Gaza Strip, Tarun Bhaduri, Alexander and ......

The picture here is of four persons kissing their ground. These people are Palestinians, and this picture was taken just after Israelis evacuated their settlements from the Gaza strip.

Now, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been there for almost 60 years now; it has become one of the most volatile issues of the geopolitic.

My intention is, however, not to talk about that issue; I'm not even qualified to do that. But what I want to talk about is the thoughts and feelings this picture evoked in me.

Long ago, when I was a kid, I used to read quite a lot, but I could do that only in my mother tounge, my knowledge of other languages being fragmental at best. (This was after 2-3 years of schooling with English as the second language, where we could translate sentences into English, but could not read a book and understand it). During that phase, I read a book, which was translated from Bangla (Bengali) and was written by noted journalist and literary figure, Tarun Kumar Bhaduri. The title of the book was "Maru Prantar", which would, upon loose transliteration into English, be "The Desert Landscape".

This was a travelogue, in which he recorded his trip to the Middle-East; Mr. Bhaduri travelled to all of the Islamic countries, and also to Israel. To me, this book appeared informative and yet with a humane touch. But what impressed me most was a small incident he mentioned in the book.

According to his writing, when his friends and relatives came to know that he was traveling abroad, many of them came up with many demands and requests. Whereas his daughter made only one request: to bring a handful of dust from each city/country he visits, for her.He did it, and at places, he had problems with the customs. Perhpas the customs guys could never undestand a middle-aged man carrying a bundle of plastic bags filled with dust! (For those interested: yes, most probably that daughter, unless she has sisters, is Jaya Bhaduri, one of the finest actresses of Indian cinema).

In Persian, there is a word called sarzameen. I don't know the exact meaning of the word; my effort in that direction has remained futile. My friends, who know either Urdu or Persian tell me that sarzameen means land, country etc. But to me, this word means more than ground (zameen in Persian) alone. I would like to think that the ground beneath one's feet becomes Sarzameen the moment one kneels down to kiss it like those guys in the picture, when someone bows down to the ground in reverence.

Land has always been one of the major causes of disputes and wars. But to how much land can one really hold on?

Alexander the great, whose dream was to conquer the entire then-known world, faced some ascetics during his invasion of India, and his first encounter of them was very interesting. I quote other sources [1-2]:

"I have always liked the story of the Indian sages, some of whom Alexander chanced to come upon out of doors in a meadow, where they used to meet to discuss philosophy. On the appearance of Alexander and his army, these venerable men stamped with their feet and gave no other sign of interest.

Alexander asked them through interpreters what they meant by this odd behavior, and they replied: 'King Alexander, every man can possess only so much of the earth' surface as this we are standing on. You are but human like the rest of us, save that you are always busy and up to no good, traveling so many miles from your home, a nuisance to yourself and to others. Ah well! You will soon be dead, and then you will own just as much of this earth as will suffice to bury you.'

Alexander expressed his approval of these sage words; but in point of fact his conduct was always the exact opposite of what he then professed to admire. [...] One must admit, than, that Alexander was not wholly a stranger to the loftier flights of philosophy; but the fact remains that he was, to an extraordinary degree, the slave of ambition."

This incident, whose dramatization I first watched in the Indian national television channel (in the TV Series, Chanakya), has ever since amused and made me ponder.

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Acknowledgements:
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/625_0019000100173762,0.htm; for the Gaza Strip picture
[1]http://www.livius.org/caa-can/calanus/calanus.html
[2]http://www.livius.org/aj-al/alexander/alexander_t60.html
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Note: Edited excerpt from a mail from my Persian friend:

"Yup...sar=head and zamin=land, but it's NOT generally categorized as a compound noun. In Farsi, it means only LAND or TERRITORY. Sarzamin differs from zamin in the sense that it refers to great, vast lands, whereas zamin usually refers to small pieces; e.g. a land which a building is built on, and the ancient Persian sarzamin. Sometimes they can be used interchangeably, because they are synonyms as well."