Love and Hate

I’m writing this for one: not to forget that I can/ I do write some spiteful stuff. And secondly, to vent out this sense of limitless frustration credited to a harrowing time I have had off late. Some related, some not. My head is such a storm its probably stupid to bind it in words. Stuffed. Stifled. Enraged. Bogged. My head is such a storm with so much of random annoyance that I can’t seem to figure out a structure to this piece that would even start to make some sense; So much that you don’t want me to get started. Or maybe you do, because you all, like half a billion other people in this country, me included, put up with so much of ridiculous shit everyday with no accountability or justification or even a basic wakefulness of shame on the part of the ones we rely on: Government, Brethren or Ourselves.

1. Recent Rambling

The Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corp makes roughly 1.5 rupees as profit for every kilometer it runs which I hardly need to tell (unless you are a complete imbecile), is an awful lot of money. I pay 20 rupees up from my flat to my office and 20 rupees back. It’s a distance just over 8 kilometers at the other end of which I reach my office at 9. Strikingly, I would now have been one and a half hours in traffic, jostling human beings, human-like beings and outright devils, all damned to a fate similar to mine. I deserve better. Enough said..? No! I stand; Almost all the while, almost all the days. I can’t hand over a ten rupee note to pay the bus conductor five bucks. Lest, Lo and behold: the over lord yells, snarls, grins, swears, (farts?) among other gestures repeating the phrase ‘change daena boss’ at least three times to reemphasize his authority and my stature as a monetary retard. All this in return to the crores and crores of rupees we contribute to the exchequer. All this in return to a requirement of paying 20% more tax if you don’t possess a PAN card! Very particular don’t you think. Inflation, Taxes, looting auto-rickshaws with meters as decorations, bribes: Nothing ever seems to get the constructions to finish, the dust to settle, the crowd to diminish, spay the littering stray dogs, calm reckless raging drivers, stop the air to literally stink from the open drains, stop every single day from being a maddening adventure to keep oneself in one piece. And I’m still talking about one of the most ‘cosmopolitan’ cities in the country. How do we manage to put up with all this? Wrong question. Why? Be extra cautious; you might just land up in shit here, in every sense of the word. Not trying to paint macabre images into your head, giving you an objective view on reality; if you didn’t notice you know.

2. Religion, Region and the Rest

I don’t hate India. I’ve been a passionate Indian all my life. I wear blue for an India match: hockey, badminton or cricket. I cheer for Force India, even though there is so little Indian about it except VMallya & NarainK, debated and sometimes even fought with foreign nationals, mostly white guys (no offence) for my national pride. I’ve been a big ass lover of India. I will remain so because I choose so. A bit too passionate sometimes. Although even in a secular country like ours, you sometimes need to wear your patriotism on your sleeve if you are not a Hindu. No No! Don’t give me that! No communal jargon here. I know better ‘coz I’ve been asked once to address my problems to Bill Clinton. I know better ‘coz my parents have been notified, more than once, that their Hindi sucks because well, they are Christian. Yes! To clarify however, both of them are Keralites, or popularly/derogatorily Mallus. So as per me, they can speak much better Hindi than most of Hindi speaking India can speak Pashto, Cantonese or Bulgarian. Dodge this: “Teri Englisss toh achi hogi… tu Christian hai na !” I mean, where do I start to explain things to someone who starts a dialogue with a statement like that? With a punch to the nose?!

I’m a rather dark skinned; malayali Christian who’s lived almost his entire first eighteen years in Varanasi; home to a so called ‘fairer skinned’; demographically Hindu and linguistically Hindi dominated ancient civilization. So word for word, I’m a fairly rare breed, having quite some hands on experience on the famed Indian diversity. The great melting pot of history, today I feel, is boiling to the brink. We have seventeen languages written on every Indian currency note which I once proudly explained to a German who said Germany was an extremely diverse nation. What is pride in an alien land is the source of political plundering back home. Demand for as many as 10 new states presently exist: so much so, one could make a famous, historic, founding father kinda political career out of a regionalist agenda: I don’t even want to get started with religion. I wonder how long it will take them to pillage this nation over region and religion; I hope it takes a wild blue yonder in eternity. But why point fingers at the ones who are always pointed at. We ourselves are no mean replicas of the devil himself. ‘Saala madrasi’, ‘jahil bihari’, ‘UP wale bhaiyya’, ‘a complete behenji’, ‘illad hi rahega’ are perhaps a few examples of a ‘tolerant, civil India’. Although proud of its better faces, it’s a dirty diversity in some ways, which in no measure rises above the level of racism over which the western world is so brutally patronized. In a society which still conforms to castes, religious stereotypes and even untouchabilty, we carry out the worst form of racism. Yeah, I heard you, “Common, no untouchability anymore. At least among educated”. Advice: Google ‘Doms of Banares’ and try speaking to one if you ever get a chance to. It will change your life. No one of the majority of India, dead or alive, can do without him, but no one will treat him human.

I have so much more to stab the rosy picture with. Cinema, respect for history-tradition, sports, language, the Indian typecast, friendship, love, intimacy. I will sometime, when I am overwhelmed again with a fit of rage for a nation I so love.

Bangalore

3March, 2011