My parents plane has just landed. I have not seen them in about a year and a half. Finally decided to risk getting them over.
They didn't tell me that dad wasn't doing too great. Was having physiotherapy daily and walking with the aid of a stick. Mom also had barely recovered from being bed ridden just before the lockdown was announced.
I hope the stay with me for a long time now chup chaap. Otherwise they always run off after a couple of weeks.
My babies were born after a great deal of problems during my pregnancies and a few miscarriages. Our closest friends were Sikhs who kept a piece of Nishaan Sahib under my pillow during my pregnancies and my daughters were wrapped in it when they were born. 🙏🏼
We took my second born home from the hospital after a very stressful couple of weeks of her birth via Gurudwara Bangala Sahib and dipped her in the holy pond for her first bath.
I'm an atheist but I have no objection to my friends who believe and have faith taking these mannats on my behalf and I respectfully bow my head in mandirs, gurudwaras, masjids and churches.
See the pictures, read the captions, think about the scale of the horror.
I've been to Dachau. But that camp was first razed and reconstructed so it seems a little sanitized.
On the other hand I have been to the killing fields of Cambodia and S-21
That's even more horrifying because they've not cleaned even many of the blood stains.
I was depressed.
As a teenager I read books about the holocaust obsessively. I had access to very good libraries. I couldn't get over the fact that such a thing could have happened to people who were my grandparents age. Then after my Cambodia visit, I read a lot of books about the Khymer Rouge.
I felt bad to see the police beat the farmers, I felt just as bad to see the farmers forcing the police to fall off the ramparts.
It's been a sad, sad day.
Because neither won.
Those who won are sitting at a safe distance and watching gleefully.