Mere Bhai Ki Shaadi

Oh the pain. Not the physical, but the mental. And the physical too.

I love my brother. So do my parents. He is sometimes a riddle, not to be solved. Many times, he is an open book, nothing to solve. Its hard to figure out what his current condition is. He didn’t have his way with his life, or he did, whichever way you want to look at it. He was a merit student, and then he got a good job. However, it was just not the job that he wanted. So, he took the high way and tried his hand. He went all in. Fate called. He lost. We all paid, smiling. Then he smiled at fate, came back home and started at ground zero again. Never complaining.

He got married last month. And I did not care much for it. But my brother was in again. So I did not mind. Now, marriage is shitty business. Because you got to deal with a lot of shitty people. And you got to deal with them for a proper two months. I didn’t have the time. I could take part of the burden only for a couple of weeks or less. So my parents bore it on their aging shoulders. I didn’t have a choice but to watch them struggle when I couldn’t help. When I could, I tried my best to give them some sort of support. As is always the case, it just wasn’t enough. And they were anyways not willing to walk with a walking stick. No, not yet. So, we all struggled, facing insults from people not worth looking at. We fed the whole lot and got it done with. We had some memorable times and enjoyed some of it while it lasted. The marriage was not a disaster. That said, we were relieved more than anything else once it was over. All of us, including my brother.  We learn a lot about people when we need them. Because they cannot conceal anymore. They either show up & help, or they do not. Either ways, you know their true value. And we learnt a lot about people that one week of my brothers marriage. Maybe the hard way, but hey, we are wiser for it now. The only problem left now is that of my brothers. He must become a married man. To bear the weight of knowing that someone is waiting at home for him, so he better not be too late. He needs to keep that job because he will need the goddamn money now.

Every commitment is a little of your independence reduced. Irrespective of whether the commitment is wilful or forced. That is a harsh way to put it, but that is simply a fact, stripped of all words like emotions, family, love and sacrifice. They exist and I am not exception. But irrespective of me or anyone else, it is a fact that, to promise a second of your life to someone else – as much as it is a necessity to live a complete life – is to have a second less to pursue your selfish goals, hence a little less of independence. So those people better be worth the little pieces of you that you are buying them with..

Hate

I get philosophical in situations like these, when the smell of chicken and prawns and meat is all over the neighborhood and I, we, decide to have some rotten Dal and rice for lunch on a Sunday morning.  With mom not being at home, its like we are left to ourselves on a island to live like wild beasts. Eating what we can cook. And we. Cant. Cook.

Its been routine these days. Not the insanity I love about my life. Going to the office in the morning, do meaningful work for poor pay and get back home by 730. Counting time like precious. Counting the hours I can sleep, if sleep at 12 and wake up at 10 minutes more or less to 8. Well lot better than my previous job. But lot worse than where I’d rather be. For me, this is insane. I cant be long doing nothing but what I am supposed to do. Seriously, listen to this routine:

Go to the office. ‘Manage’ a bunch of stupid people and get them to do routine stuff. Try and ignore the office politics, try neither to be a pain in the ass nor a hypocrite. Smile at people when you don’t want to. Listen seriously about stuff you don’t care about. Start talking to new people hoping to find a genuine one luckily. Almost always get disappointed. Obey the boss who knows no shit. Ask him for more pay. Get disappointed. Hurry to in time. Look forward to out time. Open FB, close it, open mail, close it, go out, have tea, come back and bury your face in the jungle of excel sheets. Count your time. It is precious than others think it is. Plan your weekends, which consist of just one day, to cover one group of friends and loved ones each time. Count every hundred as it goes out of your pocket. Listen to bullshit of people saying that you earn so much. Think  ‘what if I have it all to myself’. Think ‘what I can be doing right now’.

Hate it all. 

Not that I live in misery. Don’t need your sympathies.

Ordinary Things to Say.(About Secularism)

I have pretty ordinary things to say. No Discoveries. Nothing Remarkable. Just limited use of common sense*

No. Terrorism doesn’t start and end with Pakistan. It’s a lot more complex than that. There is a reasonable theory that one of the motives behind the Mumbai Attacks was to divert the Pakistani Army from the Afghan borders and to create a crisis between both the nations. The terrorists hit two targets with one shot. They degraded the Indian Government, created fear among the civilians and on the larger grounds they spoiled all the diplomatic advances made by both the governments in the line of peaceful relations between the nations. AL Qaida receives funds from a lot of sources including its own illegal businesses all over the Middle East. So don’t blame Indian government for not slashing down Pakistan. Government is a lot wiser than you. I am not a congress supporter either.

Anyhow, do you know who suffers the most from a terror attack apart from the aggrieved? The ordinary Muslims. They are treated with suspicions and hatred.  India is really secular in a good sense, it never showed hatred and dominance against its Muslims or other minorities. But please don’t change this. Saying that Pakistan doesn’t treat Hindus well is not a good excuse to treat Muslims here without sense.

What the hell is Democracy when you don’t have the right to choose your religion. Make India a Dictatorship or forceful regime before trying to stop people from converting from Hinduism or any other religion (By the way, if a person is accepting cash in exchange for his religion, even that is his OWN decision). Or before telling SRK to stop making his personal comments about his business. Or before banning valentines. Or before stabbing people who want to go to pubs. Otherwise we have no right to blame the terrorists. We are one of them! And if all this is just for one thing called the vote bank, we know how that worked!

Anyhow why in the hell would you want India to be only of Hindus? Why do you want to make other people your subordinates? Is it divine according to some Veda or Bhagavad-Gita? Is that some kind of anti-poverty policy or something? I never said Muslim extremists are right. But that doesn’t make right your stupid ideologies, does it? BJP has its ideology as Hindutva even today with added flavor of “tolerant, inclusive” outlook. My comment is “Tolerate who? Are we talking about animals? And why do we ‘include’ them when they are already one of us? Why should the Musalmans in India remain silent if they want to live here. You have your rights to speak out, why shouldn’t they have their rights?”

Why do you care when someone follows some western culture? English is western. Fucking motor bikes, cars.. all that technology is western! Jeans is western! It Is quite a lifestyle now. Show me one guy in India who is not used to them? Even the priests think it’s cool. We accept jeans and cars as a part of how we live. We don’t go on cattle or horse to a vegetable market! I don’t see many ‘warriors’ wearing Dhotis to work. Then why can’t we take other practices in the same spirit of individuality and accept things as they come. So every goddamn thing you say about invasion of alien cultures doesn’t apply when it comes to you, does it?  No one is taking away your chances of survival by selling you a greeting card. In fact, no one is forcing you to buy it. Just don’t get pissed off at others buying it.

Please live your life however you want to and let others live it the same way. Not however you want to but however they want to.

When you try to argue with a “Just Hindus” enthusiast, all you get to hear is what there is in the History books written by some 60 year old following and filtering everything which went against the Hindu “Innocents”. With proofs of how cruel the other communities were to the Hindu people and statistics of how many people were killed by Muslims in Godhra or Ayodhya. I’ll never say something like that isn’t true. Thousands of Hindus were trapped and killed in rail bogeys just for the heck of it. What I say is its only half truth. The other half, if these guys dared to face, would show that there is equal cruelty on the part of the Anti-Muslims who either acted or reacted in equal evilness killing as many people in the name of God (Hindu God). How in the world would they justify their identity as an Hindu when they advocate Ahimsa which I read no where as the Hindu-Dharma.

I don’t give a thing about gods or religions. Technically I, too, am not a Hindu. Kill me.

*        I am not a Muslim or Congress supporter. Anyhow, majority of Muslims are good people and congress is secular at least in records.