrors of the slaughter that
were perpetrated on them.

But the story did not end with Cambodia…

AMAN LOOKED AROUND FOR THE PILL…

HE WISHED GOD WOULD DO A MIRACLE IN THE LIVES OF MEN.

HE WISHED GOD WOULD DO A MIRACLE IN HIS OWN LIFE…
CHAPTER 16

                             (ELSA & AMAN) BORN FREE

“We must go back home, son.” Himesh and Reshma Mirchandani were unanimous.

“Go back home, so soon…but I am only at the beginning of my research.”

“Your life is more important than your research. Besides, the medical reports confirm
that…” Dr. Richard Weisz was abruptly interrupted as Ann Hancock, the Consulate’s
Press Secretary called up to say that the Consulate General had received an
intimidation which said that all American citizens must leave the country within 72 hours.

“Now we have absolutely NO choice but to pack our bags.”

Aman was silent.




“EVERY TIME I SAY ‘RIGHT’ (INSTEAD OF WRONG) TO A HUMAN BEING, I
CONFER UPON HIM AN INALIENABLE RIGHT, ACTUALLY, ENABLE HIM ASSERT
SOMETHING THAT ALREADY EXISTS FOR HIM! I ‘FREE’ HIM TO CHOOSE FOR
HIMSELF, HIS CHOICE.

ENDORSEMENT OF THE OTHER PERSON’S “RIGHT TO MAKE HIS CHOICE” IS, I
BELIEVE, THE BEST THING ONE COULD EVER DO FOR ONE’S FELLOW HUMAN
BEINGS…IT WOULD SAVE MANKIND ALL THAT TROUBLE.

   AND, I’M TAKING YOUR MINDS BACK (OR, RATHER FORWARD!) TO THE YEAR
   1948.”

   Aman Mirchandani clearly resided in his subconscious.


    “BORN FREE, THAT’S WHAT THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN
                      RIGHTS, 1948 IS ALL ABOUT…

You know Mama; on December 10, 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations
adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights..."

“Article 1. proclaimed” Aman continued

“All human beings are born free (“THE SPIRIT OF FREEDOM”) and equal in dignity and
rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one
another in a spirit of brotherhood….

Aman Mirchandani sometimes wished he could say more. He also wished he could stay
back…risking his life in the process.
CHAPTER 17

                   THE MIRACLE: AMAN WANTED TO BREAK FREE

                           72 Hours in hand to leave the country

                                       14 March 2002

“Not all the underprivileged of this world, the deprived, the hungry, live in Third World
countries. A great many of them reside in American or European high-rise apartment
buildings or suburban bungalows, bombarded by lethal doses of television
programming, sensate advertising and a constant belief that sex and money insure
happiness. I call this intellectual junk food, something that could lead either to people
being satiated or else undernourished and hungry…

By coming to India, I have come to the right place.”

Aman was at this time writing a diary as he stayed up throughout the night. He was not
getting sleep. And he was tired of those annoying sedatives.

“A tired city dweller will imagine that a transition to the countryside will give him rest; off
course it will not, it will only give him rural tiredness…and traveler’s Malaria.” Aman
could now recall the intravenous drips, those blood tests, and the pain and the ordeal he
had gone through.

“But don’t innocent country-dwellers turn to the city for the self-fulfillment which up to
that point of time has evaded them? Don’t they deserve their basic amenities, food,
education, health, and water and sanitation for their children?”

Aman could recall the faces of those hungry innocents in the countryside, Raja’s
helplessness (for his daughter’s school fees), the love and respect Raja and Parvati had
given him when he was facing loneliness as he first arrived, and now Amy.

Something deep inside told him, “Aman, you must not cry for you are now a man. Men
of age don’t weep. I’ll…”




I looked around for the voice. There was none. Only a gut feeling. (I could recall a
similar gut feeling as I had read about Amy)

“Since coming to India, it has often surprised me how people behave as though they
would almost give their right arm to be able to live in the city. O, those worn out and
grumpy rides, those prolonged traffic jams coming back home…

Thus people rush out from where they are; in the hope that out there or somewhere
else, they feel what they lack may be gratified.”

AMAN REMEMBERED JOHN LENNON’S “IMAGINE”…

“IMAGINE…ALL THE PEOPLE, LIVING LIFE IN PEACE…”
“A-m-a-n, A-m-a-n.” It was the same voice. There was a brilliant flash of light in the
room. His parents were sleeping in the other room.

“It could be a dream.” Aman had read Freud’s “Interpretation of Dreams” and knew
dreams could be significant in one’s life.

“A-m-a-n.” This was strange. Sigmund Freud was powerful, but was there an ideology
beyond this? Some dream ideology?

“Amy, is that you?” Perhaps the doctors at Pinewood had been right.

“When in doubt, look if at all into your conscience.” The same voice. The same pitch.
The same innocence.

“Here, take this magic potion. It will protect you against all evil.”

Aman had heard (from his mother) the words of Stephen Jay Gould, writing in The New
York Times following 9/11: “Good and kind people outnumber all others by thousands to
one. The tragedy of human history lies in the enormous potential for destruction in rare
acts of evil, not in the high frequency of evil people. Complex systems can only be built
step by step, whereas destruction requires but an instant. Thus, in what I like to call the
Great Asymmetry, every spectacular incident of evil will be balanced by 10,000 acts of
kindness, too often unnoted and invisible as the ‘ordinary’ efforts of a vast majority.”

So Amy had given up her life for a cause. No matter how hard I tried, she would never
come back. My friend would never come back.

As Aman broke down, he could feel there was something wrong. Or perhaps
miraculously right.

He had suddenly developed…
CHAPTER 18

                         THE INVISIBLE MAN (I’M A SCATMAN)

“Saab, Parvati and I are so glad you have decided to stay back. Saab, Saab!” Aman
Mirchandani had suddenly disappeared into thin air.

“Is Mr. Mirchandani around?” The Consul General walked into the room. “His parents
went back by the morning flight. Their son wassss…at the airport, he did see off his
anxious parents.”

“The boy has put his own life at risk…I wish I could talk to him. Where is he?”

“And this is Mr. Krishnan, Mr. Mirchandani’s potential research supervisor in India. Ann,
would you please take care of the rest? Thanks indeed!”

“Mr. Mirchandani…”

Raja and Parvati looked at each other. Over the past few hours, strange things were
happening. They were however tight-lipped.




“…FORGET IT, WHO CARES, THIS IS, AFTER ALL, ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE
STORIES…UNHEARD…UNLISTENED…UNAPPRE -CIATED...

MAYBE ITS ALL ABOUT A ‘MAVERICK’, A COMPLETE ‘NON-CONFORMIST’,
UNFETTERED, UNLEASHED…SORRY! UNAPPRECIATED…”

At the Medical Center, Dr. Wendell carefully sifted through Aman’s recent writings that
had come along with his Report.

“Dr. Weisz, you have reported that Aman’s parents believe there is something amiss.
According to the report, Aman was not showing signs of normal behavior when he came
to see off his parents at the airport.”

It was a clear, slightly foggy day back home in Los Angeles.

“I’m afraid we have to thoroughly investigate the matter. This is Detective Fox and I am
Sergeant John Mill and this is Ms Kelly Lowe and she is a Forensic expert from the
FBI.”

“I think the three of you need to travel to India to unravel this case.” It was Dr. Weisz.

“I shall suggest to Mr. Mirchandani if he could speak to the appropriate authorities
concerned for your travel to India including taking the help of Indian authorities to
unravel the mystery of this case.”

Those present in the room were unanimous. There was plenty of sense in what Dr.
Weisz had said.

What Mr. Mirchandani had done, whom he had spoken to was not known to any one,
until the three of them (Detective Fox, Sergeant John Mill and Ms Kelly Lowe) were to
get information from their respective headquarters in the days to come to plan
To travel to India as soon as possible…
CHAPTER 19

                       THE INVINCIBLE MAN (E.T. OR HUMAN?)

                                        Early April

There was a huge crowd outside the gates.

“My son deserves justice. He has committed no offence.” Reshma Mirchandani was
speaking to the press.

“Justice can compel innocent parents to come to court, but can justice bridge the divide
across nations, peoples and cultures?”

The court was adjourned for a day.




“Photograph of a poor undernourished boy and a dog inhumanly cramped inside a
dustbin, each one trying to find food for itself gets the best photography award in a
photographic competition.” Read the caption in the early morning newspaper.

Aman walked past the security cordon, unfettered, uncordoned…

There was something else on his mind…

At least 20,000 persons, mostly the old and children, were in urgent need of help in
Lalitpur block of Nargarh district, Orissa; even as the death toll had risen to 25 with two
more persons succumbing to mango kernel paste in Bhiku….Government had denied
starvation deaths.

“We have to fill our stomach with something or other to survive. Does the government
give us proper food? Does anybody think of feeding us? There is nobody for us.”

The innocent villager’s poignant tale moved Aman to the extent that he felt like
intervening, but he had promised Amy…to remain…

“From A Distance…God is watching us” He had grown up listening to this song. It
was probably Bette Midler… From a distance, Aman Mirchandani is watching you…he
felt like openly broadcasting his message in the village, but…

Meanwhile, police started to lathicharge villagers to control mob violence thronging
Government godowns to collect rice & wheat, which was rotting for years without a
proper distribution system and was in the process of being transported to a trader
elsewhere.

In the final instance, they opened fire on the mob. Despite the random and erratic firing,
there was no bloodshed. Not a single life was lost in the indiscriminate firing on innocent
villagers.

The Minister’s son who had come to watch the “proceedings” went back home feeling
like a loser.
“I can foresee a war coming, there will be innocent loss of lives and in the end we will
achieve nothing. The war will emanate from the Western nations and will be the end-
result of man’s greed and miscalculation. I must tell Raja.” I could sense that I had
developed the power to foresee and forecast the future.

“Raja, Raja…” There was a soft whisper as Raja woke up hurriedly.

“It’s me, Saab.”

“Saab, Saab, where have you been, the police are on the lookout for you? Everyone,
even the ones you loved, are out to get you. They have sounded a Red Alert. And
placed a ransom on your head.” Raja was still loyal to his Master.

“I do hear…but I have…done nothing wrong. I am only trying to protect innocent
civilians…You see…”

I found myself narrating the truth to Raja. There was a strange bond between servant
and master.

“But Saab, this is impossible, how can a man become “Superman” overnight? I mean
we are no longer living in the era of …”

Raja could not complete his sentence.




“Mr. Mirchandani, you are surrounded. Do not try to escape.” It was the local police.
There was a familiar voice, which Aman could place.

He looked around for the magic potion. Alas, he had left it back in his room. And there
was no way out of the servant’s quarters.

Aman Mirchandani surrendered with the words “I can foresee a war coming, there will
be innocent loss of lives and in the end we will achieve nothing. The war will emanate
from the Western nations and will be the end-result of man’s greed and miscalculation.”

This was a bit of an overdose for the local cops. They had often grown up in village
schools, and were not used to such high-infidelity vocabulary.

“Is that something you say, Mr. Mirchandani?” Sergeant Mill had just arrived in an air-
conditioned vehicle. Ms Lowe was with him.

But the Indian police would not let them talk to the boy.

“I said…” Aman was handcuffed and led away by the police.
CHAPTER 20

                        2004 (A TSUNAMI IN THE MINDS OF MEN)

“Order, Order.”

“Please go on, Mrs. Mirchandani,” Justice Armstrong asked the court to maintain
silence.

Two years had passed since Aman Mirchandani was arrested. It was the year 2004.

Aman Mirchandani was in a first-class (with all amenities and every comfort) prison in
India and for the last two years both mother (back home in the state of California) and
son (in India) were fighting a lone battle against the system.

“Yes, the US of A, my Right-Honorable!

A Nation, Pardon Me for Saying this,

But with Policies & Designs on

Every Other Nation on Earth-

All this, all another story-

That I might wish to reserve for later-

FORGET IT! I was not born on the 4th of JULY-

So, America…is certainly NOT worth my Attention now…”

Justice Armstrong slapped a case of “Contempt of Court” on Mrs. Reshma
Mirchandani.

Wife of Mr. Himesh Mirchandani, NRI steel magnate. Mother of Aman Mirchandani,
Stanford Law School graduate and a victim of circumstances.




       “IT’S ALL ABOUT THE WAY EACH CIVILIZATION CHOOSES TO LIVE”

Reshma could recount the circumstances of Aman’s birth…as she wrote her diary. She
had been confined to a women’s cell for 24 hours. She was now awaiting a final verdict.

                “A WORTHLESS EXISTENCE Vs A SIMPLE EXISTENCE

                               (IS LIFE MERE EXISTENCE?)”

“My child was not born for the ordinary…I understand from the evidence surrounding his
mysterious disappearances, that someone had given him a magic potion that made him
temporarily invincible until his arrest, but whatever he did was intended to protect the
innocent. He never wronged anyone. I have full faith in my son. He is innocent.”
“I have often wondered what living a “Worthless existence” means… What “Existence”
at all means!

Is life mere existence? Is worthiness an inherited trait, or is it acquired? What can
modern civilization with its complex systems of war-mongering, annihilator instincts (the
capacity to wipe out the human race) and obscene patterns of material consumption, sin
and greed learn from the “powers of simple existence”?

Ancient Indian Mythology tells us about our many virtuous sages and their wonderful
world. These sages were like children. Almost everything fascinated them: the stars in
the night sky, the tall mountains, the rivers and oceans, the birds in the sky, tiny insects,
even tigers!

These pious men lived close to nature. They worshipped truth, non-violence, self-
discipline and simplicity. Foremost among the wise old men of India was the great Sage
Patanjali.

Patanjali, or more appropriately Rishi Patanjali was an extraordinary man, renowned for
his learning and wisdom, author of three brilliant works, one on Sanskrit grammar, the
second on Indian medicine Ayurveda, and the third and the most important, the “Yoga
Sutras of Patanjali”.

In Book II (Means of Attainment or Sadhana) of “The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali” he
wrote:

“…Existence is that which is capable of acts fulfilling a purpose of the Self. Non-
existence is worthlessness (tucchata) as regards the purpose of the Self. That is so-
described [as having neither existence nor non-existence] which is beyond the range of
both existence and non-existence… The state when sattva and rajas and tamas are in
equipoise is never of use in fulfilling a purpose of the Self. And so it is not existent.
Neither does it have a worthless kind of existence like the sky-lotus. Therefore it is also
not non-existent… For there is no utter annihilation of the existent, or if utterly
annihilated it cannot be made to grow again. For because one cannot make the non-
existent grow, the Great [Thinking-substance] and the other [entities] would really exist
[in the unphenomenalized state] and therefore might function as acts fulfilling the
purpose of the Self [and so the unphenomenalized state might be said to exist]…”

RESHMA MIRCHANDANI WAS CLEARLY VERY WELL READ.

“Is Life mere existence? Or, more? Life is Worthless existence, is it? Then, what is
Worth? And what is Worthlessness? What is Existence? And what is Non-existence?

This brings us to the fundamental question – what is Life? And what is Non life? What is
“Prana”? And what is “Aprana”? ‘Aprana’ is simply put, lifelessness.

But why does one always have to live only a worthless existence? A brave new world
calls for more than mere existence, it calls for existence “with a purpose”…the ability to
dream…for nations and peoples… and I often feel I have never dreamt ENOUGH…

I have never really been happy…That’s the way I have chosen to live (perhaps!)”

THIS WAS NOT JUST ONE WOMAN’S DREAM…RESHMA CONTINUED DREAMING
THROUGH HER SON’S EYES THROUGH THE SUBCONSCIOUS, AS PRISON
OFFICIALS BACK HOME IN INDIA (WHERE AMAN MIRCHANDANI WAS LODGED)
CALLED FOR AN EMERGENCY BOARD MEETING.
CHAPTER 21

                                 THE GREAT ESCAPE

                                     Summer 2004

“Mr. Aman Mirchandani, is it true that you often used your magic potion to become
invisible from the naked eye?” The Public Prosecutor was relentless in his pursuit to
prove the boy guilty.

“Is it also true that you were scheming and plotting with…let me see the name, yes,
some Mr. Raja?”

“Objection, Your Honor!” “None of these questions have any bearing on the case,”
Arshad Patel, Aman’s Lawyer forcefully stated in defence of his client. “Besides, Raja
was his personal chauffeur. My client had respect for everyone.”

“Some of us think Aman Mirchandani is disturbed psychologically. He probably needs to
be in a…”

Before he could complete the sentence, Dr. Banerjee had Aman’s Counsel Arshad
Patel shouting at him to keep silent.

Outside the courtroom, there was an irate mob led by Raja, Parvati and every other
person Aman had helped on a personal basis following his arrival in India. There were
student groups, civil liberty groups, human rights groups and members of the PUFET,
The “People’s Union for Free Expression of Thought” and the many others that
supported Aman’s cause. The police started to lathicharge the demonstrators…Indeed
over a hundred were seriously injured.

In the light of the circumstances, the court was adjourned for a week.




Raja and his friends Kaushal and Himmat had been arrested along with six others on
charges of sedition. Raja was further indicted on grounds of perjury.

It was two in the morning. The cell guards were fast asleep. Raja, Kaushal and Himmat
managed to escape. They were now looking around for their Saab.

Aman Mirchandani had been lodged in a “special” cell meant for foreigners. He had all
the amenities from air-conditioning to channel music to hot water.

So they were practicing “segregation” inside prisons as well, he thought.

“Saab, Saab.” Aman could hear a familiar voice. “Saab, here hold on to this.”




Raja, Kaushal, Himmat and Aman soon boarded one of the general bogies of the Doon
Express. They had their faces covered and were in disguise as well so that no one
could recognize them.
Aman Mirchandani was now the “reluctant Fugitive”.

The rest is all history…
CHAPTER 22

                   CHEVROLET AND CELEBS – A WORLD APART

Aman Mirchandani was born in Los Angeles, California. He was the son of Himesh
Mirchandani, NRI steel magnate who spent his own childhood in a village on the
outskirts of Kapurthala, Punjab, and had been Chairman and CEO of Mirchandani Steel
and a close friend of Sir David Holmes, and on the list of California’s ‘Who’s Who’. The
Mirchandanis’ personal wealth was to the tune of two billion dollars.

The Mirchandani family initially lived in Punjab, in a house built by Aman’s grandfather.
They were from humble roots, from which Himesh Mirchandani had a meteoric rise, first
starting a steel mill and eventually moving to Delhi, where after completion of his brother
Simesh’s Graduation in Business and Accounting, the two brothers decided to jointly
take the plunge.

After buying a run-down plant in Malaysia, the family moved over to America where
Himesh Mirchandani married Reshma whose parents had also come down from India.
Both families were unaware that Reshma and Himesh had already known each other
while they were both in India. The couple settled down in Los Angeles. Simesh
Mirchandani was unfortunately killed in a car accident.

At this point of time, Himesh Mirchandani went to Mexico, and bought the country’s
second largest steel producer, Sicartsa for $168 million. This was followed by more
acquisitions in Canada and the US.

Many of his workers had not been paid for five months, and their suffering was
something Reshma Mirchandani saw for the first time.

There were a lot of workers’ abuses reported to her by the factory workers but Himesh
decided to keep her out of all this.

One of these workers, an illegal immigrant from Kapurthala, Punjab, who incidentally
had personal rivalries dating back to the early days of Himesh Mirchandani’s meteoric
rise to wealth and power vowed to take revenge.

He called himself Roshan Singh Deo.




Later, two new companies, Mirchandani Associates and Mirchandani Shipping were
formed to provide technical and commercial services to the Group and to meet its
growing shipping needs. The group went on to make more acquisitions.

Finally, Mirchandani Steel was formed through the merger of Mirchandani Associates
and Mirchandani & Sons Inc. with its headquarters in Los Angeles.

Aman Mirchandani hadn’t arrived in the world then.
“What happened next, Mama?” Reshma could recount her son as a curious child as
they served her tea inside her cell.

“O, we settled in America.”

As a mother, Reshma often thought how Aman’s life had been enormously affected by
his concepts, and still was. She knew that in the process he would find his answers.

“Hiouen-Tsang and those who preceded and followed him found a land of marvels.
Many Chinese pilgrims went to India to search out traces of Lord Buddha, and this they
did, bringing back to China information on the Indian man-god who later became one of
the deities of China.”

India had always played in Aman’s imagination the kind of role planets play in present-
day Science-fiction, distant, hardly attainable, and replete with wonders.

“When you grow up, you will be a scholar and you would study exotic customs,
languages, peoples, and countries and cultures, sometimes their lives, and liberty,
equality, fraternity, freedom, justice, peace and security.” Reshma (as well as his
grandmother) would often tell Aman.

“India is steeped in ignorance, poverty and misery and backwardness. As the wife of a
businessman, all I can do is give to charitable causes. I can only play the humanitarian
figure.”

Despite her overt respectability, Reshma Mirchandani was clearly an independent
thinker on social issues.

“But you…” Reshma had told Aman “will travel to India one day…to the ‘Land of Your
Dreams’…to make a difference.”

Reshma could recount her family’s circumstances. From a non-descript village of
Punjab to their $123 million mansion in Los Angeles, hubby Himesh Mirchandani’s
journey had been one resembling the kind of stuff dreams are made of in Bollywood
whose stars had danced in the family private functions to the tune of his money power.

She could also recount that she herself had been born in a Punjab village where no
electricity reached till the 1970’s with her family moving to the metropolis in search of
greener pastures.

It was there that she had met hubby Himesh. They were both studying Commerce at the
prestigious “Delhi School of Commerce”. Himesh would often skip classes to work in the
evenings. After finishing his Bachelor of Commerce degree with first class, he joined a
consultancy in the early seventies, but soon realized that there were limited
opportunities for him in India and decided to move to Malaysia in 1976. With the family
capital, he founded a steel plant, and made the company a success. Therein began a
saga of triumphs for the astute businessman.

Reshma could recount that hubby Himesh Mirchandani’s success had been largely
acquired buying up loss-making state owned mills and quickly turning them around. He
had one of his most notable successes in 1984, when he had turned around a loss-
making state-founded steel firm in Trinidad & Tobago which was losing $2 million a day.

She could also recount the horrific abuse and torture many of the workers had gone
through. And she was glad her son was away from all this
“Filth” as she categorized it.

Reshma was having reminiscences of the past. She put her past aside, “wiped off those
tears” and asked for the Lady Officer-on-duty.
CHAPTER 23

                                 OLD MAN BY THE SEAT

                                        2 June, 2004

I could sense there was something amiss. In the opposite berth. I had just woken up.

“Kamli”, a hoarse but cracked voice called out. It was a girl of twelve. She tried to
protest (silently), but who would hear her voice! This was his sixth Commandment; she
had silently and religiously followed his first five. She was just waiting for him to…

“Come to me, Kamli,” “come and sit on my lap,” the same hoarse voice called out. “You
look so beautiful, I feel like…” Period. I ran out of the compartment for a while.

It was the same story when I came back. The same voice, the same tone, the same
hoarseness. The same lack of feelings. It was only another girl married off to a much
older man in a nation called…India.

Then as he tried to force the girl, my blood began to boil. I couldn’t stop myself.

I WAS NO LONGER THE USUAL AMAN. I WAS NOW A-MAN.

“Rape”. “No!” “I wouldn’t be hanged for killing a marital-rapist.”

                               “MURDER THE OLD MAN!”

The girl was looking at me. Here was an educated man, (out of Stanford, she wouldn’t
know that) whose sense of justice was so strong that in order to bring justice, his sense
of injustice had prevailed.

I didn’t know what to do with her or with the bloodied knife. I threw away the knife (that
had been cleverly wrapped up in a newspaper during the murder) and washed my
hands.

The old man’s body was heavy. We looked around. The only other passenger in our
bogey was inside the washroom. Using the full force of our bodies, Raja, Kaushal,
Himmat and I pushed the body out of the moving train. And then went back to our seats.

Fortunately for us, the Doon Express came to a halt within an hour. The Board read
DHANBAD.

It was extremely hot outside. With Kamli with us, we boarded the first train to New Delhi.
We had our faces covered (as it is, it was hot) and put on normal behavior.

Raja, Kaushal, Himmat, Kamli and I were now the FIVE FUGITIVES…
CHAPTER 24

                                     THE FUGITIVES

                                       Summer 2004

“Nayee Dilli”. “Jahaan Log Apni Kismet Aazmane Aate Hain.” (New Delhi. Where people
come to experience their destinies) and so goes the popular saying.

New Delhi. The Capital of independent India. Polished and sophisticated from the
exterior. (Bland and shallow from the interior). From the thoroughfare of Sansad Marg to
the ‘gulis’ (by lanes) of Chandni Chowk. Delhi represents the ultimate dream of every
Indian. They come here for jobs (from non-profits to insurance to BPOs/KPOs), they
come here for fashion and entertainment, they come here for furthering their political
objectives, they come here for practically everything!

In this quest for power, there remains behind one India, the ‘silent India’, groups or
communities of people whose interests have been relegated to the by lanes by a larger
national interest. Consider this: India has the largest number of children of school-going
age out of school. There are millions waiting to learn to read and write, to see the light in
their lives. There are villages without roads, without electricity. There are schools that
haven’t seen what a desktop looks like. These are our ‘Unwanted Indians’…

      Consider also the practice of selective sex abortion. The practice of aborting
‘unwanted girls’ is widespread in India. Manual scavenging is common in India. As the
New India Rises, so do slums of laborers. Lack of dignity for manual labor and very low
pay has always been a truth in India. It is part of the caste system, part of our history.
And there is widespread trafficking in women and children.




“Kamli, let’s play Kith-kith, Kamli, Kamli.” The Prime Minister of India would not have
received such attention. His motorcade would have come to a halt in the neighborhood
in which we had taken shelter.

These were the blocks and pockets of Dilshad Garden.

“Kamli, get up, lazy arse.” She slept like a hog. While Raja and I just about managed the
household.

I could now see outside the window. Radha and her other friends were playing Kith-kith.
But none of them were happy. I could see the pain in their eyes. They were all married
to much older men, but that was not the only ordeal.

Day after day, night after night each one of them (I could guess) went through an
ordeal…Their husbands were much older men, each with more than one wife. For
Kamli’s friends, sex was a wifely duty. That they never enjoyed. It was harsh, feeling
less and imposed.



What did Sulochana Chachi tell all the girls in the neighborhood? (And Kamli would
often come back home and tell me)
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An american boy

  • 2. To my mother who taught me that life is beautiful
  • 3. PRELUDE “I remember what a friend of mine once asked me in all earnest: ‘Every day we read in the newspaper or hear about the “War on Terror(ism)”. Who are these terrorists? Wherein their origin(s)? This question really shocked me! I was myself in search of an appropriate answer! They are our own people, whom we sometimes create through political and economic isolation, or they could be fanatics, sometimes sponsored by hostile nations, trying to disrupt normal life through terrorism. In the Ramayana, the battle is between the divine hero Rama and the demon king Ravana. It is a long-drawn battle that finally Rama wins. In the Mahabharata, the battle at Kurukshetra is a battle between good and evil, and Dharma wins. The battles are many but finally peace triumphs. In our times too we see good battling evil- for instance, the Second World War. It seems to me both good and evil will survive side by side. The Almighty does help both to varied degrees! How to minimize the evil through our spiritual growth is a question that has persisted throughout human history… I can recall the ‘Battle of Kalinga’ which claimed the lives of at least 300,000 people with an equal number being wounded. Victory had been obtained at heavy cost…And Emperor Asoka looked down at the horror he had created, a horror of bloodshed and more gore…At that moment that was to go down in the annals of history, Ahimsa Dharma was born…The remorseful King embraced God’s command to propagate love for human beings through this doctrine! Asoka said, ‘Friends, there is one thing I have realized, there is no victory in causing suffering. Triumph is a peaceful kingdom…’ The Great Albert Einstein once famously remarked, ‘You know, in the West we have built a large, beautiful ship. It has all the comforts in it, but one thing is missing: it has no compass and does not know where to go. Men like Tagore and Gandhi and their spiritual forebears found the compass. Why can this compass not be put in the human ship so that both can realize their purpose?’ Sage Ashtavakra had once propounded that the business of life ought to be peace and prosperity, and not exploitation and conflict… Just like Nature! Nature gives without reservation, like the mango tree- people throw stones at it, break off its branches, but it still offers its shade to the weary traveler, and its fruits to the hungry! Then wherein we…? The history of the world shows the forces of good struggling hard to make life better for mankind while we human beings show a terrible capacity for destruction…Thus we have Gandhi on the one hand, striving relentlessly towards Non-Violence, while on the other hand, millions die in the Second World War and Pearl Harbor and the atomic bombing of entire cities. Several thousands perish in Bosnia-Herzegovina…a war rages in the Gaza Strip between Israel & Palestine… And on 11 September 2001, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City fall and innocent lives are lost…In India, in the Bhopal gas tragedy, 30,000 people die as the result of the carelessness of a multinational company, and Chernobyl and the daily Violence in the Kashmir Valley… Where are we going? Are we doomed to destroy ourselves?
  • 4. No, we have to find an everlasting solution… In the modern era, there are few such examples, of those who embody the qualities that come from realizing the nature of the mind… ‘Atmabodha’…We are too much preoccupied with ostentatious displays of wealth and personal freedom! Actually, how humane or civilized or compassionate or tolerant are we? There is still a long way to go… Abundance and spirituality are not mutually exclusive nor is it wrong to desire material things…Nature too adopts full measures; you would observe that if you looked around you! Inside a garden, there is a profusion of flowers. Even better still, if you looked up, you would see the vast Universe stretching into infinitude, unbelievable really! All that we see in the world is an embodiment of energy, as Sri Aurobindo says. Therefore it becomes wise to appreciate that spirit and matter are both part of existence, are in harmony with each other, after all, it is the realization that it is wrong to feel that it is shameful or non-spiritual to desire material things that matters…” ‘How do you love when you don’t love?’
  • 6. The White Man Shall Battle People in Other Lands… The greatest period of danger is in September 2001. “I can foresee a war coming, there will be innocent loss of lives and in the end we will achieve nothing. The war will emanate from the Western nations and will be the end- result of man’s greed and miscalculation.” “Why don’t I feel like an American?” I was all alone in my room. “Like David, like Michael, and Virginia, even Astad and Chang, like my friends, the way they feel…too, and Amy.” Amy was someone he truly respected. “Mama, Mom, how’s Amy, I mean?” His father abruptly left the room. “Is something the matter, I mean wrong?” I asked mother. “Well, my child, your father has advised me not to tell you.” “Not to tell me WHATTT?” “These are troubled times, my son; your friend Astad was arrested and forcibly detained along with several others in a police raid on seven counts of conspiracy. Letsss…go back to the US, son, I mean you should come back home with us. You’ve been unwell.” “Amy, I want to know about Amy. I’m sorry about Astad, but Amy is my best friend.” I was getting a bit worried. “Son, Amy had come to India to study and research rural development, during the same time that you arrived in India. During fieldwork on one of her tours, she had enquired about the peasant uprising from her supervisor, who happened to be a leading Sociologist. ‘It’s not an interesting subject,’ she was told. Amy had clearly been puzzled by her superior’s answer. ‘No, not at all, you Americans are very inquisitive. And yes, young lady, I…advise you to stay away from all this. You don’t want to enquire about that. It’s not a point with any research potential. Maybe we should continue with rural development, because that’s what you came here for in the first place.” Reshma Mirchandani handed over a few torn leaflets to her son. From what he could see, Aman was flabbergasted. It read “injustice perpetrated on American scholar”. The Indian Mirror. (The date was not clearly visible). “A young American scholar visiting India to study rural development was found brutally murdered…”
  • 7. He did not want to read any further. (He remembered her kind words: “Healing is possible as in survivors of violence in areas of conflict. Change towards justice can occur. Values of the heart are as central as those of the mind…”) Aman suddenly felt low. After crying like no man of his age would ever cry, he begged his mother for a Prozac.
  • 8. CHAPTER 1 THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE …From the moment the sperm makes contact with the ovum, under normal conditions, all subsequent development to birth of a living newborn is a fait accompli…Following that initial contact of sperm and egg there is no subsequent moment or stage which is held in arbitration by the mother, or the embryo or fetus. Nor does the male make a second contribution to the birth process. Humans develop in a continuum in which every stage overlaps and each one blends one into the other. Indeed, all of life is contained within a time continuum. Thus, the beginning of a new life is exacted by the beginning of fertilization, the reproductive event which is the essence of life… (These are the beginnings of life) Monday afternoon, 1 March 12:32 P.M. Reshma Mirchandani was expecting. The baby was fine…Both mother and baby were doing well. Then, what was bothering her? Outside the cabin window (of the elite Seinfeld Center for Reproductive Medicine in Los Angeles), Reshma could see a group of white cops beating up a black motorist and detaining several others for reasons that were beyond her comprehension and indeed audibility, she was in an airtight cabin. The blinds were not drawn so anyone could see right through. “And what might you worry about?” Lucy, the cabin attendant for the night asked her. “O, they are only some black fellas’ detained on ten counts of felony and aggravated assault.” Lucy was clearly racist. This was America. “I have a dream,” Reshma remembered Martin Luther King Jr’s famous words. This was also Abe Lincoln’s America. And Kennedy’s America. Actually, there were two Americas, she thought. Not North and South America, or Central America. But one ‘exotic Venice-of America’ (and the private lives and private wealth of ‘The Big Apple’ and ‘The Big Orange’) and one of black neighborhoods, inner cities indeed “Ghettos”…
  • 9. “Push, come on push a little bit more,” the baby was coming out. “I can’t,” and as she caught a glimpse of hubby Himesh behind the glass separating the labor room from the outside world, “I hate you,” she said. But Reshma actually didn’t hate the experience. On the other hand, she was enjoying it. She had felt extremely sexually stimulated as prior to being taken to the labor room; she and hubby Himesh had locked themselves in a passionate kiss. Reshma’s first experience of birth was of hearing her mother tell her how she was born. Her mother’s story was one of pain; humiliation and a final need for surgery. Then Reshma and hubby Himesh decided to see a number of television programs about birth. This was in the years 1980-81. Reshma had found these images of birth exciting and moving, but it was the emergence of the baby, which touched her. So she had absolutely no preconception of labor as a sexual act when she was to become a mother. It was an entirely typical hospital birth of the time-disinhibited by Pethidine, Reshma lay in the lithotomy position, pubis completely shaved, being enthusiastically exhorted to push with every contraction. In between contractions, she begged for her legs to be taken down from the stirrups (they were not, it was unthinkable). As the baby came closer to delivery her cries became more intense, and, after the birth, changed with dramatic speed to gasping, relieved acceptance as she repeated, ‘Oh Baby, Oh my baby’. The rhythm of her response to the contractions and the sudden release and change seemed orgasmic to the would-be mother. Hubby Himesh meanwhile waited anxiously outside the labor room. Inside the labor room, Reshma was able to experience tremendous sexual arousal, a feeling reiterated by Ina May Gaskin who famously encouraged women and their partners to ‘smooch’ to augment labor, advice further reiterated by Caroline Flint. And Reshma and hubby Himesh had smooched when she was being taken to the labor room. Late in second stage, Reshma was begging the student midwife to ‘please hurry up’. “Come on, take deep breaths, just once more, the baby is almost out,” and as the baby emerged, her gasps seemingly more pronounced changed to “O baby, my baby!” It was a boy! In a faraway land called India, in a remote Himalayan hamlet called Pahargaon, an innocent man called Bhumi Gaddi had suffered a violent death by stoning at the hands of a reckless mob. The reason was he had refused to subject his child bride to intercourse on the first night out of sheer compassion. Soothsayers had earlier predicted that Bhumi Gaddi would be reborn across the seas in a fantasy land called America and come back to Pahargaon one day as an alien. Bhumi Gaddi was cremated, but although his body died, his soul was to live for ever. Like
  • 10. wearing new clothes, the soul would transmigrate to spiritually implant itself in the womb of another virgin which in this case would be Reshma Mirchandani. “Son, I carried you to term through difficult circumstances. Your birth is auspicious not only for two proud parents but for everyone. May the Good Lord always protect you and take care of you. It is a beautiful gift of God; this ability to conceive and give birth, it takes generations of “Karma” for both parents of a child.” That night, Bhumi Gaddi appeared in Reshma’s dreams. Reshma was never to mention the matter to anyone, but in her heart of hearts…she knew that Her son was born to be a Messiah…
  • 11. CHAPTER 2 THE CITY OF ANGELS: WHAT’S IN A NAME? “Curfew lifted from the city of Los Angeles,” ran the headlines. The Los Angeles Post, The Los Angeles Mirror, The Sun…it was all over. Evidently, there had been a lot of rioting following the detention, and an enraged mob had lynched three white policemen and injured several others during the period Reshma was admitted and hubby Himesh had decided to conceal the matter from her. What intrigued the proud parents was the fact that the curfew had been lifted the day their son was born! This was a stark fact and something they were proud of that too. “Jai, we’ll call him Jai,” said his grandmother. “No, we’ll call him Sanjay,” “San-jay,” said his aging aunt. “Rimesh, son of Himesh,” his father added. “Aman,” Reshma quietly emerged from the room. “Aman,” for peace…” “My son was born on the day curfew was lifted.” Reshma was beaming. So, at the insistence of the mother, the newborn was named Aman… Aman Mirchandani grew up to be a fine boy. Born to NRI steel magnate Himesh Mirchandani and Reshma Mirchandani, Aman was sent to “Daffodils”, an up market Montessori when he was a little child. Very different from the average child, his teachers often predicted he would grow up into something different. He was caring, empathetic and compassionate quite unlike most other children from similar family backgrounds and never ceased from walking the extra mile. After all, he had Reshma in his blood. It was never difficult teaching him though. He was never a problematic child. He was keenly observant and believed in speaking his mind out. At the age of 19, Aman Mirchandani was sent to Stanford University to study Law, and his chosen specialization was Human Rights Law. For the first time, the young mind was exposed to the vast array of rights, civil and political and economic, social and cultural. The scholar chose to write his dissertation on the meaning and concept of justice. The boy had a curious mind which often wondered why there was no peace in this world, why did so many people go hungry, was food the major cause of social ferment, and whether guaranteeing the rights of the child would mean everlasting peace? The young mind decided that the best way to find answers to the questions that intrigued him was to travel. He had the funds and he had his mother’s blessings. Besides, there was no other way.
  • 12. He decided to travel to India… India had always intrigued him, he was stranded between two cultures and to him this was the best opportunity, after all, he was an Indian…born in America. Or, was he an American? “I am an American citizen. I was born in Los Angeles. It was important to my mother however that her son not forget his roots, meaning Indian culture though off course I had always been taught that there is only one culture and one language and one religion: Humanity.” “I went to an up-market school where I studied French, German and English. I grew up, confused not knowing which or what to call my home. I wanted to travel to India. In America, I felt like the hybrid genre. ‘Split Identity’ call it. I remember having read the accounts of Western travelers, how ‘at home’ they felt in India, that it was their ‘spiritual home’ but my own confusion often prevented me from understanding what they had meant.” “Spiritual home to me then implies a place where one journeys and feels roots that are imperceptible, indefinable. I do feel connected to the history, the people, the place. I have never been there. And though India is not my birthplace, something draws me to her.” “I AM AN AMERICAN BOY LIVING THE INDIAN DREAM.” Aman could recount his grandmother narrating to him: “If you were a scholar you could study exotic flora and fauna or equally exotic customs, dialects, peoples, and Gods.” “India for the past fifteen centuries has been subject to the kind of imagining I am doing…playing the role in men’s imagination which exotic planets play now in present- day science fiction, far away, hardly attainable and replete with wonders. I too have my share of imagining about India. My life seems to have been enormously affected by my concept of India, and still is. Like a lover finally thrown back upon himself, I have to go out in order to know where to discover what I was seeking. And that, off course, would be within myself.” “I am sure that in the process, I would find my answers.” His father was busy typing something on his laptop. While his mother cried. They had come to see him off at the airport. “My mother believes in giving away money to charitable causes. For mother, India would be perfect for a humanitarian ‘Karma’. What amusing play of Karma caused her own son to adopt to travel to India of his own choosing?” These were his last thoughts before he boarded.
  • 13. CHAPTER 3 (THEME PARKS & YANNI) ONE MAN’S DREAM Mid 2001 Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport, Kolkata. Aman Mirchandani arrived by British Airways. It was well past midnight. He had no option but to stay on at the airport for the night. Aman was now looking at the airfield. There were airplanes of varying shapes and sizes. “Japan Airlines”, read the airplane closest to the terminal. “So this would probably be going to Tokyo, or Hokkaido or even Hiroshima or Nagasaki. To the ‘Land of the Rising Sun’. To the land that rose out of the ashes. To the United Nations University.” Aman wondered why there ever was a World War II. Or a Pearl Harbor. Why Hiroshima, why Nagasaki? Why so many innocent lives? And think of the ones that had survived the radiation. “Please show us your passport!” Aman was fast asleep. “Show us your passport, please!” they repeated. “Show us your Passport.” Aman took out his Passport. They saw he was American. And so did the sniffer dogs. This should not have happened. At an international airport. They immediately apologized to him. But Aman said nothing. Thereafter he took a cab to the hotel. There was a problem here. He did not speak Bangla and they never got his American accent. “So this is the ‘Land of the Buddha’, Aman enquired at the hotel reception. “Saab, we do not know what Buddha you are talking about. We know about Buddhism and that’s it!” The young boy did not know whether to feel amused. The Consul General arrived at 10 a.m. sharp. Briefing started as scheduled. “Mr. Mirchandani, you have to be extra-careful in these troubled times. We will be moving you from the hotel to a guesthouse where the Consul General’s Chef will cook for you.” “And yes, please don’t get yourself into trouble, Mr. Mirchandani.” The Consul General, who had first arrived with a word of caution left with a word of caution as well. Those eyes did not comprehend the enormity of the matter. Those eyes were innocent. Those eyes had seen a more enlightened and educated system. Those eyes had never seen bloodshed. Those eyes had dreamt of peace…
  • 14. CHAPTER 4 INDENTURED SERVANTS AND DISOBEDIENT MASTERS 11 June 2001 “…Once upon a time there was a great chain of being. At the top was God, and at the bottom were all the inanimate objects. (Actually, hidden below the bottom – in a kind of underground lair – were the Devil and his minions). Humanity appeared at different points in between: kings were below angels, vassals below lords, apprentices below craftsmen, and wives below husbands. And all this was divinely ordained… From out of this compost grew English common law. Over time hallowed principles were codified into social rules, and extremely detailed treatises were produced setting out how people on different levels must relate towards each other. This common law controlled the parent-child relationship, the husband-wife relationship, the guardian- ward relationship, and the master-servant relationship...” (Excerpts from “Of Masters and Servants” by Peter Hall-Jones) Working as cooks and servants in private households is a common job for young to middle-aged men and women, women especially. They start in the morning and generally earn Rupees 2000 monthly (approx. $50.00; the Consul General’s Chef and her husband, a chauffeur earned much higher, for obvious reasons). Meals are included. The change of diet that these women have made them vulnerable to obesity, high sugar, high BP and so on. These are relatively new illnesses for these communities, so there is a need for both preventive care as well as medicines. “My experience with cooks and chauffeurs back home in Los Angeles has been very different from my experiences in Calcutta (Kolkata). In this short span of time ever since I arrived, I have seen children of low-income communities whose parents leave their children to work in the city during the day, sometimes working in 3-4 homes for about 2 hours in each home.” Aman made a few notes. He was trying to ‘discover his purpose in life’. “Saab, your tea is getting cold.” Aman looked around for the voice. There was innocent humility in that voice. It seemed the “servant class” in India had been trained for such humility. There were limits that one couldn’t cross, you know. Most of these servants were migrants from rural India. Poverty and lack of jobs often resulted in this mass exodus. They migrated with their wives and children. While the men found some work, the women (and very often, children) worked as domestic help, cooking, cleaning, and washing the dishes and so on and so forth. “This is our story, Saab.” Aman could see the crestfallen look on his chauffeur. There existed a vast urban-rural divide, and Aman actually thought about it. So, there was a class divide, he thought. There was indeed humility in these voices. And there were many. But there was no human dignity.
  • 15. CHAPTER 5 9/11 (THE RETURN TO INNOCENCE) Reshma wondered if Aman was safe. She had heard of United Airlines. She had heard of the Pentagon. She knew that on that fateful day, two airplanes had crashed into the World Trade Center. She knew her Aman was an innocent child. “We lost Alicia and Chris in the attacks on the World Trade Center. Their bodies were found in the debris. Many of my business associates were inside the Center. O God, when will the world stop warring?” Himesh Mirchandani burst into the room. Reshma wondered why Aman had not called up. She hoped her child was safe and secure. The phone rang. Reshma picked up the phone. “I hope you are fine, Mama. I don’t understand why there is so much of violence in the world. Please take care.” Reshma knew Aman was still a child.
  • 16. CHAPTER 6 THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS: THE RIGHT TO LIVE October 2001 “If we are to reach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with children. And if they will grow up in their natural innocence, we won’t have to struggle, we won’t have to pass fruitless, idle resolutions, but we shall go from love to love and peace to peace, until at last all the corners of the world are covered with that peace and love for which, consciously or unconsciously, the whole world is hungering.” (Gandhi) Aman looked at Parvati’s daughter. She was seriously thin and emaciated for a girl of her age, and wondered what the Government of India was doing to feed and protect India’s growing child population. India had acceded to the Convention on the Rights of the Child of the UN. Aman wondered why the Indian Government had failed to honor its obligations even after it had ratified the Convention. After all, no state can achieve peace until it has realized the rights of its children. “Mama, I remember my university days. We were studying ‘Rights’. There were Civil and Political Rights and there were Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. There was the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Mama, God has created me for a purpose in life, and I must fulfill that purpose. But I do not know where to begin. I’ve started off with India. Perhaps I’ll wind it all up with a degree in International Humanitarian Law from the University of Groningen.” Aman beamed over the phone. (The IELTS goes online and the cash-rich, money-strapped get to go to the University of Groningen. The rest get pushed into “Heavily Indebted Poor Country Initiatives”) “Aman, my child, be careful and work to discover your purpose in life,” Reshma advised. “Mr. Mirchandani.” The US Consul General’s voice was grave and purposeful. “Have you read the teachings of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda? Not that I expect you to, but if you are in India… Well, you should read Tagore and Gandhi as well. As a matter of fact, I will be making a short business trip to Vishva-Bharati University, Shantiniketan. Would you like to come with me?” Deep inside, I found myself saying “Yes”, and that was indeed my response to the Consul General. I packed my bags and prepared to leave (the very next day!) to Shantiniketan. Aman had never heard of the place. He knew from his friends back home that India was the land of the Ganges, snakes and the Taj Mahal. To him it was almost unbelievable how little he or his friends knew about Tagore who he was told had won the Nobel Prize for Literature…
  • 17. “Would we be crossing Sonagachi?” I innocently enquired of Raja, the chauffeur. They were not yet ready to leave. The Consul General had been held up over “official matters” related to the attacks in the US. “Saab, rich people don’t visit Sonagachi. And why would they? They visit the Taj (Bengal). What would they understand, the life and the pain of a commercial sex- worker?” Aman was clearly embarrassed. He dreamt however that one day, sex-workers would be recognized in society and given their due as citizens, that the lives of their children would dance to a different tune as during holy festivals… He dreamt of a day when there would be no trade in human beings on earth. “So, what is the root of the issue of commercial sexual exploitation?” Aman once again enquired of Raja. “We are poor. I have a job. But most poor people are ignorant of their rights and privileges. The state does nothing to feed or protect us. Under the circumstances, most of our innocent rural folk have no alternative but to sell their wives and daughters, mostly to pay off their debts. They talk of women’s rights in the cities but refuse to truly understand the situations in the villages.” Raja clearly had an element of anger in his voice. I looked around. Clearly Calcutta (or Kolkata) was poor. Desperately poor. Perhaps Calcutta was by far the poorest city in the world. Aman could see entire families living (or existing), cooking, cleaning, washing and relieving on the sidewalks. He could see children begging on the streets. “Why blame the Government? Fie on my (elitist) education instead.” Aman left for Shantiniketan with a heavy heart. Something deep inside pricked his (noble) conscience. The Consul General spoke of the attacks on the World Trade Center, he spoke of the Pentagon, and he spoke of the “War on Terror”… but Aman was silent. The entire journey, he said not a word. He was rather uneasy, and kept glancing sideways… rather looking out of the window of the car. Those images shattered him…of thin, wasted and emaciated children standing and waving by the roadside, little innocents tending cattle, little innocents traveling on foot with pots on their heads and little innocents serving tea at ‘Dhabas’… So, West Bengal was after all a very impoverished state, should be very low on the Human Development Index, he thought (but said nothing).
  • 18. They reached Bolpur Station where Raja halted for refueling nearby. Aman could see the beautiful hostel building that some social activists had constructed for the welfare of tribal girls and women as they set off on the final leg of their journey to Shantiniketan. He could now feel a sense of serenity within. Shantiniketan was truly serene and had begun to put his mind at ease once again. There were trees, there was the breeze and there was the university. There were young girls in colorful ‘saris’ rehearsing for the Annual Convocation. Aman checked into his hotel room and partitioned the drapes. It was wonderful outside, and the grass outside his room was an exotic green. Meanwhile, the Consul General had given him some literature to read. -“I am trying hard to start a school in Santiniketan. I want it to be like the ancient hermitages we know about. There will be no luxuries, the rich and poor alike shall have to live like ascetics. But I cannot find the right teachers. It is proving impossible to combine today’s practices with yesterday’s ideals…”- -“There are men who think that by the simplicity of living introduced in my school I preach the idealization of poverty which prevailed in the medieval age… should we not admit that poverty is the school in which man had his first lessons and his best training? Even a millionaire’s son has to be born helplessly poor and to begin his lesson of life from the beginning. He has to learn to walk like the poorest of children, though he has the means to afford to be without the appendages of legs. Poverty brings us into complete touch with life and the world, for living richly is living mostly by proxy, thus living in a lesser world of reality...”- -“The school was conceived as a state of creative unity where the student’s minds would be free from blind superstition, where they would respect human beings irrespective of caste and creed”- -“There was a unity among us when the Indian mind was actively engaged in thinking. But now there is division. The large branches no longer find themselves connected to the root. The separation of limbs is dangerous for the body. Likewise, the Indian mind is now divided into the Hindu, Buddhist, Jaina, Sikh, Muslim and Christian branches. They are unable to receive anything from the composite whole or give back anything to the composite whole. Our ten fingers must necessarily be together to make an offering or to receive an offering. Therefore Indian education must be a collective of the Vedic, Puranic, Buddhist, Jain and the Islamic minds to fill the Indian heart. We must find out how the Indian mind has flown along these different streams from the past. That is the only way India shall realize its unity within its diversity. We must understand ourselves in this connected way…”- -“… in every nation education is intimately associated with the life of the people. But for us modern education is relevant only in turning out clerk, lawyers, doctors, magistrates, munsiffs and policemen, the few favourite professions of the gentle folk. This education has not reached the farmer, the oil-grinder, the potter. No other educated society has been struck by such disaster. The reason for this is that our universities have not been a growth from the soil… When a truly Indian (or, for that matter, of any other nationality, I should add) is established it must from the very beginning implement its acquired knowledge of economics, of agriculture, of health and all other everyday sciences in the surrounding villages. Then alone can the school become the centre of the country’s way
  • 19. of living. This school must practise agriculture, dairy-keeping and weaving on the most modern methods. And to obtain its own financial resources it must adopt cooperative methods bringing together students, teachers, and the people living around…”- -“I have proposed to call this ideal school Visva-Bharati…”- “So this is the incredible Shantiniketan of Tagore” (I was not familiar with the first name). And why has the kingdom of the Nobel Laureate (meaning West Bengal) been reduced to such…?” For the first time, Aman tried to find the answers in the serenity within.
  • 20. CHAPTER 7 WE ALL NEED THE SUN…WE ALL NEED A MESSIAH 17 November, 2001 “Al-Qaeda militants have hijacked four commercial airlines and crashed three of them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon killing nearly 3000 people. America has declared a War on Terror.’’ As CNN reported, Aman’s mind traveled to Africa. There he was in India, trying to find his answers by generalization initially after which he thought he would narrow down to the basics. Despite the fact that the countries of Africa had ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and even implemented a regional treaty, the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, many child rights issues remained unresolved. Child soldiers, child refugees and displaced children, how would Africa cope? Aman was crestfallen. Drought, famine and disease had decimated indeed millions. In addition, children faced the threat of HIV-infection at birth. Child sexual abuse was rife. Aman switched on the television set. The report said that by 2010, two million children would be orphaned by this pandemic in South Africa alone… So, there was still a mammoth task waiting before realizing the African dream… Aman switched off the television set. Politics did not interest him any more. And least of all the Politics of War. He was only trying to find the answers to his questions on the world’s primary problems. But the answers if at all were evading him. “Saab, if you don’t mind, can I tell you something?” I could sense a degree of reluctance in Raja’s voice. “Go on, I don’t mind.” Aman was surely different from the rest. “Saab, you have a…golden heart, Saab,” Raja fumbled. “Go on.” “Saab, I am trying to get my little girl into school. I want to send her to a good school, but I need help with the fees, then her uniforms and books. Saab…I promise to repay.” Aman was at first unable to come to terms with the helplessness of the man. He did not feel the way most people felt, as if they were doing something out of the ordinary for the children of their servants and chauffeurs. He did not at all feel like a Messiah. (Although they need a Messiah, he thought) “Alright, how much do you need? Don’t worry, I’m with you. God is with you.” (I was unable to trace how and why I had used the word ‘God’)
  • 21. Raja fell at his master’s feet.
  • 22. CHAPTER 8 THE US of A The 21st century began with the United States as the sole superpower in the absence of the Soviet Union, with China becoming a potential superpower. The debate over finding a solution to global warming, fossil fuel pollution and alternative energy raged in the new century after most of the 20th century was marked by industrial expansion. With the Cold War over and terrorism on the rise, the US and its allies turned their attention to the Middle East. Almost 3000 people were killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and in rural Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon and United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into a grassland in Pennsylvania. The US had subsequently declared a War on Terrorism. On October 7, 2001 the US and NATO had invaded Afghanistan and overthrown the Taliban government. Troops remained to install a democratic government, fight a slowly escalating insurgency, and hunt for Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. “International Peace and Security cannot be achieved like this. Force is never the answer to force. What way are we different, the so-called civilized nations of the world, no as a citizen of the United States” and then again, “my mother has always taught me respect for and belief in other peoples’ ideologies. I cannot be a mute spectator to such gross violations of the principles of justice. God forgive them for they know not what they do.” As a strong ray of light penetrated his eyes, Aman suddenly felt weak in the knees… “We have to rush to India” Himesh Mirchandani cautioned, “Aman is admitted. And…” “And what?” Reshma was clearly nervous. The glass bowl crashed to the floor and into tiny pieces. “How are we to reach my Aman? The security situation is so volatile, anything can happen any time.” She felt faint. “I’m arranging for two emergency tickets to reach us to Indian shores as soon as possible,” hubby Himesh had always felt invincible. “Ladies and Gentlemen, please fasten your seat belts, we’re about to take off.” The Mirchandanis were traveling to the country of their birth following a gap of 21 years. The last time the couple was in India was a year prior to Aman’s arrival in the world…
  • 23. CHAPTER 9 ‘IN’ ‘JUSTICE’ “He doesn't know what justice is but he knows what justice is not.” (Plato) 3 January 2002 “Doctor, what is wrong with me?” Aman innocently enquired. “Nothing much.” Dr. Samuel Trehan was more than adept at handling enquiries from patients. “Doctor, I have to complete my dissertation.” “You most certainly will, but you cannot…” “I cannot what, Doctor?” “I’m afraid I cannot tell you this until your parents arrive,” Dr. Trehan’s voice was grim, as if there was a serious conflict ahead which he could foresee. (That perhaps Nostradamus couldn’t) “That reminds me, Doctor, I have just written something, would you like to see it?” “Sure, why not, I would love to.” In all the years of his life so far (he was 54) leave alone his years in Medical school, Dr. Samuel Trehan was yet to read anything of the kind. It read ‘injustice’. “Of all calamities suffered by this Humanity in the modern times, war and conflict, poverty and destitution, epidemics and pandemics, ignorance and neglect, terrorism and militancy, deforestation and pollution and innumerable other perversities, injustice is the most painful of all. This matter has many views, as we really do not know much and we admit even less. What is justice? Where can you find it? Can judges be fair? No question of this kind can get a satisfactory answer to the quest of justice suffered by the poor and the destitute. Justice belongs to the Almighty and one can investigate only different forms of justice in human society and efforts made by institutions to improve them. One must understand how the world works, what is the operation of the principle of pair of opposites, the basic laws of human evolution and the laws of Manu. One can study the principles of justice in order to facilitate the peace process. Inequality is often seen as the source of injustices, we do not understand that we are different so that life may prosper despite apparent injustice. Tremendous announcements of the modern era of the violent happenings: Bush’s ‘Infinite war’, daily massacres between Palestinians and Israelis, police dragnets in the slums of Rio and Buenos Aires, guerrilla combats in Colombia, merciless plundering by the IMF, destructive corruption in communication media…these are wrong. To illustrate, no law, only individual intervention can regulate unjust and dirty TV transmissions. In these times, Humanity is on the brink of a world catastrophe, and men run the risk of experiencing one of the biggest injustices of all times. We must remain just ourselves in the face of injustice. Weapons of Mass Destruction, atomic, biologic and corrosive
  • 24. bombs are distributed everywhere. One can start a war without knowing if one can finish the same. It is true that injustices have been committed against innocents in New York City, but let us learn to renounce revenge. People now anxiously wait for a change in international relations towards peace. Humanity can usher in a ‘New Human Revolution’. War and Peace can go up and down on the pans of movable scales. The destiny is in the hands of a powerful man, if and when he learns to renounce revenge.” “Saab has been admitted for quite some time now, I must go and see him”, said Raja. “Have you given a thought to the loss in terms of wages” Parvati cautioned. “We have to get our little girl into school, and besides…” “Do you forget what Saab told me, “Don’t worry, I’m with you. God is with you.” “So let God feed us, do you remember what happened in the village last year?” Raja looked at his wife. Parvati’s eyes were heavily moist. In January 2001, an entire village community was neglected and facing starvation in the village of Kurtuli. Many villagers were on the verge of death. (There was a ‘Hunger Alert’ from the Permanent People’s Tribunal on Human Rights, Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law in Asia. Many villagers were on the verge of death) The hunger situation was terrible and shocking. At least 754 landless laborers belonging to the Hira indigenous community in Kurtuli suffered from starvation and malnutrition. Many were driven by circumstances to eat poisonous plants and roots and leaves to survive. Villagers were also lacking several other basic facilities – water, education, primary health care facilities and electricity. While the government discussed the matter, the death toll rose to over 800 as villagers continued to suffer. Most of the dead were children, pregnant and lactating women and senior citizens. “I wish I could tell Saab…about hunger and government inaction and neglect and caste discrimination and landlessness and debt and added to it sometimes the government threats and intimidations…in our country, then Saab could write and publish a report on it in America. The American people are far more educated and enlightened, you know.” Raja tried to take those memories out of Parvati’s mind. They had a big laugh together.
  • 25. CHAPTER 10 ONE WOMAN’S DREAM January 2002 “Eggs for Everest: One Woman's Dream Eleanor Roosevelt once said: The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams”. The boy’s health had weakened. His parents had arrived from America. But the doctors were not saying anything about his condition. “Mama!” Aman had to be assisted to raise himself off the hospital bed. Hospital attendants rushed to support the boy as he darted towards the mother. Aman collapsed on the floor. “What’s wrong with him, doctor?” Mrs. Mirchandani was extremely uneasy. “Well…” “I’ll tell you, Mrs. Mirchandani.” The orthopedic surgeon intervened. “Actually, although his heart and lungs and kidneys and liver are in shape, his legs have weakened and are no longer able to support the body.” “I’m afraid…Aman may become confined to a wheelchair for life although we are yet to be sure.” “We are investigating the cause of this condition. We have seen his blood pathology reports. An X-ray will be done soon.” “Aman, my son, there are often trying times in life. Big or small, such trials only test your fortitude and ability to hold on. Very often, such trials motivate you to perform and could be the beginning of a New Human Revolution in your life. In such crucial moments, only one’s firm determination to prevail can genuinely work wonders.” Reshma knew she had to keep her son alive. To her, little Aman was a prodigy who could change the world. “There are struggles in which a solitary individual transforms the world. (Many of them were confined to a wheelchair). When Rosa Parks refused to obey the bus driver’s order to give her seat to a white passenger, and said “No”, the bell of change tolled triumphantly for African-Americans in the United States. This now famous event took place on Dec 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, when Mrs. Parks was coming back home following a hard day’s work in the tailoring section of a department store. The bus driver shouted, ‘Aren’t you going to stand up?’ ‘No’, she replied. ‘Well, I’m going to have you arrested,’ the bus driver declared. ‘You may do that,’ was Rosa Parks’s calm response.
  • 26. Do you know what happened next?” Aman Mirchandani had never before seen his mother like this. “This incident led to an explosion of anger among the Afro-American population in Montgomery. A bus service boycott was organized, led by the Civil Rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. 30,000 Afro-Americans who used to ride in the backs of these same buses joined together in solidarity, walking and using shared cars instead. Mrs. Parks lost her job, and she was besieged with threatening phone calls. There were false rumors, and Dr. King’s home was bombed. But the nonviolent movement pricked the conscience of America and the world. A year later the US Supreme Court declared segregated busing unconstitutional. From that moment, the Civil Rights Movement gained tremendous momentum ushering in a new era towards equal rights for all American citizens. A single word and one woman’s dream had changed history. How do you…?” Aman was fast asleep. The day’s excitement had induced a state of tiredness in him. “Now the trumpet summons us again…” Reshma was sifting through some of her son’s writings that she had found in the cabin closet. “…a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation’s struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself. Can we forge against these enemies a grand and global alliance, North and South, East and West, that can assure a more fruitful life for all mankind?” -President J F Kennedy, USA, In an address to the nation “Our world’s future hangs precariously…Lopsided development and rampant Consumerism have widened the chasm between the world’s rich and the world’s poor… Numbers do not matter. We are too much preoccupied with them. The time has come in the history of nations to liberate their peoples from centuries of illiteracy, ignorance, inequality, disease and war. For instance, a part of global spending on arms can be diverted to the social sector. Why at all spend so much? I understand there are countries that do not have a defense budget. I for one do not understand much of fiscal policy or bulls and bears. What I do understand is the language of the poor and the marginalized, the language of the harsh realities of staying alive till the next moment, the next day, the language of survival. It is not just one planet; it is one home, one family. Is this utopia? Let us challenge our limits in our endeavor (however small it may be) to bring about a happier world. Let us help shift development attention away from economic growth as the main index of progress to look more closely to what is happening to the poor in terms of equitable distribution of income...
  • 27. I was only…. looking at the world through my eyes. Only when we work together hand in hand can we create a better world to live in. And so they all say… If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain. If I can ease one life from aching, or Cool one pain, Or help one fainting robin into his nest again, I shall not live in vain. Emily Dickinson” There were scribbles here and there. Reshma was clearly astonished yet she loved what her eyes saw. She looked at her child. Aman was fast asleep. “Saab”, Raja stopped dead in his tracks when he saw the Mirchandanis inside the cabin. “Who are they?” Reshma enquired. “O, this is Raja and that’s Parvati. He drives my car and she cooks for us.” There was an innocence in his voice completely free of (class-based) discrimination. Himesh Mirchandani was visibly upset. He left the cabin. “Namaste Madam.” “Namaste Bibiji.” “Namaste.” “So I understand that you have made friends in India who are helping you write your dissertation,” Reshma lightly quipped. “Mama!” “Son, I carried you to term through difficult circumstances. Your birth is auspicious not only for two proud parents but for everyone. May the Good Lord always protect you and take care of you. It is a beautiful gift of God; this ability to conceive and give birth, it takes generations of “Karma” for both parents of a child.” “What is ‘Karma?’’ Aman immediately jotted down the term. For her own part, Reshma noticed how much of a ‘scientific thinker’-open to every idea, her son was ‘blossoming’ into.
  • 28. “We’ve got the X-ray report.” The orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Sunil Gupta darted into the room. “But we’ve got to get an MRI done before we can comment.” “We have decided to shift Aman out of this hospital into a private nursing home in south Calcutta. This decision was taken jointly by Aman’s mother and me and here…” “A few well-wishers from America” Himesh Mirchandani added. “And this is Dr. Richard Weisz who has come with us.” Himesh Mirchandani had the magnetic charm of an NRI steel magnate settled in ‘elitist’ America. There were years of maturity, though struggle in his voice.
  • 29. CHAPTER 11 WANTING RECOVERY- A VERY PATIENT PATIENT February 2002 Aman Mirchandani was lucky. “In the poorest countries, as many as a fifth of children do not reach their fifth birthday. Diarrhea kills approximately 1 million children every year in India. You see, the poor cannot afford elitist private nursing homes, and primary health centers are virtually non- existent. Doctors prefer to steer clear of the rural areas. Coughs and colds kill approximately 600,000 children each year in India. Many millions of children have been orphaned by AIDS. Leprosy is more common in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Orissa and West Bengal. And TB often kills.” “Please come to the point, Doctor!” Himesh Mirchandani had no time for such “Nonsensical stuff.” As he called it. “Oh, yes, Mr. Mirchandani, our team of doctors here suspects a case of traveler’s malaria. I’m afraid your son has been misdiagnosed.” “That, that…that’s not possible; a rich man’s son cannot have malaria.” Himesh Mirchandani’s voice had sunk. “That’s a myth, there are certain misconceptions.” Dr. Ghandhy was extremely polite; there was profound humility in his voice. “Can Dr. Weisz investigate?” “I’m afraid he cannot. Our Indian doctors are better-equipped to handle tropical medicine. And besides, we have to start him on intravenous therapy immediately.” Dr. Ghandhy was right. Aman’s ordeal started four days afterwards. His fever was not subsiding. He had lost his appetite. He had chills and a persistent headache. And there was diarrhea. Aman occasionally used insect repellants. But it seems he had been bitten by a mosquito. He had most likely been bitten by one during his recent visit to Shantiniketan. Aman had often ventured out of his five-star hotel room and taken long walks outside despite being cautioned by the hotel authorities.
  • 30. Doctors had previously misdiagnosed him and said that he would remain confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Dr. Ghandhy, a Professor of Medicine, a specialist in Tropical Medicine, had research interests in leprosy, travelers’ research done in India, Diarrhea, parasites and health. A Visiting Professor at John Hopkins Medical Center, Dr. Ghandhy carefully assessed Aman’s condition in the Emergency Room where the boy was confined to his bed. It was difficult ascertaining the cause. And the effect. Was it malaria? Besides, he had been misdiagnosed. He had been put on an intravenous drip to relieve his dehydration. There was also fatigue like symptoms that doctors were unable to contend with. Then why crippling him permanently for life? Why had doctors declared that his liver and kidneys were in shape? Why the MRI? During the next few days, Aman became weaker and weaker… At the nursing home, he weakened further. His fever was fluctuating; his BP was alarmingly low, and both his pulse and his breathing rates were abnormally high. The laboratory tests suggested that his liver and kidneys were also not functioning well. Himesh Mirchandani had flown in a doctor from the U.S….who knew practically nothing. Because malaria was eliminated from the U.S. in the late 1940s, it was unthinkable for Dr. Weisz that an American traveler could develop the disease. In the developing world, however, most travelers would see a physician, or stay in bed or be rendered incapacitated in their work, or hospitalized during or after the trip or in the final instance, air-evacuated. One would die… Problems could include traveler’s diarrhea, malaria, respiratory tract infections, Hepatitis A, animal bites risk for rabies, Hepatitis B, Typhoid and HIV mostly transmitted through casual sex... “They hurt” as the needle pricked his skin. “Mama, these repeated injections for blood tests hurt” Aman was almost on the verge of tears. “I understand. But learn to endure, my child. What is life without pain? Birth itself is so painful. Besides, you are grown up… and you have to go a longgggg… way!” The mother tried to relieve the child’s suffering. Luckily for Aman, his parents had shifted him to a reputed private clinic in the city whose (Indian) doctors were to immediately put malaria high on their list of potential diagnosis. They were suspecting that sometime during his travel to the countryside, Aman may have been bitten by a mosquito carrying malaria parasite. The clinic pathologists promptly took blood samples and did a blood smear test. An enlarged liver and spleen was apparent during the physical examination.
  • 31. Once diagnosed with malaria, his case was treated as a medical emergency. They gave him Quinine through a constant intravenous drip for rapid delivery, and antibiotics. Aman also received multiple transfusions of blood cells and platelets to correct the damage done to his blood by the malaria parasites. For several days his body struggled against malaria. Aman used to wake up in the middle of the night shivering and sweating profusely and complaining of nausea, muscle aches, fatigue and general malaise. His skin had turned frighteningly yellow and he was clearly anemic. He would complain of severe cramps. They had given him a bed pan. Finally after ten days in the ICU, he started getting better, eventually regaining better health. By now, he had recovered a little strength in his joints (following an initial wrong diagnosis) and was put on a strict diet regimen and complete rest. He was discharged after a lengthy sojourn in the nursing home. Everything was now back to normal. Dr. Ghandhy assured the boy that there was nothing to fear, but that he should rest, take an appropriate diet. As for the weakness in his joints, Aman was advised complete rest to recover his full strength. He was told he needed to gain back the weight he had lost while he was sick.
  • 32. CHAPTER 12 THOUGHTS OF ORDINARY PEOPLE As the car stopped at the traffic light, the kid knocked at the car windowpane. “Mama, what compels them to beg even in the extreme weather conditions?” “O, this is just another group of harassed victims.” Himesh Mirchandani was cold but thoughtful. “Or worse, the ugly face of civilization, of a bonded life.” “Civilization…ugh?” Aman could now recall his law school buddy Nathan’s words: “I think it’s a crying shame when a person can’t even walk down the street without being accosted by some urchin that feels compelled to beg you for your spare change. Every one of them has the same story, about being disabled or whatever. But most of them are just lazy bums. Recently, I was in Toronto, Ontario, where this problem is worse than I’ve ever seen in any US city. You would find a beggar on literally every corner. Only the other night, while on my way back home, some homeless reprobate crept up on me and scared the hell outta’ me. I yelled at this miscreant about not scaring folks in the dark, begging and not doing some constructive work. The next thing I knew I had some progressive Canadian standing next to me asking me why I was harassing the homeless kid! Seriously! Suddenly, there would be a flurry of ‘Can-adians’ each firing a missile at me with ‘You arrogant Americans have so much money; why not re-distribute wealth…’ all that blather. I asked the bum how much money he needed to keep warm, to which he said ‘Keep warm, I just wanna go buy a pack of cigarettes!” “But we just turn our backs on them by saying what can we do? Child begging is the bane of modern India.” There was clearly an element of empathy in Reshma Mirchandani’s voice. She actually felt for India. “They often expect compassion in the midst of a tragic life, poverty and pain. This life is often preferable to a life in a brothel or the drudgery of field work or work inside factories. Helpless as they are, their lives are often more tragic than most of us of the elite could ever imagine…They have no choice. Irrespective of fever or any other disease, these innocent flowers often have no option but to dance to the tunes of their ruthless employers. Sometimes, in order to have charity, you have to have the people who are to be benefited by charity. I see no organized system of charity.” Himesh Mirchandani looked at his wife. He knew he had never known her.
  • 33. CHAPTER 13 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY The year 2001, with late 2001 being a difficult one for the Mirchandanis, the year of the snake in the Chinese Zodiac, had been an eventful year. Noah, a gaur, was born, the first individual of an endangered species to be cloned. An earthquake in El Salvador had killed at least 800 and left thousands homeless. Impeachment proceedings against Philippine President Joseph Estrada, accused of committing plunder, had ended prematurely and triggered the second EDSA People Power Revolution or People Power II. On January 20, George W. Bush had succeeded Bill Clinton as the President of the United States. UN war crimes prosecutor Del Ponte had demanded that Serbia hand over Slobodan Milosevic. The Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident had occurred. In February, Iraq faced a disarmament crisis as British and American forces carried out bombing raids, attempting to disable Iraq’s air defense network. On the same day, the US and the UK had bombed a Baghdad suburb, killing three. Former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia President, Slobodan Milosevic had surrendered to Police Special Forces, to be tried on charges of war crimes. On April 7, Timothy Thomas, a 19-year old Afro-American had been shot by a police officer in Cincinnati, sparking riots in downtown Cincinnati from April 10 to April 12. And in Terre Haute, Indiana, Timothy McVeigh had been executed for the Oklahoma City Bombings. An American missile had hit a soccer field in Northern Iraq (Tel Afr County) killing 23 and wounding 11. And on September 11, the world stared in terror as 3000 were decimated in an attack by militants on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in rural Shanksville, Pennsylvania respectively. America had subsequently declared a ‘War on Terror’. On September 18, the 2001 anthrax attacks commenced. Federal officials announced the first anthrax attack in the US in October. An Office of Homeland Security had been created in the United States. The US had invaded Afghanistan (with other nations participating) in Operation Enduring Freedom. In December, the Parliament of India had been attacked killing 14. On the 22 nd Hamid Karzai had been sworn in as the head of the interim government in Afghanistan. Kofi Annan and the United Nations were awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. Meanwhile, the Second Congo War continued into the early 21 st century. A 1999 ceasefire quickly broke down and a UN peacekeeping mission, MONUC, failed to control the fighting.
  • 34. Aman sifted through the year’s reports on his laptop. “Al-Qaeda terrorists hijack four commercial airlines and crash three of them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in the United States killing nearly 3,000 people. The US has declared a War on Terror. ” (Dated September 11, 2001) Militants, terrorists, blah, blah, blah… Who were (or are) the actual terrorists? The US and NATO had “invaded” Afghanistan. Troops were remaining… “So the lives of Westerners are important. (And so they are). Are the lives of innocent African and Asian citizens any less important? Innocent little children in the developing world die daily of preventable causes. Then why this big uproar over September 11?” Aman was thinking deeply as he rested in his armchair. He made a few notes.
  • 35. CHAPTER 14 AMY, MY BEST FRIEND March 2002 “Why don’t I feel like an American?” I was all alone in my room. “Like David, like Michael, and Virginia, even Astad and Chang, like my friends, the way they feel…too, and Amy.” Amy was someone he truly respected. “Mama, Mom, how’s Amy, I mean?” His father abruptly left the room. “Is something the matter, I mean wrong?” I asked mother. “Well, my child, your father has advised me not to tell you.” “Not to tell me WHATTT?” “These are troubled times, my son; your friend Astad was arrested and forcibly detained along with several others in a police raid on seven counts of conspiracy. Letsss…go back to the US, son, I mean you should come back home with us. You’ve been unwell.” “Amy, I want to know about Amy. I’m sorry about Astad, but Amy is my best friend.” I was getting a bit worried. “Son, Amy had come to India to study and research rural development, during the same time that you arrived in India. During fieldwork on one of her tours, she had enquired about the peasant uprising from her supervisor, who happened to be a leading Sociologist. ‘It’s not an interesting subject,’ she was told. Amy had clearly been puzzled by her superior’s answer. ‘No, not at all, you Americans are very inquisitive. And yes, young lady, I…advise you to stay away from all this. You don’t want to enquire about that. It’s not a point with any research potential. Maybe we should continue with rural development, because that’s what you came here for in the first place.” Reshma Mirchandani handed over a few torn leaflets to her son. From what he could see, Aman was flabbergasted. It read “injustice perpetrated on American scholar”. The Indian Mirror. (The date was not clearly visible). “A young American scholar visiting India to study rural development was found brutally murdered…” He did not want to read any further. (He remembered her kind words: “Healing is possible as in survivors of violence in areas of conflict. Change towards justice can occur. Values of the heart are as central as those of the mind…”)
  • 36. Aman suddenly felt low. After crying like no man of his age would ever cry, he begged his mother for a Prozac. “Mamaaaaaaa…it hurts.” Doctors (Psychiatrists) at the Pinewood Private Clinic in Kolkata (West Bengal, India) had put him on electro-convulsive therapy. Reshma and Himesh Mirchandani watched helplessly as their precious child was brought out of the emergency room. “I hate it, all this traditional Western Medicine. They only address the symptoms without addressing the root causes of the problem. Look… now they have prescribed sedatives for him.” There was an element of anger in Reshma Mirchandani’s voice. “My child...” Aman looked partially sedated. “Mr. Mirchandani, your son is yet to recover from shock. I have prescribed some anti- depressants and a couple of sedatives. He should be…” Dr. Banerjee could not complete his sentence. “We think he’s disturbed psychologically.” The doctors were unanimous. “My son is definitely not insane, are you saying that? Look at his writings.” Reshma Mirchandani had to be helped out of the room. Her last words as she left the room were, “O, my child, my child …”
  • 37. CHAPTER 15 IF WISHES COULD COME TRUE “The world was not very different in those days…you know, my child.” It was one of those sessions between Aman Mirchandani and his mother. “Ahmad Shah Abdali never invaded Bihar… in fact he did not even invade Awadh, a richer province which sits between Delhi and Bihar. In 1757 he invaded Punjab and captured Delhi in January, defeated the Maratha general Antaji Mankeshwar in February, defeated the Jats in Mathura in March ransacking that city, fought the Naga Sanyyasis in Gokul, while his troops burnt, slaughtered, and raped all over that region south of Delhi. But all this bloodletting created a cholera epidemic, my child… which began killing hundreds of his soldiers on a daily basis. So in April 1757 Abdali hastily withdrew from India.” So, Slobodan Milosevic was NOT the only one, I thought…It had been carried down the ages by people as ruthless as Klaus Barbie and Adolf Eichmann…and the Khmer Rouge’s Cambodia…When the Khmer Rouge ruled the country in the 1970’s, more than a million people died of Starvation, Disease, Torture, and Execution…It has been reported that Cambodians have still not recovered from the horrors of the slaughter that were perpetrated on them. But the story did not end with Cambodia… AMAN LOOKED AROUND FOR THE PILL… HE WISHED GOD WOULD DO A MIRACLE IN THE LIVES OF MEN. HE WISHED GOD WOULD DO A MIRACLE IN HIS OWN LIFE…
  • 38. CHAPTER 16 (ELSA & AMAN) BORN FREE “We must go back home, son.” Himesh and Reshma Mirchandani were unanimous. “Go back home, so soon…but I am only at the beginning of my research.” “Your life is more important than your research. Besides, the medical reports confirm that…” Dr. Richard Weisz was abruptly interrupted as Ann Hancock, the Consulate’s Press Secretary called up to say that the Consulate General had received an intimidation which said that all American citizens must leave the country within 72 hours. “Now we have absolutely NO choice but to pack our bags.” Aman was silent. “EVERY TIME I SAY ‘RIGHT’ (INSTEAD OF WRONG) TO A HUMAN BEING, I CONFER UPON HIM AN INALIENABLE RIGHT, ACTUALLY, ENABLE HIM ASSERT SOMETHING THAT ALREADY EXISTS FOR HIM! I ‘FREE’ HIM TO CHOOSE FOR HIMSELF, HIS CHOICE. ENDORSEMENT OF THE OTHER PERSON’S “RIGHT TO MAKE HIS CHOICE” IS, I BELIEVE, THE BEST THING ONE COULD EVER DO FOR ONE’S FELLOW HUMAN BEINGS…IT WOULD SAVE MANKIND ALL THAT TROUBLE. AND, I’M TAKING YOUR MINDS BACK (OR, RATHER FORWARD!) TO THE YEAR 1948.” Aman Mirchandani clearly resided in his subconscious. “BORN FREE, THAT’S WHAT THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS, 1948 IS ALL ABOUT… You know Mama; on December 10, 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights..." “Article 1. proclaimed” Aman continued “All human beings are born free (“THE SPIRIT OF FREEDOM”) and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood…. Aman Mirchandani sometimes wished he could say more. He also wished he could stay back…risking his life in the process.
  • 39. CHAPTER 17 THE MIRACLE: AMAN WANTED TO BREAK FREE 72 Hours in hand to leave the country 14 March 2002 “Not all the underprivileged of this world, the deprived, the hungry, live in Third World countries. A great many of them reside in American or European high-rise apartment buildings or suburban bungalows, bombarded by lethal doses of television programming, sensate advertising and a constant belief that sex and money insure happiness. I call this intellectual junk food, something that could lead either to people being satiated or else undernourished and hungry… By coming to India, I have come to the right place.” Aman was at this time writing a diary as he stayed up throughout the night. He was not getting sleep. And he was tired of those annoying sedatives. “A tired city dweller will imagine that a transition to the countryside will give him rest; off course it will not, it will only give him rural tiredness…and traveler’s Malaria.” Aman could now recall the intravenous drips, those blood tests, and the pain and the ordeal he had gone through. “But don’t innocent country-dwellers turn to the city for the self-fulfillment which up to that point of time has evaded them? Don’t they deserve their basic amenities, food, education, health, and water and sanitation for their children?” Aman could recall the faces of those hungry innocents in the countryside, Raja’s helplessness (for his daughter’s school fees), the love and respect Raja and Parvati had given him when he was facing loneliness as he first arrived, and now Amy. Something deep inside told him, “Aman, you must not cry for you are now a man. Men of age don’t weep. I’ll…” I looked around for the voice. There was none. Only a gut feeling. (I could recall a similar gut feeling as I had read about Amy) “Since coming to India, it has often surprised me how people behave as though they would almost give their right arm to be able to live in the city. O, those worn out and grumpy rides, those prolonged traffic jams coming back home… Thus people rush out from where they are; in the hope that out there or somewhere else, they feel what they lack may be gratified.” AMAN REMEMBERED JOHN LENNON’S “IMAGINE”… “IMAGINE…ALL THE PEOPLE, LIVING LIFE IN PEACE…”
  • 40. “A-m-a-n, A-m-a-n.” It was the same voice. There was a brilliant flash of light in the room. His parents were sleeping in the other room. “It could be a dream.” Aman had read Freud’s “Interpretation of Dreams” and knew dreams could be significant in one’s life. “A-m-a-n.” This was strange. Sigmund Freud was powerful, but was there an ideology beyond this? Some dream ideology? “Amy, is that you?” Perhaps the doctors at Pinewood had been right. “When in doubt, look if at all into your conscience.” The same voice. The same pitch. The same innocence. “Here, take this magic potion. It will protect you against all evil.” Aman had heard (from his mother) the words of Stephen Jay Gould, writing in The New York Times following 9/11: “Good and kind people outnumber all others by thousands to one. The tragedy of human history lies in the enormous potential for destruction in rare acts of evil, not in the high frequency of evil people. Complex systems can only be built step by step, whereas destruction requires but an instant. Thus, in what I like to call the Great Asymmetry, every spectacular incident of evil will be balanced by 10,000 acts of kindness, too often unnoted and invisible as the ‘ordinary’ efforts of a vast majority.” So Amy had given up her life for a cause. No matter how hard I tried, she would never come back. My friend would never come back. As Aman broke down, he could feel there was something wrong. Or perhaps miraculously right. He had suddenly developed…
  • 41. CHAPTER 18 THE INVISIBLE MAN (I’M A SCATMAN) “Saab, Parvati and I are so glad you have decided to stay back. Saab, Saab!” Aman Mirchandani had suddenly disappeared into thin air. “Is Mr. Mirchandani around?” The Consul General walked into the room. “His parents went back by the morning flight. Their son wassss…at the airport, he did see off his anxious parents.” “The boy has put his own life at risk…I wish I could talk to him. Where is he?” “And this is Mr. Krishnan, Mr. Mirchandani’s potential research supervisor in India. Ann, would you please take care of the rest? Thanks indeed!” “Mr. Mirchandani…” Raja and Parvati looked at each other. Over the past few hours, strange things were happening. They were however tight-lipped. “…FORGET IT, WHO CARES, THIS IS, AFTER ALL, ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE STORIES…UNHEARD…UNLISTENED…UNAPPRE -CIATED... MAYBE ITS ALL ABOUT A ‘MAVERICK’, A COMPLETE ‘NON-CONFORMIST’, UNFETTERED, UNLEASHED…SORRY! UNAPPRECIATED…” At the Medical Center, Dr. Wendell carefully sifted through Aman’s recent writings that had come along with his Report. “Dr. Weisz, you have reported that Aman’s parents believe there is something amiss. According to the report, Aman was not showing signs of normal behavior when he came to see off his parents at the airport.” It was a clear, slightly foggy day back home in Los Angeles. “I’m afraid we have to thoroughly investigate the matter. This is Detective Fox and I am Sergeant John Mill and this is Ms Kelly Lowe and she is a Forensic expert from the FBI.” “I think the three of you need to travel to India to unravel this case.” It was Dr. Weisz. “I shall suggest to Mr. Mirchandani if he could speak to the appropriate authorities concerned for your travel to India including taking the help of Indian authorities to unravel the mystery of this case.” Those present in the room were unanimous. There was plenty of sense in what Dr. Weisz had said. What Mr. Mirchandani had done, whom he had spoken to was not known to any one, until the three of them (Detective Fox, Sergeant John Mill and Ms Kelly Lowe) were to get information from their respective headquarters in the days to come to plan
  • 42. To travel to India as soon as possible…
  • 43. CHAPTER 19 THE INVINCIBLE MAN (E.T. OR HUMAN?) Early April There was a huge crowd outside the gates. “My son deserves justice. He has committed no offence.” Reshma Mirchandani was speaking to the press. “Justice can compel innocent parents to come to court, but can justice bridge the divide across nations, peoples and cultures?” The court was adjourned for a day. “Photograph of a poor undernourished boy and a dog inhumanly cramped inside a dustbin, each one trying to find food for itself gets the best photography award in a photographic competition.” Read the caption in the early morning newspaper. Aman walked past the security cordon, unfettered, uncordoned… There was something else on his mind… At least 20,000 persons, mostly the old and children, were in urgent need of help in Lalitpur block of Nargarh district, Orissa; even as the death toll had risen to 25 with two more persons succumbing to mango kernel paste in Bhiku….Government had denied starvation deaths. “We have to fill our stomach with something or other to survive. Does the government give us proper food? Does anybody think of feeding us? There is nobody for us.” The innocent villager’s poignant tale moved Aman to the extent that he felt like intervening, but he had promised Amy…to remain… “From A Distance…God is watching us” He had grown up listening to this song. It was probably Bette Midler… From a distance, Aman Mirchandani is watching you…he felt like openly broadcasting his message in the village, but… Meanwhile, police started to lathicharge villagers to control mob violence thronging Government godowns to collect rice & wheat, which was rotting for years without a proper distribution system and was in the process of being transported to a trader elsewhere. In the final instance, they opened fire on the mob. Despite the random and erratic firing, there was no bloodshed. Not a single life was lost in the indiscriminate firing on innocent villagers. The Minister’s son who had come to watch the “proceedings” went back home feeling like a loser.
  • 44. “I can foresee a war coming, there will be innocent loss of lives and in the end we will achieve nothing. The war will emanate from the Western nations and will be the end- result of man’s greed and miscalculation. I must tell Raja.” I could sense that I had developed the power to foresee and forecast the future. “Raja, Raja…” There was a soft whisper as Raja woke up hurriedly. “It’s me, Saab.” “Saab, Saab, where have you been, the police are on the lookout for you? Everyone, even the ones you loved, are out to get you. They have sounded a Red Alert. And placed a ransom on your head.” Raja was still loyal to his Master. “I do hear…but I have…done nothing wrong. I am only trying to protect innocent civilians…You see…” I found myself narrating the truth to Raja. There was a strange bond between servant and master. “But Saab, this is impossible, how can a man become “Superman” overnight? I mean we are no longer living in the era of …” Raja could not complete his sentence. “Mr. Mirchandani, you are surrounded. Do not try to escape.” It was the local police. There was a familiar voice, which Aman could place. He looked around for the magic potion. Alas, he had left it back in his room. And there was no way out of the servant’s quarters. Aman Mirchandani surrendered with the words “I can foresee a war coming, there will be innocent loss of lives and in the end we will achieve nothing. The war will emanate from the Western nations and will be the end-result of man’s greed and miscalculation.” This was a bit of an overdose for the local cops. They had often grown up in village schools, and were not used to such high-infidelity vocabulary. “Is that something you say, Mr. Mirchandani?” Sergeant Mill had just arrived in an air- conditioned vehicle. Ms Lowe was with him. But the Indian police would not let them talk to the boy. “I said…” Aman was handcuffed and led away by the police.
  • 45. CHAPTER 20 2004 (A TSUNAMI IN THE MINDS OF MEN) “Order, Order.” “Please go on, Mrs. Mirchandani,” Justice Armstrong asked the court to maintain silence. Two years had passed since Aman Mirchandani was arrested. It was the year 2004. Aman Mirchandani was in a first-class (with all amenities and every comfort) prison in India and for the last two years both mother (back home in the state of California) and son (in India) were fighting a lone battle against the system. “Yes, the US of A, my Right-Honorable! A Nation, Pardon Me for Saying this, But with Policies & Designs on Every Other Nation on Earth- All this, all another story- That I might wish to reserve for later- FORGET IT! I was not born on the 4th of JULY- So, America…is certainly NOT worth my Attention now…” Justice Armstrong slapped a case of “Contempt of Court” on Mrs. Reshma Mirchandani. Wife of Mr. Himesh Mirchandani, NRI steel magnate. Mother of Aman Mirchandani, Stanford Law School graduate and a victim of circumstances. “IT’S ALL ABOUT THE WAY EACH CIVILIZATION CHOOSES TO LIVE” Reshma could recount the circumstances of Aman’s birth…as she wrote her diary. She had been confined to a women’s cell for 24 hours. She was now awaiting a final verdict. “A WORTHLESS EXISTENCE Vs A SIMPLE EXISTENCE (IS LIFE MERE EXISTENCE?)” “My child was not born for the ordinary…I understand from the evidence surrounding his mysterious disappearances, that someone had given him a magic potion that made him temporarily invincible until his arrest, but whatever he did was intended to protect the innocent. He never wronged anyone. I have full faith in my son. He is innocent.”
  • 46. “I have often wondered what living a “Worthless existence” means… What “Existence” at all means! Is life mere existence? Is worthiness an inherited trait, or is it acquired? What can modern civilization with its complex systems of war-mongering, annihilator instincts (the capacity to wipe out the human race) and obscene patterns of material consumption, sin and greed learn from the “powers of simple existence”? Ancient Indian Mythology tells us about our many virtuous sages and their wonderful world. These sages were like children. Almost everything fascinated them: the stars in the night sky, the tall mountains, the rivers and oceans, the birds in the sky, tiny insects, even tigers! These pious men lived close to nature. They worshipped truth, non-violence, self- discipline and simplicity. Foremost among the wise old men of India was the great Sage Patanjali. Patanjali, or more appropriately Rishi Patanjali was an extraordinary man, renowned for his learning and wisdom, author of three brilliant works, one on Sanskrit grammar, the second on Indian medicine Ayurveda, and the third and the most important, the “Yoga Sutras of Patanjali”. In Book II (Means of Attainment or Sadhana) of “The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali” he wrote: “…Existence is that which is capable of acts fulfilling a purpose of the Self. Non- existence is worthlessness (tucchata) as regards the purpose of the Self. That is so- described [as having neither existence nor non-existence] which is beyond the range of both existence and non-existence… The state when sattva and rajas and tamas are in equipoise is never of use in fulfilling a purpose of the Self. And so it is not existent. Neither does it have a worthless kind of existence like the sky-lotus. Therefore it is also not non-existent… For there is no utter annihilation of the existent, or if utterly annihilated it cannot be made to grow again. For because one cannot make the non- existent grow, the Great [Thinking-substance] and the other [entities] would really exist [in the unphenomenalized state] and therefore might function as acts fulfilling the purpose of the Self [and so the unphenomenalized state might be said to exist]…” RESHMA MIRCHANDANI WAS CLEARLY VERY WELL READ. “Is Life mere existence? Or, more? Life is Worthless existence, is it? Then, what is Worth? And what is Worthlessness? What is Existence? And what is Non-existence? This brings us to the fundamental question – what is Life? And what is Non life? What is “Prana”? And what is “Aprana”? ‘Aprana’ is simply put, lifelessness. But why does one always have to live only a worthless existence? A brave new world calls for more than mere existence, it calls for existence “with a purpose”…the ability to dream…for nations and peoples… and I often feel I have never dreamt ENOUGH… I have never really been happy…That’s the way I have chosen to live (perhaps!)” THIS WAS NOT JUST ONE WOMAN’S DREAM…RESHMA CONTINUED DREAMING THROUGH HER SON’S EYES THROUGH THE SUBCONSCIOUS, AS PRISON OFFICIALS BACK HOME IN INDIA (WHERE AMAN MIRCHANDANI WAS LODGED) CALLED FOR AN EMERGENCY BOARD MEETING.
  • 47. CHAPTER 21 THE GREAT ESCAPE Summer 2004 “Mr. Aman Mirchandani, is it true that you often used your magic potion to become invisible from the naked eye?” The Public Prosecutor was relentless in his pursuit to prove the boy guilty. “Is it also true that you were scheming and plotting with…let me see the name, yes, some Mr. Raja?” “Objection, Your Honor!” “None of these questions have any bearing on the case,” Arshad Patel, Aman’s Lawyer forcefully stated in defence of his client. “Besides, Raja was his personal chauffeur. My client had respect for everyone.” “Some of us think Aman Mirchandani is disturbed psychologically. He probably needs to be in a…” Before he could complete the sentence, Dr. Banerjee had Aman’s Counsel Arshad Patel shouting at him to keep silent. Outside the courtroom, there was an irate mob led by Raja, Parvati and every other person Aman had helped on a personal basis following his arrival in India. There were student groups, civil liberty groups, human rights groups and members of the PUFET, The “People’s Union for Free Expression of Thought” and the many others that supported Aman’s cause. The police started to lathicharge the demonstrators…Indeed over a hundred were seriously injured. In the light of the circumstances, the court was adjourned for a week. Raja and his friends Kaushal and Himmat had been arrested along with six others on charges of sedition. Raja was further indicted on grounds of perjury. It was two in the morning. The cell guards were fast asleep. Raja, Kaushal and Himmat managed to escape. They were now looking around for their Saab. Aman Mirchandani had been lodged in a “special” cell meant for foreigners. He had all the amenities from air-conditioning to channel music to hot water. So they were practicing “segregation” inside prisons as well, he thought. “Saab, Saab.” Aman could hear a familiar voice. “Saab, here hold on to this.” Raja, Kaushal, Himmat and Aman soon boarded one of the general bogies of the Doon Express. They had their faces covered and were in disguise as well so that no one could recognize them.
  • 48. Aman Mirchandani was now the “reluctant Fugitive”. The rest is all history…
  • 49. CHAPTER 22 CHEVROLET AND CELEBS – A WORLD APART Aman Mirchandani was born in Los Angeles, California. He was the son of Himesh Mirchandani, NRI steel magnate who spent his own childhood in a village on the outskirts of Kapurthala, Punjab, and had been Chairman and CEO of Mirchandani Steel and a close friend of Sir David Holmes, and on the list of California’s ‘Who’s Who’. The Mirchandanis’ personal wealth was to the tune of two billion dollars. The Mirchandani family initially lived in Punjab, in a house built by Aman’s grandfather. They were from humble roots, from which Himesh Mirchandani had a meteoric rise, first starting a steel mill and eventually moving to Delhi, where after completion of his brother Simesh’s Graduation in Business and Accounting, the two brothers decided to jointly take the plunge. After buying a run-down plant in Malaysia, the family moved over to America where Himesh Mirchandani married Reshma whose parents had also come down from India. Both families were unaware that Reshma and Himesh had already known each other while they were both in India. The couple settled down in Los Angeles. Simesh Mirchandani was unfortunately killed in a car accident. At this point of time, Himesh Mirchandani went to Mexico, and bought the country’s second largest steel producer, Sicartsa for $168 million. This was followed by more acquisitions in Canada and the US. Many of his workers had not been paid for five months, and their suffering was something Reshma Mirchandani saw for the first time. There were a lot of workers’ abuses reported to her by the factory workers but Himesh decided to keep her out of all this. One of these workers, an illegal immigrant from Kapurthala, Punjab, who incidentally had personal rivalries dating back to the early days of Himesh Mirchandani’s meteoric rise to wealth and power vowed to take revenge. He called himself Roshan Singh Deo. Later, two new companies, Mirchandani Associates and Mirchandani Shipping were formed to provide technical and commercial services to the Group and to meet its growing shipping needs. The group went on to make more acquisitions. Finally, Mirchandani Steel was formed through the merger of Mirchandani Associates and Mirchandani & Sons Inc. with its headquarters in Los Angeles. Aman Mirchandani hadn’t arrived in the world then.
  • 50. “What happened next, Mama?” Reshma could recount her son as a curious child as they served her tea inside her cell. “O, we settled in America.” As a mother, Reshma often thought how Aman’s life had been enormously affected by his concepts, and still was. She knew that in the process he would find his answers. “Hiouen-Tsang and those who preceded and followed him found a land of marvels. Many Chinese pilgrims went to India to search out traces of Lord Buddha, and this they did, bringing back to China information on the Indian man-god who later became one of the deities of China.” India had always played in Aman’s imagination the kind of role planets play in present- day Science-fiction, distant, hardly attainable, and replete with wonders. “When you grow up, you will be a scholar and you would study exotic customs, languages, peoples, and countries and cultures, sometimes their lives, and liberty, equality, fraternity, freedom, justice, peace and security.” Reshma (as well as his grandmother) would often tell Aman. “India is steeped in ignorance, poverty and misery and backwardness. As the wife of a businessman, all I can do is give to charitable causes. I can only play the humanitarian figure.” Despite her overt respectability, Reshma Mirchandani was clearly an independent thinker on social issues. “But you…” Reshma had told Aman “will travel to India one day…to the ‘Land of Your Dreams’…to make a difference.” Reshma could recount her family’s circumstances. From a non-descript village of Punjab to their $123 million mansion in Los Angeles, hubby Himesh Mirchandani’s journey had been one resembling the kind of stuff dreams are made of in Bollywood whose stars had danced in the family private functions to the tune of his money power. She could also recount that she herself had been born in a Punjab village where no electricity reached till the 1970’s with her family moving to the metropolis in search of greener pastures. It was there that she had met hubby Himesh. They were both studying Commerce at the prestigious “Delhi School of Commerce”. Himesh would often skip classes to work in the evenings. After finishing his Bachelor of Commerce degree with first class, he joined a consultancy in the early seventies, but soon realized that there were limited opportunities for him in India and decided to move to Malaysia in 1976. With the family capital, he founded a steel plant, and made the company a success. Therein began a saga of triumphs for the astute businessman. Reshma could recount that hubby Himesh Mirchandani’s success had been largely acquired buying up loss-making state owned mills and quickly turning them around. He had one of his most notable successes in 1984, when he had turned around a loss- making state-founded steel firm in Trinidad & Tobago which was losing $2 million a day. She could also recount the horrific abuse and torture many of the workers had gone through. And she was glad her son was away from all this
  • 51. “Filth” as she categorized it. Reshma was having reminiscences of the past. She put her past aside, “wiped off those tears” and asked for the Lady Officer-on-duty.
  • 52. CHAPTER 23 OLD MAN BY THE SEAT 2 June, 2004 I could sense there was something amiss. In the opposite berth. I had just woken up. “Kamli”, a hoarse but cracked voice called out. It was a girl of twelve. She tried to protest (silently), but who would hear her voice! This was his sixth Commandment; she had silently and religiously followed his first five. She was just waiting for him to… “Come to me, Kamli,” “come and sit on my lap,” the same hoarse voice called out. “You look so beautiful, I feel like…” Period. I ran out of the compartment for a while. It was the same story when I came back. The same voice, the same tone, the same hoarseness. The same lack of feelings. It was only another girl married off to a much older man in a nation called…India. Then as he tried to force the girl, my blood began to boil. I couldn’t stop myself. I WAS NO LONGER THE USUAL AMAN. I WAS NOW A-MAN. “Rape”. “No!” “I wouldn’t be hanged for killing a marital-rapist.” “MURDER THE OLD MAN!” The girl was looking at me. Here was an educated man, (out of Stanford, she wouldn’t know that) whose sense of justice was so strong that in order to bring justice, his sense of injustice had prevailed. I didn’t know what to do with her or with the bloodied knife. I threw away the knife (that had been cleverly wrapped up in a newspaper during the murder) and washed my hands. The old man’s body was heavy. We looked around. The only other passenger in our bogey was inside the washroom. Using the full force of our bodies, Raja, Kaushal, Himmat and I pushed the body out of the moving train. And then went back to our seats. Fortunately for us, the Doon Express came to a halt within an hour. The Board read DHANBAD. It was extremely hot outside. With Kamli with us, we boarded the first train to New Delhi. We had our faces covered (as it is, it was hot) and put on normal behavior. Raja, Kaushal, Himmat, Kamli and I were now the FIVE FUGITIVES…
  • 53. CHAPTER 24 THE FUGITIVES Summer 2004 “Nayee Dilli”. “Jahaan Log Apni Kismet Aazmane Aate Hain.” (New Delhi. Where people come to experience their destinies) and so goes the popular saying. New Delhi. The Capital of independent India. Polished and sophisticated from the exterior. (Bland and shallow from the interior). From the thoroughfare of Sansad Marg to the ‘gulis’ (by lanes) of Chandni Chowk. Delhi represents the ultimate dream of every Indian. They come here for jobs (from non-profits to insurance to BPOs/KPOs), they come here for fashion and entertainment, they come here for furthering their political objectives, they come here for practically everything! In this quest for power, there remains behind one India, the ‘silent India’, groups or communities of people whose interests have been relegated to the by lanes by a larger national interest. Consider this: India has the largest number of children of school-going age out of school. There are millions waiting to learn to read and write, to see the light in their lives. There are villages without roads, without electricity. There are schools that haven’t seen what a desktop looks like. These are our ‘Unwanted Indians’… Consider also the practice of selective sex abortion. The practice of aborting ‘unwanted girls’ is widespread in India. Manual scavenging is common in India. As the New India Rises, so do slums of laborers. Lack of dignity for manual labor and very low pay has always been a truth in India. It is part of the caste system, part of our history. And there is widespread trafficking in women and children. “Kamli, let’s play Kith-kith, Kamli, Kamli.” The Prime Minister of India would not have received such attention. His motorcade would have come to a halt in the neighborhood in which we had taken shelter. These were the blocks and pockets of Dilshad Garden. “Kamli, get up, lazy arse.” She slept like a hog. While Raja and I just about managed the household. I could now see outside the window. Radha and her other friends were playing Kith-kith. But none of them were happy. I could see the pain in their eyes. They were all married to much older men, but that was not the only ordeal. Day after day, night after night each one of them (I could guess) went through an ordeal…Their husbands were much older men, each with more than one wife. For Kamli’s friends, sex was a wifely duty. That they never enjoyed. It was harsh, feeling less and imposed. What did Sulochana Chachi tell all the girls in the neighborhood? (And Kamli would often come back home and tell me)