The Curse of Being Indian

Wow. Initially this was meant to be rant on the whole bias of calling people from Delhi arrogant and generally uncivilized. Then halfway I decided it had to be the whole South vs North thing.

By the time I reached home though, I finally seem to have understood one thing. It’s an Indian thing.

We’re all royally screwed.

Kindly realize at this precise moment that this isn’t a specific rant. This is well…fuck that. Let me talk about what’s driving me insane.

It began with this. I read this guy’s post on the whole Metallica concert in Gurgaon turning into a riot. Found the link on Twitter but had heard a few rants on Facebook as well. At that time I shrugged in that familiar Indian way. Plus I saw this video of the riot at the event. Lame by our usual standards?

It’s India man. Shit happens.

Then I heard people talk about how Delhi can’t host these things anyways. Uncivilized animals. Hooligans. I sighed again.

I’ve heard those before. Many times.

But when I read the above mentioned post, some weird type of anger started building up.

Them racist jerks! Manhandling our people! Just because we are a 3rd world country? The comments as usual were extremely supportive to that cause. People just rioted cause they were pissed at the management. The media as usual sucks. Government is useless. Country is messed up. A lot of talk about DNA had me confused until I realized that was the name of the event management firm.

Who the fuck calls their company DNA?

But soon every inch of me started loathing everything. India is so beyond repair. Corruption, crime , reservations , terrorism and related headlines. We either kill ourselves while fighting over God or others who actually don’t believe in God shred us to pieces in his name.

The usual emotions during such an event right?

We are so fucking used to getting used to stuff!(grammar mistake?) My head explodes with the instances of the amount of times I’ve told people about how great India is but how we ourselves destroy it. I’m an idealist someone once told me. I expect people of such a huge and vast diversity to live happily together as a bunch of siblings.

Quarrel? Yes. Hate, NEVER!

Stupid me I guess.

I am of South Indian lineage but I was born and brought up in the North.

It is not enough that I was born in India.

Of all places, Delhi. Surrounded by people from just about every corner of the country. No differences. I think about how as kids we played cricket in our apartment. We broke windows and we ran. We hid together as the owner shouted expletives into thin air. We were caught a few times. But we took the abuse together and swore mutiny and promised revenge once the elders were out of hearing range.

I remember when I first talked to my parents about not returning to India.

“It’s so perfect here. Everything’s perfect”

Too perfect I now realize. I’m not used to cops arriving inside 2 mins of an emergency or a cars that make way when an ambulance approaches.

I am part of the filth that my country is infamous for. There is no permanent place for me here. I cannot settle. I am one with the dirt.

I loved the World Cup. Not just because we won, but because we all just molded together. No states , no previous arguments. Everyone forgot everthing as long as we won.

WE.

Pessimistic? Cynical? Refuses to see India’s bright side? Nah you idiot. I see it.

But isn’t it a bit too dim my friend? And is everyone really getting it or are only a few basking in it?

You know what really gets to me. I see videos of the rioters in the concert. I see similarities in the riots in London , the ones in Vancouver(Canada) and even River Plate(Argentina). All these people have one thing in common. They’re all fucking SAD. Not in the “emo” way or other variants of the word now so common online. The real sad. People who are just so tired of how things just never seem to work and how it’s all so wrong.

You may add deviant, malicious and hormonally charged to that list. True, vandalism is disgusting and in no way do I approve of it simply because it’s the innocent who end up being victims of this form of anger. I simply find that emotion equally responsible for such things.

Over reacting? I shouldn’t be bothered I suppose. Worse things happening all around. Economy is rising right?

Anyways, it’s over now. Do the usual shrug and forget this incident. Small incident. Just a band.

It’s India man. Shit happens.

The curse of being Indian is to be born in paradise and yet stare at it’s destruction hopelessly.

Had this song on loop while writing. Blame them for this.

Where is our Robin Hood?

P.S Er..to those offended by the profanity that I don’t tend to use often(at least while writing )..I’m allowed one rant right?

Idealist signs out.

Remembering 9/11

Originally posted by me here

9/11 has to be part of the Oxford Dictionary for sure. I mean, Google made it and the last few years have seen the literary geniuses who edit and monitor the “Bible” of word meanings add words that range from ‘sexting’ to ‘OMG’ and ‘LOL’. (read  more here). I say simply that simply because I assume that the rational our pundits applied was the “high impact or increased usage” of the word. 9/11 did more than that. It had an aftershock which would change the very fabric of the world system.

For the Martians in the crowd, 9/11 refers to twin plane crashes into the World Trade Center buildings on September 11,2001 (9/11 see?). It was the brainchild of our now dead (or  alive) psychotic Islamist pseudo-God, Osama Bin Laden. That is all for you guys. Now back to the rest of the poor homo sapiens who are all too familiar with this weird smirking guy we all have seen on TV for almost a decade now.

So what was the first reaction? For me, the first thing I remember sitting at home in India was the newspaper headline, “America Attacked!”(Creative eh?). For 9 year olds like me, the whole kill people to prove a point theory the above mentioned psychopath propagated was a bit beyond what my brain could process. In the coming years though I would see first hand examples of how twisted people can actually get in the form of communal riots, strikes and political wars. But that is common in some form or the other in most parts of the world today.

On a global scale,2 different types of changes spread. The first was the more obvious and required change; security measures around the world. Airports  have been at the receiving end of many who think their new measures invade privacy. A few cases here and there have been a bit twisted but its better to be manhandled than be blown  up in an aircraft right? I mean, that is the best we can come up with in these situations. I mean people must realize that not everyone is either travelling for pleasure or business. We now have to keep in mind that there are those with simpler motives which include either taking hostages, recording videos wearing black masks and AK-47′s or even crashing an entire plane right through a building. The reason? A bunch of repetitive religious gibberish.

Security cameras deserve a special mention. Structures from embassies to high schools adopted these “monitoring” devices so as to ensure everything was under control. For some I would agree these were required but in schools, this simply encouraged any hormonally charged rebellious teen to find the camera’s blind spot and then grin maniacally at his/her achievement.

The second and more disheartening change I observed was the rekindling of the War over Religion. In India, most people built it up as a Muslim vs Hindu fight while the rest of us Christians, Sikhs, Jains and other minorities got involved once in a while. We didn’t need 9/11! We Indians have been happily hacking against each other for so long now! Everybody swore revenge at everyone while everyone else died. A vicious loop of insanity, murder, insanity, blood, insanity and insanity ensued. No, insanity did not paste itself on its on the other words. I guess I’m among those naive people who don’t understand the whole revenge theory and its various benefits. The sad part though was that it religion that once again was the main “motivator” for the violence. A quote for the uninitiated:

“Delusion arises from anger. The mind is bewildered by delusion. Reasoning is destroyed when the mind is bewildered. One falls down when reasoning is destroyed.” -Bhagavad Gita

The blood of the innocent have no reasoning.

In America and other parts of the world , an Islamic hate wave spread. Korans being burnt and anti-Muslim protests spread like crazy. Extremely intelligent folks started branding all Muslims “terrorists”. Sikhs in some parts were attacked cause they looked like “fuckin’ Arabs! ” Ignorance and intolerance that was primarily born out of fear spread to many places across the world. Even some Christians, most recently the maniac in Oslo , considered this to be a war on Christianity of some kind. People of an entire religion were blamed for a crime done by fanatics who are more ungodly than anything else that has ever stepped onto the face of this earth.

In the issue of Islam, I have talked to only a few Muslims in my life but through them realize that they too hate these diabolic nuts like hell. The damage caused to their faith is huge but they realize that people react because they too are deluded by certain sections of the mainstream media. But the truth is, people are not as intolerant as we think. During my stay here, I’ve met a certain section of Americans who seem to understand that terrorism has no faith or alliance of any kind. The perception of all Americans being fat-bellied rednecks who spit out racial slurs at the speed of light is just another stereotype that all races face. Ignorance born out of fear.(While talking about stereotypes, check out this hilarious  song by YouTube’s highest subscribed channel)

So what did 9/11 teach us? That man nobody is safe as long as we stay curled up pretty inside our own comfort zones and keep wishing that everything just goes away on its own. The world can no longer function under the perimeters of individual nations. It begins on an individual basis when people start with the simple yet so uncommon “respect” situation. You might not necessarily like somebody’s opinion or their outlook but that does not give you the right to discriminate. Intolerance lays the seed for discontent and snowballs into something worse. Till the point that you think the other person is right inside their own confines and it does not interfere with the well being of other humans, we must learn to love and respect them. That however does not mean we empathize with those who in the name of falsified doctrines turn to slaughtering people. I guess as  a Christian I am supposed to say that forgiveness is the way forward. But I personally believe that those who intentionally take another’s life for no fault of the victim’s, then they lose the right for their own.

We can’t always stare and wait for time to mend things, can we? If injustice has to be wiped out, we must first try and change things in our daily lives. Not by a raising arms, but by initiating dialogue. Discrimination of any kind, be it race, origin or religion, must be destroyed. We are only strong as a community because individuals can be wiped off easily but a force made of peace loving humans is too hard to diminish.

“All the problems of the world could be settled easily if men were only willing to think. The trouble is that men very often resort to all sorts of devices in order not to think, because thinking is such hard work.”- Former IBM President Thomas Watson

There are some who say 9/11 cannot be compared to the atrocities that have been rampant in so many countries for so long or that the actions taken by the American government after the war were simply outrageous. There is truth in those statements and that is disputed. But what has to be remembered is that it is only after 9/11 that people started viewing these matters as  a global problem instead of local happenings. 9/11 opened our eyes to the bloodshed  that has been existed for so long now. It was our awakening to the cries of those who died while we slept oblivious to their pain.

People are still dying. The most recent being the blasts in Delhi on the 7th of this month. With each attack, our desperation and frustration reaches a new level. How can we unite under one banner if more of us keep getting blasted apart like mannequins at a shooting range!

So remember 9/11. Remember the fact that for so long the world has always been on the road to destruction simply because people were just too scared to join hands together as one. Never before has the need for a united spirit among us humans been so high. The Arab Revolutions of 2011 have been the first indicator of people trying to rid themselves of the old order. Change will come but only when those who seek start changing themselves.

Our freedom can only be won together.

Alan Jackson’s beautiful song in memory of 9/11
http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/gPHnadJ-0hE?rel=0

How about not caring?

Funny. Real funny. 18 years on this weird planet and man, I feel so enlightened. Everyday i see people my age talk with the supposed knowledge of war veterans. A complicated and sophisticated aura surrounds most wise men of this age. Every seems to have figured out life and seem smug about their achievement.

We are all so full of shit.

Just because you can google just about everything doesn’t mean you actually know/feel what it actually is.

Facebook of all places reveals such epic attitude. All you need is an ignorant/abusive/philosophical touch to it and the wise men from across the Facebook world descend upon the status message with more urgency than a g8 summit! Then we have smart words, more ignorant crap until we ensure just about everyone is appreciative about our intellect and abnormally high level of thinking. How do I know this? Cause im exactly like one of the aforementioned idiots.

We are young! What On earth are trying to figure out? The Meaning of life and other related shit?

I can only judge myself(very smart eh). For long I used to think I had this whole globe figured out. I could understand emotions and actions of others. Or atleast I thought I could. I was running in a circle of self deceiving crap.

The one thing I found is that the only way to realize and answer all our secret questions is by not caring . The incredible feel of not worrying about the consequence is so beautiful . The only thing being that you must be true to yourself.

I have started trying it. Its epic.

So that’s about it. The rest of life has a lot of time to be figured out. And even if there isn’t , then man I’m not going to stop and think and kill my brain.

I won’t get that moment again.