Well done Reena George Menezes
-----Original Message----- From: Goanet-News2 [mailto:goanet-news2-boun...@lists.goanet.org] On Behalf Of Goanet Reader Sent: Monday, February 01, 2016 3:11 AM To: Goa's premiere mailing list, estb. 1994! Subject: [Goanet-News] Once upon a time, in Kuwait (Reena Martins, The Telegraph) http://www.telegraphindia.com/1160131/jsp/7days/story_66683.jsp Once upon a time, in Kuwait Airlift, the Bollywood movie, has stirred the memories of people affected by the invasion of Kuwait. Reena Martins [reenamart...@hotmail.com] talks to some of them ------------------------------------------------------------ RAVAGED: Chand Gidwani (top) and Alex Fernandes, who were among those who fled the war zone ------------------------------------------------------------ "Dad made me a flag of India, and we wrote 'Hindi, Indian' on the car windscreen. We played Hindi music and wore salwar kameezes, our heads covered." ------------------------------------------------------------ It was early August, 1990. Vilette Jennings, now a homemaker in Qatar, recalls travelling in a convoy of seven cars to Iraq after Saddam Hussain's invasion of Kuwait, where she lived with her family. The journey to Baghdad was arduous. They had to prove their nationality at gunpoint at checkposts, drink saline water in Basra and guard the cars and petrol at night. But the Iraqis were kind to the Indians and had even picked up some Hindi from Bollywood films, Jennings says. These long buried, bitter-sweet memories of people affected by the invasion of Kuwait now find themselves dug out by the Bollywood hit, Airlift, which tells the story of the attempts of one man -- played by Akshay Kumar -- to rescue people trapped in the West Asian country. But, as the makers of Airlift insist, the film doesn't just seek to tell the tale of Mathuny Mathews, nicknamed Toyota Sunny. Mathews, now 80, a then influential businessman from Kerala, has been credited with rescuing a large number of Indians stranded in Kuwait. It's the story of many others, too. Shiva Karayil, a badminton coach in Mumbai who was a part of Mathew's rescue team in Kuwait, remembers how they had to often break into shops to feed people in the relief camps they'd set up. With communications snapped, Mathews and his team radioed the government for help, which came as an individual allowance of 200 Iraqi dinars. "We then signed a contract with Iraqi bus owners and got 20-30 buses sent to UN camps in Jordan and Iraq, before people were airlifted by Air India," says Karayil. But while the tussle for credit rages between Mathews's supporters and the Indian government, focus shifts to regular folk in Kuwait, who went out of their way to save their stranded brethren. Carmo Santos, a Goan businessman in Kuwait, sheltered and fed families that, after having sold their household goods to fund their trip out of Kuwait, were stranded at the Iraqi border and had to return penniless. "I distributed hundreds of kilos of rice and wheat that were in my godown, and even gave money to those who had little or none," Santos says. "Many, including Kuwaiti locals, sought me out to return the money after the war had ended, and are still very grateful." For many Indians, it was an escape all right, but not always to victory. Santos, who stayed back in Kuwait, got advertisements placed in the Goa papers, asking those who had returned to Goa to send him copies of their passports, sponsorship and employment details, so he could help them get back their jobs. "Their families were in turmoil over loss of money, and marriages were breaking down," Santos says. Chand Gidwani, an amateur wildlife photographer in California, who was in Kuwait during the invasion, says her husband, who was in Mumbai then, was traumatised over news of rapes and paucity of food, water and medical care in Kuwait. A little over a month after the invasion, Gidwani left with family and friends by a caravan one night, each one carrying a suitcase. They could buy flight tickets only in American dollars which they got from an aunt in Dubai through a Palestinian relative. At a Red Cross camp in Jordan, Goa-based photographer Alex Fernandes's cab was stopped at the camp's main gate by Iraqi troops who, on finding Scotch whiskey in his possession, demanded a bribe in dollars or Kuwaiti dinars. And, as a parting shot, they told him he was crazy to get off at the main gate when there was an unmanned one. "That's when I realised that the cabbie who had dropped us there was hand in glove with the cops," says Fernandes. But truth, as they say, could be stranger than fiction. Dramatic, too. On August 2, 1990, Anthony Veronica Fernandes was on his way to the bakala (Arabic for grocery store), to get the morning papers, when he was held at gunpoint by Iraqi soldiers carrying "World War II style" battered helmets and wireless sets. Traffic had come to a standstill, so he assumed some senior sheikh was passing. "It was only when I heard engines running with no driver behind the wheel, that I sensed trouble," he says. "But as luck would have it, the soldier who was holding me at gunpoint got distracted by a Palestinian woman asking why the bus service had been stopped, and I bolted into my apartment building and informed my flatmate who was getting ready for work about the invasion," says Fernandes, who founded the Goa-Kuwait Solidarity Centre and whose book on the Kuwait invasion will be released next month. When Fernandes and his flatmate decided to check out the scene in the streets that morning, they got out of the elevator and saw that the soldier was back. He pointed a gun at Fernandes's head and ordered him to run to the Sheraton Hotel, which had been turned into an open air prison. "But on the way I ran into the house of some Goan friends." That didn't help, though. Soon, two Iraqi soldiers were at the door. "They ordered the men out, but I put my arm around the teenage girl who was crying, and refused to leave her and her mother." But the mother and daughter had a lucky escape when the Iraqi soldiers left suddenly after getting a message on the wireless. This wasn't the end of the story. On the third day of the invasion, Iraqi soldiers raided Fernandes's apartment block six times a day. He hid under the bed, only to find the towel covering his face being lifted off by the muzzle of a gun. "I thought that was the end of me, but the soldier got up and picked up my Bible from the table, opened it and quietly walked out." Fernandes lives to tell the tale. For many who were there in Kuwait, Airlift has revived old memories.
