Defiance: n. Open disobedience; bold resistance

How true. This definition could perhaps best sum the whole effort. The whole effort which makes miracles seem fragile. The whole effort which allows one to believe that to be human is to be everything; the whole effort that allows one to understand the complexity of actions, the menace of situations and also offers the hazardous solutions.

This happens to me quite a lot. It happened after I saw Schindler’s List and it has happened now once again, after watching Defiance. It leaves me really with no words for the movie. Because in these cases, the movie itself becomes obsolete and redundant. It is the story itself which speaks. And this one more that the other that I just mentioned. Because this was an example of raw courage, of absolute heroism, that, if romanticized, makes the whole effort futile. But purists will scoff at what I said. How could I?

But how could they? How could they keep recruiting Jews to defend them, when they had nothing to offer. Just a few days more maybe, as the way they put it. And in those few days, they lived and surged along, allowing people to make new definitions of miracles, and more importantly of the word freedom. Three poor brothers, smuggling themselves into ghettos, only to smuggle out some more Jews? What more can you say about them. That they were the real Moses? That they were the stories that build myths? That they were the stories that offer an absolutism to theology?

And this is where the profane blunder always happens. By making them messengers of God, we ruin their whole effort. We do not do justice to their deeds. We bring in the hand of a mere abstraction, just to wipe away what is the real in front of our eyes. If we were to just believe that these people were human, we increase our own standards to newer levels. We allow ourselves to believe that really, nothing is impossible. But that is to arduous a task to take up. That is too much work for ourselves, we who are born with silver spoons in our mouths and we who have never faced a crisis in our sheltered life. We believe taking a bus is a struggle, we believe walking in the sun is a struggle, we believe not drinking coffees at Baristas is a struggle. We really do lead charmed lives and never once do we realise that when the moment ever comes, we will be found wanting. Because from there to here, we have learnt nothing, but perhaps to dust matters under the carpet. We as a social, humanitarian being have dissolved away into obscurity. We are critical today of the breath we take, not realising for once maybe that it is because of heroes like these that we breathe any air today. That 1200 people saved through these incredible chapters of human history now allow ten million people to inhabit the world today.

The day when we again know how to get off our cushions and the day when we can know what being brothers to each other is like, maybe that day, we will then learn that our revenge is the fact that we live. That is our defiance.

Freedom: n. 1 condition of being free or unrestricted. 2 personal or civic liberty. 3 liberty of action (freedom to leave). 4 (foll. by from) exemption from. 5 (foll. by of) a honorary membership or citizenship (freedom of the city). b unrestricted use of (a house etc.).