There’s a song stuck in my head and for once I don’t want it out…

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“Yes, ‘n’ how many years can some people exist
Before they’re allowed to be free?”

Last evening went to the screening of Burma VJ – a very well-made, taut and engrossing documentary which focuses on the undercover reporters in Burma working under great personal threat to bring the images of brutality in their country to the world, the backdrop being last year’s protests that started with the monks, on behalf of the people, and soon became a popular uprising. Though sometimes a subject as strong as this eclipses the film-making, the director Anders Østergaard adds his powerful story-telling technique that resonates with the story to give us an end-product that is touching as well as thrilling. You feel the anticipation and anxieties of the reporters in a very real sense – I had goose-bumps! And you are also saddened at the inevitable end which is best summarised in the words of the narrator, Joshua, one of the reporters himself, (though he is talking about the ‘88 uprising), “So many people died for nothing”.

A highlight of the evening was a video conference with the director at the end of the screening. Amidst the inescapable inane questions from people out to prove their intellectual superiority, there were a few poignant moments. One was a Burmese man living in Singapore who got up to thank the director on behalf of his people. The moment attained greater significance upon personal reflection actually. Living in the comforts of Singapore, if I had to watch such brutality on familiar streets and avenues of my birthplace committed upon my own people, who were not as lucky as me to have escaped, I can very well imagine the sickness I would have felt at the bottom of my stomach. The other special moment was when the director, in answer to a question on how we could contribute, remarked that in a way we are already contributing by keeping the issue alive in the collective memory and conscience of the people of the world. Do not forget Burma and its people. Do not forget Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

(In a humorous aside, the MC last evening was something of a dud, and posed the most number of questions to the director and most of them of the pseudo-intellectual variety. During one of his questions, I forget which one, he started by saying “Living in a free country such as Denmark or Singapore…”. And the whole audience burst into spontaneous laughter! I have no idea why! Wink wink!)

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“Yes, ‘n’ how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?”

Bomb blasts in Jakarta – one of my favourite cities in the world, if I ignore the legendary traffic jams of course!

JW Marriott – Just next to the hotel and part of the same complex, are the residential apartments Sailendra, which was the address of my boss and her partner, two of my favourite people in Jakarta.

Ritz Carlton – One of my best friends in Jakarta, an amazingly talented pianist, whose website I maintain, used to be a regular performer in the lounge bar there and I do not even remember the number of times I have relaxed to her music sitting in spacious, comfortable couches, after a particularly difficult day at work.

The familiarity of these places which were attacked today probably stirs up the mind in this manner, a mind which is otherwise numb to violence by now. In a similar manner as when Bombay trains were bombed – trains which I have taken home almost every evening for five years – or people were gunned down like cattle at Victoria Terminus – a station that has witnessed many sad farewells and warm welcomes, including a few where I was a player.

But the recurring images in my mind are that of the friendly, helpful and always-smiling Indonesians working at these places – a few of them probably the sole bread-earners of their families. So will the suicide bombers, martyrs in the cause of Islam, reach heaven while thrusting these families, fellow Muslims, to hell on earth? Will some Muslim friend of mine answer me that? Please…

Bali, Bombay, Jakarta, London, Madrid, New Delhi, New York – How many deaths will it take?

Picture courtesy The Jakarta Globe

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(The song and the lyrics…)