Capítulo 1371: Chapter 661: Gentlen Are Too Much Trouble!
The sumr night in New Delhi, the humid evening breeze carrying the “scent” of the Ganges River, blew across the thronging crowd in India Gate Square.
The live broadcast signal from the national television had already entered thousands of households, the light from the office windows filtered through the blinds, casting dappled shadows on the lawn.
At eight o’clock sharp in the evening, Narasimha stood at the podium of Capitol Hill, a giant tricolor flag behind him.
He was not wearing a tie as usual, the collar of his white kurta shirt slightly open, with a rare heaviness in his eyes, as the red light of the cara turned on, he raised his hand to press his earphone, his fingertips paused on the cool tal surface for two seconds.
“At midnight sixty years ago, when we raised this flag at the Red Fort.”
His voice transmitted through the airwaves, “more than ten million people were trekking with their luggage in the dust of the India-Pakistan Border, my grandfather, then a professor at Lahore dical College, hid with my aunt in the basent of Qing X Temple amidst the chopping sounds of mobs, while my grandmother forever stayed in that blood-stained alley.”
The seats of the parliant below were silent, the cara swept past several white-haired elders in the front row, their Adam’s apples moving beneath loose skin, soone quietly took out a handkerchief and dabbed at the corner of their eyes.
“Today, I received a letter from Singh, a farr from Punjab.” Narasimha drew out a yellowed piece of letter paper from his pocket, the edges of the paper worn, “he said what his father repeatedly ntioned on his deathbed was not the harvest in the fields, but the ancestral mango orchard taken from them in 1947, where twenty fruit trees personally planted by his mother stood.”
He lifted his gaze, looking through the cara lens as if staring at those scattered survivors around the world from the India-Pakistan partition: “Stories such as these are hidden in the albums of every household in India, in refugee camps in Assam, in slums in Delhi, in old age hos in the Indian community in London, too many people live today with unhealed wounds.”
The crowd in the square began to stir, soone raised a placard with “Return our holand” written on it, its wooden pole wrapped with fragnts of newspapers from 1947.
“The British governnt always says, partition is a historical issue.” Narasimha’s voice suddenly rose, the tricolor flag behind him fluttered in the night wind, “But history is not a cold file! It is the shattered Gandhara statues in Lahore Museum, the Hindu Temple stone carvings sunk at Karachi Port, it’s more than five hundred thousand lives, it’s the cries of twenty million displaced people!”
“Therefore!”
“We demand British reparations! Compensation for everything from our personal psyche to national honor!”
On the streets of New Delhi, soone set fire to an old map from the British colonial period, the flas danced on people’s faces.
“Today I represent the Indian governnt in formally demanding reparations from the British.”
A fist slamd heavily on the podium, the wooden surface emitted a dull sound, “We don’t want them to pay with shares of the North Sea Oil Field, nor do we want them to appease us with the managent rights of the London Underground.”
He pulled out a docunt from a folder, the cover of the docunt embossed with the gold-embossed emblem of India: “We demand that the British governnt publicly acknowledge the undeniable responsibility in the 1947 India-Pakistan Partition plan, require them to establish a special fund to compensate all partition victims and their descendants; require them to return the artifacts plundered from India during the colonial period, totaling thirty-seven thousand items, from fragnts of stone carvings from the Taj Mahal to Sanskrit manuscripts from the Madras Library, we have a complete list.”
“So may say this is settling scores after the event.”
Narasimha’s voice transmitted through satellite signals to the ruins of Belfast, to the Scottish Parliant in Edinburgh, to the trading hall on Wall Street in New York, transmitting far and wide, “But when a nation doesn’t even dare to acknowledge its historical debts, what qualification does it have to talk about civilization and order?”
The square exploded with thunderous cheers, people began to chant in unison: “Blood debt for blood!” “Return our history!” An elderly man wearing a turban held up a yellowed family photo, the young couple in the photo dressed in colonial-era formal wear, the background was the Lahore Fort, now belonging to Batan.
In the cabinet eting room in London, the Chancellor of the Exchequer was just about to reach for the coffee cup when he found his hand trembling.
The compensation list just received from India was held in the Pri Minister’s hand, the edges of the paper soaked with sweat and wrinkled.
“Are they crazy?” the Minister of Internal Affairs growled, “Making such demands now is nothing but taking advantage of the situation!”
“Are these slaves going to rise up in rebellion?”
Indeed, in his view, India was still just slaves.
The Pri Minister didn’t speak, just stared out the window.
The neon lights of the London Financial City flickered in the fog, suddenly he recalled a file in the Oxford University Library, Lord Mountbatten’s personal diary in 1947 noted: “The partition plan is like cutting cake with a butcher knife, soone will always cut their hand.”
But what was severed was far more than fingers.
The live broadcast finally froze on the night sky of New Delhi, countless sky lanterns slowly rising, printed with refugee photos from 1947.
Narasimha stood on the podium, watching the lights drifting towards the stars, his voice low and firm:
“We have waited for this day, for sixty years.”
Saying it so gloriously…
It’s actually just kicking soone when they’re down!
To summarize in two words: Money please!!
Except the “goblin” was kneeling then, and now it’s standing begging.
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