Worrying Wounds

 A few years ago, I read a story by Eli Wiesel. A truly touching tale it was. I translated it later. The translation was published,  and most all readers loved it. 

Why was it so universally appealing? It was an introspective narrative told retrospectively. It talked of a young Jewish boy who gets a gold wristwatch as a gift for his  'mitzwah'  ceremony. For a boy just in to his very early teenage, it is indeed absolutely precious.

That very evening, like all the other Jews in the vicinity, his family, too, is rounded up to be taken to the concentration camp. Just before marching off to an extremely uncertain future, everybody in the ghetto is busy burying his/her most precious possession. Why, even the kid sis of the narrator buries her favourite doll. The child narrator tries to bury deep the valued watch. 

After the harrowing experiences in the concentration camp, the narrator, now a young man, returns to his hometown. Everybody else in his small, little family is dead. Suddenly, he is at the gulley where he once lived. His heart starts beating fast as he wants to find out if the watch is still there.

He is perfectly aware that the non-Jewish population of the town raided the ghetto for the valuables even before the ill fated train taking the victims to the concentration camp left the platform.

Yet hope beats eternal in the human heart. Furtively looking around, he starts digg fting. And, voila, the wristwatch is there, the day/date/time frozen in to an eternity.  Does he take the fancy wristwatch?

The end is truly touching. The tale stays with  us forever. Why? In my opinion, that is because it opens up, pries open wounds which never healed.

Each of us has such shattering wounds, for example, harassment due to jealousy, envy, sadism, or due to the sheer wonky idea of fun of the perpetrator. One does not even need to worry the wound. Scratched a little, the pain flows unstoppably.  Much worse is the sense of helplessness, especially because everybody else chose to look on despite knowing the wickedness. You can neither forgive nor forget the whole of the tragic memory even when you bravely carry on with life.

Remembered all this because read about, heard interviews about the Kashmir Pandit exodus and genocide. Hope to see the movie that opens up a chapter that just cannot be justified any which way.

Pratima@numbing the pain for a while makes it bitter when you feel it later, says J.K. Rowling