Irom Sharmila won’t relinquish her hopes, ideals and love
The Anna Hazare agitation, because of the unmissable analogy, has now brought the spotlight back on Sharmila. She isn’t unhappy about the comparison. She says she looks up to Anna Hazare and is happy that his anti-corruption campaign yielded results, and that he could end his fast after 13 days. “I have a lot of reverence for Anna Hazare. I revere his struggle. The fight against corruption is a very noble cause. He invited me to go to Delhi to join him in his campaign. I would have been happy to do so. But I’m a prisoner. I’m tied to all this (she gestures at her room). Yes, this is the difference between him and me. I am a prisoner. He is a free man. He can go wherever he wants to. So I have invited him to come. He and his team are very welcome here. If the people of India came out in our support, my demand to repeal AFSPA would have been met by now.”
In Hazare’s victory, Sharmila sees the beginning of the end of her own struggle. “I feel finally the time has come,” she says with a smile. That’s why she has invited Team Anna to Manipur. Says Irom Singhajit, Sharmila’s elder brother, and someone who is closest to her: “Suddenly everyone has woken up from a slumber and realised that there is this girl who has been starving herself from the age of 28 for the sake of justice.”
After all these years, does Sharmila miss regular food, even though she is force-fed thrice a day with nutrients and multi-vitamins? “Yes, I do miss food,” she candidly admits, “that is why I don’t think about it. I love honey and I love coconut water. Also, bitter gourd. But I love sweets. I ate a lot of pastry the day before I went on the fast. When I go back to normal life I will eat. Now I put cotton wool in my mouth so that I don’t swallow anything. I don’t even brush my teeth so that I don’t swallow anything.”
Sharmila’s fast began two days after ten civilians—including school students and a 61-year-old woman, inhabitants of Manipur’s Malom Village—were shot dead, allegedly by Assam Rifles commandos. As she recounts the horror and tragedy of that day 11 years ago, Thoibi Debi, mother of one of the boys who was killed, breaks down. When she recovers, she says, “It was 3 pm. His father had just come back from work. My son asked him for ten rupees for the bus fare because he had to go for his science tuition. Fifteen minutes later he was gone forever.”
However, of late Sharmila has been in news for her relationship with 48-year-old writer Desmond Coutinho, a British citizen of Goan origin. They communicated for almost a year and professed their feelings for each other. They met once—this March. Sharmila admits, “Yes, I love someone. I am made out to be an extraordinary woman. I am called an iron lady. But I am human too. I want to lead a normal life. And do all that an ordinary woman wants to do. Like get married. I will do it when my demand is met.”
To Sharmila’s discomfiture and unhappiness, her relationship with Coutinho is met with hostile suspicion by her supporters. Even her brother Singhajit disapproves: “That man—Desmond—is a government agent. He is trying to make her weak. His only goal is to marry Sharmila and take her away. We will not allow that to happen. She is struggling for over a decade. How can she just abandon her struggle for the love of a man?”
Sharmila says she will not give up her struggle and betray the cause. “No, I just can’t afford to run away. When I began the fast, I didn’t think it would last this long. I have been living from moment to moment. But I try not to think too much about it. I think of God and I leave it all to Him. I don’t think anyone wants to spend a life-time imprisoned in a hospital bed, tied to a nose-tube.”
Sharmila spends her time in custody reading and writing. Her favourite books? The Gita and the Bible. Right now she is reading a book by Minnie Vaid on Binayak Sen. The author personally gifted her a copy. “She wants to write about me too. But I’m not sure,” says Sharmila.
At her home in Kongpal Kongkham Leikai Porompal village, Sharmila’s mother Irom Sakshi says it would be irresponsible for her to ask her daughter to return home and have a hearty meal, although, like any mother she wants to feed her. “I never visit her as it will make her weak. And it will make me weak. I will never ask her to call off her fast because she is struggling for the people. Yes, she is the youngest of my nine children but she has ceased to be just my daughter. She is also the nation’s daughter now.”