It’s been years since I read Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel, the wonderfully complex ‘The Brothers Karamazov’. Of the many currents in that book, like belief in God, morality, free will and patricide, one tiny part of the classic has overtaken all others to remain embedded in my head.That bit concerns a folktale about a woman who, as a result of her selfish ways, is thrown into a lake of fire in hell. Then an angel remembers that she once gave a beggar an onion from her garden. God tells the angel to hold that onion out to her and pull her out of hell. As she is being pulled away, other sinners grab on to her legs to also try and escape. She kicks them away, shouting: ‘I am to be pulled out, not you. It was my onion, not yours.’ The onion breaks and she falls back. In that breaking onion, in that angry line, in the word ‘my’, there is a world of metaphors, parables and endless lessons.Across history, combinations and challenges have come from variables and from the absence of constants. Patience and resilience, when combined, await opportunity. Then the hammer strikes. A battleground soaked by rain can change the course of events or someone who was blindly trusted can turn out to be a traitor — the past is full of examples like these.Did the British Empire ever think that a thin, loincloth-clad man whose creed was non-violence would catalyse the collapse of the world’s largest, wealthiest and most powerful domain that the planet had known? It happened. Call that ‘Factor X’. The Unknown, the event, the person that no one anticipated, far less predicted.During the Emergency of the 1970s, when civil liberties had been crushed, my father and uncles, or he and a couple of friends, would huddle and talk. The gist of their conversations was: “Is this what we got Independence for? The only difference seems to be that earlier the colonisers were from another nation, now they are from our own.” This may be a little simplistic, but the kernel of truth is there. This remains to the present day.During the Emergency, a habeas corpus petition filed by Bharti Nayar challenged the illegal detention of her husband, prominent journalist Kuldip Nayar, under the draconian Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA). My father’s friend was a part of the Division Bench of the Delhi High Court that ruled in favour of Nayar, ordering his release and stating that the right to personal liberty and legal procedures under the law still applied despite the proclamation of Emergency. Almost needless to add, the powers that be were rather displeased and the judge was sidelined. The spine showed then was acknowledged at the end of that unhappy period of our democracy.Much earlier, in another part of the country, around the time of Partition, an uncle joined the RSS for a while. With the extended family having been slaughtered almost by the score, my mother and her sisters were trained in self-defence and the use of firearms by members of the ‘shakha’. Years apart, one had done his duty as demanded by his profession; the other had been drawn by emotion and by something that had given hope and support in a trying time. Despite contrary perspectives, was either anti-national or seditious? If anything, both were immensely patriotic.The difference lay in their interpretation and application of the word ‘patriotic’. The meeting ground could only be basic humanity, plain common sense, the rule of law and critically, in what was enshrined in the Constitution. History, like it or not, remembers those with a spine and those without.Despite the horror where it has its roots, there is gentleness in Imtiaz Ali’s film, ‘Main Vaapas Aaunga’. For good reason, the review aggregator, Rotten Tomatoes, has given it an overall positive review. It has much of what makes a film memorable — a good story, good acting, good musical score and much else. This brings me to why I’ve mentioned it in August, around the anniversary of both Independence and Partition. I wonder what my parents, who barely survived Partition, would have made of this film.I can almost step into my father’s shoes and say that it is unlikely that it would have resonated with him. That has nothing to do with the film, but with views that were shaped by the events of his life — by the years that preceded Partition and by those that followed.His take always was, ‘Main Vaapas Nahin Jaunga’ (I will not go back). For him, that door had closed and events had nailed it shut. At various points, he received opportunities to visit Lahore, where he was born and grew up. His answer was consistent: “Thank you. I have very happy memories. I would like to leave them at that.”— The writer is an author based in Shimla