Today I wont be braying anything....I have someone who will talk intelligently and provoke one's thoughts instead.... someone who has been influenced by certain events in history so much so that he flew all the way to a lesser known country to see with his own eyes, what he had read about it in history. He is an ex-colleague of mine and a dear friend. Dr.Nishikanta Verma, another Indian ENT Surgeon like me settled in South East Asia .... an interesting character who has always talked and lived life on his terms and taken most things in life not too seriously until he got influenced by Phnom Penh and the atrocities of Khmer Rouge in the 70s. For him, a casual reading of the events lead to an in depth viewing of the happenings in an Oscar winning movie,
The Killing Fields, a movie revealing the torture and crime of the Khmer Rouge and finally lead him to the fields where it happened to get a first hand experience of the place which suffered the atrocities. Nishikanta has just completed his tour of Phnom Penh and was kind enough to be my guest writer on my blog. I leave you now with him and his experience and thoughts....
Reflections of an Experience-My Journey through Phnom Penh
Even the weather was perfect-cloudy skies, a cool breeze and little rain.
As the plane flew over the rice fields of Cambodia, dipping through clouds and finally emerging over the confluence of the Mekong and the Tonle rivers over Phnom Penh, I gazed at the flying countryside and city below, not just a little amazed at the fact that I was actually here.
In Cambodia. In Phnom Penh. Alone. In the last city anyone would have expected me to be.
I suppose 3 days confined to a city, with no real plans and a very bare agenda, would be what a travel brochure would call “A relaxing city break away from the stresses of daily life”. I would disagree but my trip was undeniably just a city break. It was just that the city and the country in question had been on my mind for the last four months. And it still is.
When I first mentioned Cambodia to family, the immediate assumption was a visit to Angkor Wat. No one really thinks of Phnom Penh as a tourist destination in itself, yet, here I was, trying, but failing to explain why exactly I wanted to visit a city that had essentially no landmark sights and a reportedly high crime rate.
I now realize that it was inevitable. I went because I had to. Phnom Penh, and on a wider scale Cambodia itself, had come alive for me just a few days into reading it’s history and it’s place in the Khmer Rouge Revolution of 1975-1979. Riveting accounts of the fall of Phnom Penh in April 1975 had geographical references to the city that have certainly changed dramatically, but still exist. And of course, there was S21-the notorious Khmer Rouge incarceration centre- and the related “Killing Fields” of Choeung Ek.
Coupled with this were the incredible events of the 1960’ and the early 1970’s-a military coup in 1970 and the US cluster bombings- a lethal mix which would combine and lead to the rise of the Khmer Rouge, an event which, sadly however, was by no means was an inevitable. I had read about the politics and the manouverings of the foreign powers in that period and the sad fact that Cambodia, when all was said and done, was simply a victim of the next door war in Vietnam. And I also read, with mounting disbelief, at how Cambodia became the battleground for the last 10 years of Cold War politics, after the Khmer Rouge had destroyed the Kingdom of Wonder.
However, these kind of reasons-essentially a desire to visit the S21 prison and the execution grounds of Cheung Ek- sometimes dubbed “morbid tourism”, are difficult to convey to worried parents or incredulous friends, but , as I read more about what has been termed as
“Per square mile, the worst holocaust in the 20th century, even worse than The Holocaust itself”, it became obvious to me that practically every Cambodian, with few exceptions, has been a direct or indirect victim of the Khmer Rouge era.
I went with very vague plans of seeing S21 and Choeung Ek-2 institutions that are at the heart of the Khmer Rouge era- but I also got a glimpse of the soul of a country and a people I had read much about. I went to relive history-and it’s not a history for the faint hearted-but I also ended up falling in love with a city and the warmth, genuiness and smiles of practically everyone I met. Over the course of my three day trip, I found a bit of Cambodia that once was, before war and politics tore it apart. And I saw that in everyday life. My entire hotel staff who made hotel a home, Thun my tuk tuk driver, a roadside bookseller whose handshake and smile I’ll never forget but whose name I wish I had asked, my guide at S21 who shared her life story or Chum Mei and Bou Meng- whose photographs with me I will always treasure.
As the Sun dipped below the horizon over the banks of the Mekong, I gazed out at the mighty river, on whose banks many a battle had been fought and as night fell, sipped Long Island Ice Teas on the roof of the Foreign Correspondents Club, where photographs by Al Rockoff adorn the staircase walls. Many of these were taken around April 1975-the time when Cambodia’s history fractured and the beginning of a fresh set of events that would shatter and nearly destroy the fabric of a gentle, innocent country.
I spent evenings walking by the promenade or sitting on a waterfront bench and I just saw a normal city, a people going about their lives. Children playing by the waterfront, bars and pubs open for business, a beggar sitting by the roadside, monks emerging from a nearby Wat.
I saw no crime there, although I took the precautions I’d take in any place. I was completely unfazed by the traffic, which is far more civilized that that of the average Indian town.
I spent three days in this city and Thun was my tuk tuk driver on all my little trips in Phnom Penh. Thun-an unfailingly polite, always punctual, uassuming, gentle man-who spent three days driving me around Phnom Penh. On many occassions, as we passed the sights, back roads and boulevards of Phnom Penh, I could not escape the feeling that the two of us-me at the back, Thun on his attached motorcycle-were in a cocoon, an isolated twosome looking at a city and a culture from the outside in. From just another tourist, I felt myself changing into a privileged observer, interacting with the people and the institutions that define them and then respectfully withdrawing, and Thun was my partner-an unwitting participant, waiting patiently by his tuk tuk, studying a Khmer text he kept on it's roof while I took my time and indulged my fantasies. Thun would always drop me off, point to a spot and say “I wait here”. And he would be always be there.
The only occassion where Thun was not exactly where he'd said he'd be was after a visit to the Royal Palace, when I got caught in a downpour and he had sheltered his tuk tuk under a tree. The rain was warm and I did not mind, but after watching me standing getting soaked and looking for where Thun might have parked his tuk tuk, another tuk tuk driver offered me shelter inside his own till Thun and I found each other. The driver asked for nothing in return. Thun did not apologize-he did not need to.
Thun took me everywhere. In the morning, I would step out of my little hotel and find Thun and his tuk tuk waiting by the kerb. He wasn’t waiting for me in particular of course and when I would walk up and tell him to go someplace, he would ask “You want to go with me”?, perhaps grateful and perhaps surprised that I would choose him over the other tuk tuks scattered by the kerb.
We went to the all the usual sights-The Royal Palace, The National Museum, The Central Market. We visited Wat Lanka and Wat Phnom-the hill temple where Phnom Penh was founded. We even landed in the middle of huge political rallies-marking the historic return from exile of a Cambodian opposition politician, but Thun steered us through it all. We drove through the backroads and the main roads. We passed wide green parks and trundled over broken, potholed roads. On occassion, I told Thun where to go-sights like the Gate of the French Embassy or the Preah Ket Melea Hospital near it. Thun may have been wondering why I wanted to spend a minute at these places-places that are not on any tourist itinerary but hold a special esoteric historical interest for me.
Thun did not ask once, and I never told him.
Of course, we also went to S21 and the “Killing Fields” of Choeung Ek-the two sites that now define the Khmer Rouge Era in Phnom Penh. Twenty thousand people went into S21 and not more than about 150 survived. The last two known survivors are Chum Mei and Bou Meng are still alive and I had the lifetime honour of meeting them. Visiting these two sites is a profound, indescribable experience-one that may not change my life, but has redefined perspective.
All Cambodians know S21 and Choeung Ek. Thun certainly does I am sure, and I don't know what goes through his mind every time he is asked to go there. It's not for me to say.
I spent three days wandering all over Phnom Penh. For Thun-a man in his 20's, driving his little red tuk tuk, waiting patiently for his charge to return from a sightseeing stop, I was undoubtedly just another tourist, stopping by his city. To think anything otherwise is to indulge in a wild fantasy.
But Thun, along with the staff in my hotel who made me feel like family, the tuk tuk driver who kindly sheltered me asking nothing in return, Chum Mei and Bou Meng, whose lips part in an obligatory smile for a photo but whose eyes cannot hide their pain, a guide with a brilliant smile who lost many members of her family, the old roadside bookseller whose slow smile and firm handshake are indelible memories and the thousands of ordinary Cambodians I was privilged to see from Thun's tuk tuk-living normal lives, trying to forget a past that may be impossible to move away from.
On my last evening in the city, I found a roadside cafe, one of many within walking distance of my hotel. The cafe was right across the road from Wat Lanka, and sitting there, alone, my mind empty of thoughts, I heard the soft chime of bells from the temple. The evening was cool and subdued rock played on the stereo. Some mild traffic passed by, mainly tuk tuks looking for a ride. I sat alone next to a group of barangs and watched in silence as a small girl, not more than five, skipped in with a bunch of flowers. And I watched transfixed as the girl and the barangs-no doubt long term regulars, bonded and chatted in pure Khmer like old friends. They did not buy the flowers but the girl’s smile never left her face.
These are the memories I carry and the images that play in my mind.
Sitting barely 10 minutes away from Cambodia’s most notorious Khmer Rouge Institution, on my last day in Phnom Penh I found a peace, a soul satisfying stillness I have not experienced before and will be fortunate to savour again.
And as I walked back past Wat Lanka and the Independence Monument back to my hotel along the wide roads of Norodorm Boulevard, I thought about “resilence” and what it means. Resilience implies a choice-one either is or is not. But to use it for many Cambodians in the context of what happened in Cambodia and what happened to a city once called “Paris of the East” seems unfair because for four years, there were no choices, no battlegrounds and no last stands. There was no question of resilience.
One survived and one lived. Else, one died. It was as simple as that. There was no fate, no destiny. It just was. One talks about the spirit of survival and there are many examples of that from that time that left me frozen in place, but at that time, in Cambodia, you survived only because you were not the next randomly chosen victim.
Cambodia lost 30% of it’s population-an estimated three million people, including nearly all of it’s intellectuals and it’s Buddhist clergy-an entire generation- in the space of four short, brutal years. It gave rise to Pol Pot and Duch-the S21 Commandant, among others, and the unmatched ferocity of the Khmer Rouge.
But it also gave birth to Haing Ngor and Dith Pran-the two men whose intertwined stories first put me on this path and whose stories would come together in one of the finest movies Hollywood has ever made. Their stories eventually led me to many more- stories of pure survival, stories of pain that no words can do justice to, stories of unbearable despair but with moments of pure love and happiness, stories of war and politics that made me cry with anger and shame.
When you hear someone say “Cambodians eat spiders”, take a moment and think why. When you get stuck in traffic in Phnom Penh, take a second and imagine the city completely abandoned, empty and quiet, as it was for four long years. Pass by the Gate of the French Embassy and while your tuk tuk sverves to avoid incoming traffic, try to imagine the desperation and chaos of April 1975. Ask yourself why you hardly see anyone who looks older than 50. And when you do, don’t think too much about what they were doing for the worst four years anywhere in recent history.
And that’s the crux of it all. In a sense, all of this hasn’t even been confined to history yet. The men directly responsible for killing three million of Cambodia’s population and creating the world’s biggest refugee crisis for many years are on trial right now, as I type this, nearly 40 years later. A nation that had once bombed and then abandoned Cambodia supplies aid and is it’s self appointed moral guardian.
I went with no specific purpose other than to see S21 and Choeung Ek but I came back with the deepest respect for a population that, despite all of it’s “Third World Problems” (but none that are unique to it) has reached where it has.
To understand what “resilience” means, visit Cambodia-anywhere at all and open your eyes.
Cambodia is not a utopia, but one cannot pass judgement on Cambodia’s present without sight of it’s historical context. The fact that Cambodia exists at all today is a miracle in itself. It has it’s issues but it is solving them. Cambodia, I like to think, is healing. And though the past will always be present, Cambodia is moving on.
I came to Cambodia as a tourist with some vague plans, but I left a bit of myself back there.
Phnom Penh will not be a once in a lifetime trip, but it was a once in a lifetime experience.
P.S. The author of this article Dr.NishikantaVerma when asked to give me his bio wrote the following which actually conveys almost all about the man :)
'I am a surgeon currently living in Melaka, Malaysia. I don't travel as much as I want to, spend way more time on the internet than my family likes and love writing sense and nonsense.
I am always available on email (
drverman@gmail.com) or follow me on twitter (@jipmerdays)! "
I have never entered a gym with the idea of working out and never have I bothered to even know what exactly goes on there. It was always a place where people who are fat or too ambitious about getting the right curves visited… not a place for me…. who defined fitness simply as not being sick. 
And thus happened Lito - my trainer- a happy go lucky philipino who was not the best in the business probably, but surely good enough for an out of shape man to make a beginning. You need a good company and someone with a positive vibe for you to be able to go back and do things which you never really are interested in to begin with. And Lito provided that impetus. Slowly over a period of days, weeks and months, the machines started unravelling their mystery to me. The clanking of steel made more sense and beckoned me to get back to it as soon as I was done with the mundane affairs of the day. Lito had to move back home to the Philippines for a while but he made sure I was not left in lurch. He transferred my training to Eddie's hands. Eddie came in as a blessing in disguise. A Bruneian with malaysian origin and Chinese roots, Eddie was Mr.Muscles come to life.. Eddie was into fitness for 9 years and at 32 he was Adonis in flesh and blood. Bulging with all the right curves and an 8 pack abs, we looked David and Goliath every time we got together during the training sessions.I guess I brushed some good charm on him too because he went on to win a couple of body building competitions and was crowned Mr. Malaysia 2013 after taking me under his training. 
