“Charsi kadhi na marsi!
Agar marsi, tho chaalis aadmi
Aagey karsi!
Charsi no sinner
Charsi big winner”
From The Proverbs of
Herbs by Bachchoo
It’s the time of year when the unselfconscious bores of the world post blogs, outlining the activities and achievements of themselves and their families, sending them to unsuspecting victims in their email address lists. “Tina came second in a geography competition on global warming… George was arrested by police in Majorca for parking in a no-parking zo-ne…” Can the tiresome exercise of a year’s roundup be made a little more readable? Gentle reader, allow me to try: After the massacre of 11 cartoonists and journalists at the offices of Charlie Hebdo in January, the world came out in solidarity with “Je Suis Charlie” slogan on T-shirts. No one wore the slogan “Je Suis Hebdo” probably because Hebdo is the French way of saying Abdul.
In February, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria posted a video on the Internet of the beheading of 21 Coptic Chris-tians in Libya. The debate about what to call this death cult was even taken up in the British Parliament where Prime Minister David Cameron announced his preference for calling them “Daesh” and not the ISIS as they were neither Islamic nor a state. The BBC begged to differ, saying that they would call it the IS and add “so-called” for accuracy. Less importantly, in March a London restaurant called Dishoom opened a new branch and dedicated its décor to the theme of “Indians in ’60s London”. The furniture and layout are a tribute to the “Irani” cafes of Mumbai and Pune and the photographs on the walls are of Indians who lived in London at the time. Prominent among these is Dolly Tha-kore — Mumbai’s woman-about-town and I might immodestly say that there are a few photographs of my unrecognisable self.
In the early part of the year the exodus main-ly of Syrians, Afghans and Somalis ris-ked crossing the Mediterranean from Morocco, Libya and Turkey in unseaworthy boats. These refugees from the devastating wars in their countries came in their thousands to try and make a life in Europe. The boats, often no more than rubber dinghies cram-med with these refuge-seeking people, overtur-ned or sprung leaks, drowning literally hundreds of men, women and children. Europe deployed boats from its coast guards and navies to rescue some of them, but the effort was never enough. In May, the British elections brought Mr Cameron’s Conservative Party into power at Westminster. The Labour Party not only lost the election disastrously, it also lost 40 seats in Scotland, which elected 56 Scottish National Party MPs out of 59. This certainly indicates that Scotland will in the near future hold a referendum to secede from the UK.
In June and July, the German government declared that it expected 800,000 asylum seekers by the end of the year. These refugees in their thousands, crossing Turkey and trying to get to the European Union countries, mainly to Britain and Germany through Serbia and Croatia, caused Hungary to close its borders, build a barbed-wire and deploy a police and military force to stop them crossing Hungary. And so to the subcontinent in November — Mumbai mostly, where the talk was about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s trip in the opposite direction, his declaration in London that he came from the country of Buddha and Gandhi, implying that tolerance was an Indian birthright. Bihar voted decisively against the BJP and the spectre of intolerance of some of the BJP’s spokespersons may have contributed to the defeat.
Then on to Bangladesh for the Dhaka Literary Festival where the guests were heavily protected by squads of police and escorted to events with a police guard. Two tourists had been killed in the previous weeks, presumably by supporters of the death cult. While the festival debated things literary, the Bangladeshi courts turned down the appeal of two men accused of war crimes in 1971 in the cause of Pakistan’s Islamic unity, and they were hanged. So for me, gentle reader, 2015 was the year of the crack-up of the artificially created Islamic states and of the exodus of the desperate this caused.
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