And he waits for Shoma Sen

I called up Tushar Kanti Bhattacharya husband of Shoma Sen an accused in the Bhima Koregaon case on May 9 with a request could he tell me their storymdashshe languishing in jail and he alone outside He said it was on this day in 1991 that Shoma and he were married ldquoI feel so so lonely on my marriage anniversaryrdquo Tushar said Their wedding had involved Shoma and Tushar taking oath before 20 friends to live as wife and husband and working together for the downtroddenThus was Indiarsquos notorious class divide bridgedmdashand howShomarsquos father was the creative head of an advertisement agency in Mumbai The Sens lived an upper middleclass life in Bandra Shoma married a trade union leader and moved in with him to a chawl A childmdashKoelmdashwas born to them When the marriage soured Shoma shifted to Nagpur where in 1987 she began to teach English Literature at Dr Madhukarrao Wasnik PWS College an institution run by DalitsTusharrsquos father was a clerk in SirpurKagaznagar town now in Telangana and had seven children A Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh pracharak would take three of the four brothersmdashAlok Kalol and Tusharmdashto play games every morning When he was in Std VIII the pracharak criticised Indira Gandhi Tushar shot back ldquoYou claim RSS is a cultural organisation but you are talking politicsrdquo The pracharak did not know that the precocious child had read on Naxalbari and Srikakulam uprisings and about the 1968 student protest in ParisTusharrsquos reading spawned in him the desire to smash class and caste hierarchies as was also the case with Shoma in Mumbai They were set on a path that was to bring them togethermdashand into conflict with the Indian State inclined to summarily jailing its ideological opponentsTusharrsquos tryst with jail was early in Std X He had joined a group of boys who wrote radical graffitimdashand misguidedly demonstrated their revolutionary fervour by painting red the white marble statue of Mahatma Gandhi One day the statue was found broken The boys were arrested The court found the charge against them bogus Tushar now made it his mission to organise workers to fight for their rightsIn 1987 appalled by the working conditions at Nagpurrsquos Khaperkheda Thermal Power Plant Tushar late activist Anuradha and her husband Kobad Ghandy an alumnus of Doon School took to organising workers there In the same year Tushar contracted typhoid prompting Anuradha to shift him to Shomarsquos residence where he recovered under her care Love blossomed their Marxist beliefs as much a glue as their Bengali background the relationship further leavened as Koel took to addressing Tushar as PapaOn such a family the State has inflicted untold miseryThe irony is that Shoma was returning to her middleclass roots in Nagpur focussing on her work even as she formed Stree Chetna a womenrsquos organisation Yes like any conscientious citizen she spoke against the atrocities committed on Dalits and petitioned the High Court for establishing a prison in Gadchiroli in order to save the poor adivasis from journeying to Nagpur where their relatives in substantial numbers were jailedThe State looks askance at anyone whose heart beats for adivasisShoma and Tusharrsquos suffering does not date to her arrest in the Bhima Koregaon case on June 6 2018 It began in 2007 when Tushar was arrested and accused of heading the underground Maoist unit Triple U that supposedly operated in Uttarakhand Uttar Pradesh and Uttar Bihar Thus was the couple torn apart ldquoShoma was my strength in those yearsrdquo Tushar said So was also Kalol the older brother who had become the Telangana secretary of the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh an RSS affiliate Tushar was acquitted in all seven cases filed against him He walked into freedom in February 2013By then Shoma was inducted into the English department of RTM Nagpur University To midday contributor Jyoti Punwani Shoma said ldquoEither I kill myself with guilt and hoard my earnings or I use them to make life a little comfortable at this agerdquo She now lived in an apartment overlooking a patch of forest with two domestic helps and a driver ldquoIt took me two years to resolve our contradictory lifestylesrdquo said Tushar who began translating books and laid out a terrace gardenTheir idyllic life was shattered on June 6 2018 Koel was traumatised by her Marsquos incarceration the neighbourhood shunned them a parttimer left work under pressure from other households A voice constantly murmured in Tushar How would Shoma racked by glaucoma arthritis and hypertension endure the jail life He would stare all day at the computer screen unable to write a sentence He opted for psychotherapyTushar last met Shoma on April 28 She looked depressed acutely aware that her incarceration will likely not end anytime soon for even the charges in the Bhima Koregaon case have yet to be framed The Supreme Court was recently told that Prime Minister Narendra Modi favours ldquoprotection of civil liberties respect of human rightshelliprdquo This must sound as a cruel joke to Shoma and Tushar who both put together have spent nine out of 31 years of their married life in jailmdashand countingThe writer is a senior journalistSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper