:: Shekhar Bhatia

I have a tiny piece of the Berlin Wall...

Shekhar Bhatia

May.8 : The Berlin Wall collapsed on November 9, 1989. The Germans have launched a six-month celebration to commemorate the 20th anniversary. They are creating a mile-long chain of giant dominoes that they will topple as a symbolic re-enactment of that day.

Way back in 1972 I spent some months in East Berlin. Like most people in the two divided parts of the city, I never dreamt that I would live to see the day when the Wall would come down.

In those days I don’t think I heard anyone even talk of the possibility. How could you when you looked at the physical barriers and the more formidable ideological and psychological walls that divided not just them but the entire world into two blocs? I guess it was the fear of the Stalinist East German regime controlled by Moscow, or the secret police, the Stasi, that forced them to keep their dreams to themselves.

My friends, however, did talk about the days before the Wall came up almost overnight in 1961 to "protect citizens from capitalism" — first the rolls of barbed wire, then the concrete slabs, and the no-man’s land known as the "death strip". Nearly a quarter of the city’s population had by then fled to the western side. Most people I knew in the city had relatives on the other side — a mother separated from her son, a brother from his sister.

There were two walls — one that divided the two Germanys and the other around the city of West Berlin to prevent the people of east from getting in. The traffic was one-way: East Berliners were not allowed to cross the Wall. They needed a special permit that was almost impossible to obtain.

In communist Europe, East Germans enjoyed the highest standard of living. There was no shortage of basics. But there was hardly any choice in the state-run shops. So friends and relatives from across the Wall would come over with chocolates, clothes and other gifts. For a visitor from East Berlin, even pre-liberalisation India would have been a shopper’s paradise. For one, we had Coca-Cola, the symbol of economic imperialism. But more important, they didn’t have freedom.

During the 28 years that the Wall stood, they say 240 people died trying to escape. In the east I never heard anyone talk about escape attempts; in the west there is a museum near Checkpoint Charlie that tells the story of those who managed to escape — and those who didn’t.

I made many friends in East Berlin, young, bright and educated. We drank Pilsner beer, ate sauerkraut, and the divine Black Forest cake. They took me to the famous Brecht theatre, the Berliner Ensemble, for magnificent performances of the Caucasian Chalk Circle and the Life of Galileo.

Across the Wall, past Checkpoint Charlie and the famous signboard, "You Are Entering The American Sector", it was a different world. There were Checkpoint Alpha and Bravo but Charlie was literally downtown and the only one that foreigners were allowed to use. I have still not been able to figure out the location of the walk-bridge that the Russian spymaster Karla takes to defect to the West in John Le Carre’s classic Cold War book, Smiley’s People. I would like a photograph of that spot.

The buzz in West Berlin was in your face, as if a whole city was showing the middle finger to the autocratic communist regime on the other side. The strains of Woodstock sounded familiar (in the east, music by western bands was banned to "protect" its people from "imperialist cultural invasion"). Tanned hippies returning from the beaches of Goa were selling beads and agarbattis — I even spotted Kolhapuri chappals — in makeshift stalls on the pavements of the fashionable Ku’Damm boulevard, the Fifth Avenue of Berlin.

One people, forced to live in two different worlds. Sadly, over the years I lost touch with the Berliners I had befriended.

Then, in 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union, introduced his policy of "Perestroika" (restructuring) and "Glasnost" (openness), and created conditions that eventually led to the demolition of the Iron Curtain.

In August 1989, Hungary took Gorbachev’s cue and opened its border with Austria. Thousands of East Germans fled via that route to West Germany to start a new life. What happened next is an interesting story. Faced with pro-democracy demonstrations in East Berlin, a government spokesperson announced that restrictions on travel to West would be lifted. From when, asked a reporter. According to media reports, the spokesman hesitated, fumbled and said, "Immediately, without delay".

That was the end of the Berlin Wall. They demolished it with a vengeance.

A year later, in October 1990, I went back to Berlin to report on the reunification of Germany. Where there once were slogans of Marx and Lenin on billboards, there was the Marlboro Man. The currencies of the two nations had become one. The West Germans were frantically stocking the empty shops in the east, and goggle-eyed East Berliners thronged KaDeWe, the Harrods of Berlin. I bought a T-shirt with the face of Gorbachev and John F. Kennedy’s famous line, "Ich bin ein Berliner" ("I am a Berliner").

On the night of October 2, there must have been a million people out in the streets, hugging strangers, singing and dancing. People kept pouring champagne into our glasses as a friend and I walked towards the Reichstag building. A young man had climbed the Reichstag and the crowd cheered as he stripped off his clothes. The church bells were ringing. It was the culmination of a year-long party that started the night the Wall fell.

For the East Germans it was an emotional moment. They were free again. They were also celebrating the end of an era.

I asked a friend from East Berlin (who had managed to escape via Austria) if she ever thought she would see this day. She said let alone the Wall she had had a hard time believing her own escape. She was far too excited about the future, about going to Paris.

Late at night, after dinner with an old friend in the eastern part of the city, it felt a bit strange driving to my hotel in the west, across what was once the "death strip".

I still have a tiny piece of the Wall that I brought back to remember the fall.

Shekhar Bhatia can be contacted at shekhar.bhatia@gmail.com