Version imprimable[ Letter to my Daughters, my grandchildren - Indian, Pakistani, American from an anguished woman, wife, mother, grandmother, educator! ]
by Lalita Ramdas
It was an incredibly magnificent full moon night - Buddha Purnima, May 11 1998 - and little Nirvan, our grandson, pointed excitedly to the luminous golden orb as it rose majestically above the eastern hills surrounding this coastal town of Alibag on the west coast as we drove back homewards from our daily trip to the beach. As he and his little sister aged 18 months kept trying to grab as much as they could of the moon as it played hide and seek behind the hills each time the road curved and wound its way into the mini ghats before our home, as usual, Nirvan was full/ of questions. Why is this full moon was called Buddha Purnima? Who was Buddha? When did he live? When did he die? Why was he a good man? What do you mean when you say that my name Nirvan came from him? What does Nirvana mean? How do you explain all this to a little boy who is not quite five years old ......
So grandpa and I tried - and for over an hour - we lay on the khatiya on the verandah - just watching the moon rising higher, imagining its shapes, re-telling Buddha for a small boy , enjoying the coolth, the occasional hoot of the owls and the shrieking of the lapwing which goes crazy every night. But tonight the owls were screeching more restlessly than usual and the lapwing’s dervish - like flight was more hysterical than usual as she shreiked "didudoit -didudoit?"...... maybe they picked up the vibrations travelling under the surface of mother earth from a place called Pokhran, in the state of Rajasthan some 500 kms to the north and west of us.
With our 25 year old TV finally having called it a day - the usual pressure of rushing to switch on the news at 9pm was absent - and we continued to enjoy the cool and peace of the night when the rest of the towns and cities sweltered .....until the telephone jangled - a friend from Mumbai to ask us to switch on the news - India had carried out three underground nuclear tests - yes - this day - Buddha Purnima, deep under the ground in the Rajasthan desert. It was a phone call which shattered and changed many things - both the stillness and the peace of that night, and more permanently perhaps, the illusion of peace and harmony.
The lapwing was more perceptive than us mere mortals - but even she stopped her hysterical wheeling around - and left us to take on where she had left off. Phone calls, conversations and arguments late into the night - Nirvan could not sleep because his grandparents kept talking, sometimes softly, most of the time loudly and angrily - when he asked why we were fighting, we had to defend ourselves by saying this was called "arguing". "What are you arguing about " was the inevitable next question.
And so I tried to explain the story of what had happened today - somewhere deep in the desert - many many important people - scientists, politicians, servicemen - had `burst a bomb
