JHALKARIBAI, A FLASH DIFFUSED IN THE NIGHT OF JHANSI

I am overwhelmed, Wordsmith Rana, by this early response to my request to you for a commemorative piece on Jhalkaribai and I must say that in this short piece you have caught the spirit of the sacrifice insignificant of countless foot-soldiers in the broader scheme of things, martyrs who are lost in the pool of their own spilled blood and sink into oblivion subject to the tyranny of the times. But their collective force brings forth all significant historical changes even as they remain obscured in the dust of the battle that is raised during such tempestuous transformation. And when the dust settles, they are seen no more, either buried under the footfalls of history or blown away in diverse directions by the scattering effect of the pervading violence or absorbed by a mighty moment as integral to it, a moment that springs forth from the resolution of all such minuscule modes as the defining point in the history of a people. So are Jhalkaribais lost, save in so far as subsistence is possible in the larger persona of the Lakshmibais who occupy centre-stage and rightly so, but who can deny the individual moment its due in affirming the importance of the lengthened lifetime of a being? None can and none will dare do so for that would be suicidal. Yet, at the same time the moment was born as if to perish before its sibling took its charge and passed on the baton likewise from self to self, itself remaining incognito forever, for such is in the nature of things here on earth where man's sense of dimension renders his vision blurred beyond rough estimation in aggregate terms and he, perforce, has to miss out on all that is delicate and all that is sublime, the fair flower on the wayside or the glow-worm that failed to light up the sky that night and was consumed in the suffusing moonlight that spread its wings in a dizzy dance through the spaces of the heavens. What more may I say but to turn the words inward to still the thoughts of my feverish brain and, for once, listen to the music within where Jhalkaribai sings her solitary song en route to the scaffold, in blissful disdain of the imperial design to throttle the voice of freedom, even as her mistress, that goddess of a girl, the Rani Lakshmibai thunders, "Meri Jhansi nahin dungi"?