Aikido Incident

By: Tathagata Ghosh (1/9/2008)

Last October, 2008, the Ukrainian Center was packed for the annual Durga Puja festival. This festival celebrates the Indian Goddess Durga, the warrior aspect of the Divine Mother, and the crowd was predominantly Indian.

I was there to organize food distribution for a 1000 people in a temporary tent. My responsibilities includes moving the food from the kitchen, organizing volunteers, managing lines of hungry people, and distributing hot food from enormous trays.

After the people finished their meal, they trooped inside the main hall for the cultural festival. I was not able to find a chair because the hall was packed and the chairs were taken. My wife and I found a low platform to the side of the auditorium where we sat. A few other late comers joined us.

A Bollywood singer was just warming up. The performer was in his element . The crowd was having a great time and getting vocal.

All of a sudden, I heard some shouting and yelling a few rows behind me.

I quickly headed that way, where I found some agitated people. Two individuals were being restrained, each by a couple of people, a few rows apart. These two had some kind of altercation that had led to pushing. I couldn’t tell, but maybe they had even come to blows just before I got there.

One of combatants was short and the other taller. The taller was being restrained by his friends.

As I watched, another man, big and powerful, in a racing jacket and a cap, worked his way between the chairs to the tall guy .

It seemed ‘racing jacket’ was going to attack the tall man. Maybe he was a friend of the short person.

I was in between the rows of chairs and I could barely reach the guy in the racing jacket, who was now a few chairs away, and closing in on the tall guy. He raised his fist to hit the tall guy.

I reached over with one hand, spanning a few chairs, almost unbalanced. My other hand on a back of a chair helped retain my balance. Just as the guy in the racing jacket was unloading his punch, I managed to get one hand in the crook of his elbow. He unleashed the punch at the tall guy, not really feeling or knowing that I had my hand on him. As he hit, I went ‘heavy’ on the inside of the elbow.

You may not know what that means. I’ve been practicing Aikido a few years, and one of the skills I’ve learned is to add and take energy from a person and redirect their attacks.

So, instead of hitting the tall dude in the face, who was completely vulnerable , with his hands at his sides and unaware of the attack, ‘racing jacket’ found his arm strangely stop short of his target. And he was being spun around by a force he could not comprehend.

But now he was facing me. I prepared for the attack which would certainly now be directed at me.

But instead, he looked at me and said something odd. “I was trying to break up the fight” he said. He seemed stunned that he’d been stopped.

I stared at him, trying to understand him.

He repeated, “Really, I was just trying to break up the fight”.

“Go back to your seat”, I said, and ‘Racing jacket’ went back to his seat.

Maybe, he thought the tall guy was the aggressor and that punching him would help in some way. Maybe, the opportunity for violence called to him. Maybe he wanted to get high by punching somebody, or get rid of some anger, or do justice.

‘Ok folks, we’re here to enjoy the music’ I said to the people in the vicinity. Fortunately the Bollywood singer was oblivious to the local disturbance in the cavernous depths and had continued performing.

And it was over.