Taboo or Tomorrow's Truth?

Thou shalt not speak English.
Thou shalt not speak to a person of the opposite sex(Oh God!!)…er… gender.
Thou shalt not wear skirts or pants or anything which our Western counterparts wear.
Thou shalt not enter a mall or a pub, especially women (else we’ll beat the crap out of you.)

These are some of the rules which a handful of wannabe “Prime Ministers of India” want us to follow. Reason? Well, they want to stop the “westernization” of India (whatever does that mean!). They want a ban on the most ridiculous things ever. You have them coming on news channels and with a very serious face, they start commenting on how they feel youngsters aren’t following the Indian culture. And how the sight of a girl and a boy walking together holding hands and speaking English (seriously!) makes them sad, because it is anti-Indian. The moral brigade will beat up innocent girls just because they were in a pub, which is supposed to be against Bharat ki Sabhyata aur Sanskriti, and the Wannabe PM Brigade will support it. According to them, that is Indian culture-bashing up young girls who are enjoying themselves.

So for a moment I give in to their ridiculous demands and say that in India a young, working, unmarried girl should not go to a pub or a mall to have fun wearing indecent clothes (that includes skirts and jeans and t-shirts), children in schools should not study or speak, English, a girl should not see, talk or go shopping in a mall with a boy, pubs should hold a notice saying “Women not allowed”. But will the revised and updated version of Indian culture raise a voice for the girl who gets raped and murdered? Will it stop the men who molest a two year old girl, who doesn’t even know what is happening with her? Where are these men and their Indian culture when innocent men, women and little helpless children are burnt, hacked and slaughtered in the name of religion? Will it do justice to innocent victims like Aarushi Talwar and Neeraj Grover? Will it ever include real issues like education, poverty, population, female foeticide etc? I doubt whether the Wannabes would even comment on these issues.

If men having such thoughts are would-be-PMs, then what is going to happen to our future? On one hand we rejoice and boast about the progress of India, and on the other, a bunch of sadistic men are trying to put everything in the reverse gear and take us back to the Middle Ages. And considering the current voting trends and statistics, they just might be successful in doing so.
Indian culture is not the load of crap which a handful of idiotic politicians make up to get their fifteen minutes of fame. The two points, which are the essence of the Indian culture, are: Secularity and Democracy. But sadly, these two factors are disappearing gradually, giving way to the fake and unreasonable form of Indian culture. Secular India should not have people fighting on religious issues every now and then. Democratic India should not have an average turn out of only 50% during the Lok Sabha elections. I mean, if the trends continue, there might be a time where only 20% Indians vote and form the government and guess who’s Mr. Prime Minister? Our dear misogynist and sadistic Wannabe PM gang leader.

The most important question right now is who the hell are these 50% Indians who are trying to wreck our future? They are no different than the rest. Most of them are educated, employed and intelligent people. But casting a vote during elections is a big waste of time for them. They would rather enjoy their day off and sleep a little extra. A few of them don’t care because they are going to move out of the country and get themselves branded as NRIs, so voting is of no use for them. And the rest of them don’t give a shit. So they are ready to let a few bunch of people decide there future because voting, according to them, is a waste of time.

What they don’t understand is that the only way we can make ourselves be heard is if we choose a government who is willing to hear us out. How long will we keep hurling shoes on ministers to make them hear us? News channels, newspapers, magazines can help by bringing to our notice certain important issue. But at the end, it is upto us to choose a future. It can either be 50% for the favour of fake rotten Wannabes or a 100% for the favour of a happy, progressive and a transparent tomorrow. And the choice is ours. Should we just sit at a coffee shop and bitch about the government and politics, without voting or should we make an attempt to change things by doing the simplest of all things—vote.

Being selflessly selfish

Most of us think of volunteering for active social work or helping someone. It makes us feel good. It transcends us to a different level of happiness. We become great in our own eyes. Yet why is it short lived? The answer is we are eventually human beings. Everything that we do-social work, helping someone for free etc.-won’t give us the feeling of complete happiness until of course there is something in it for us. I am sure most people would get their weapons out and start a war with me; to them I would just say-take a moment and think about it.

I don’t say that I am a saint who goes out of her way to help each and every person she meets. I do that with a few people. And before anyone draws a conclusion that I am selfless, I should mention that after the initial happiness, sometimes, I do not feel very good about it. No, I am not Satan’s ally, neither am I a hypocrite (someone’s laughing). I am a human being. And so being selfish comes naturally to me. It rests in my genes. It flows with my blood.

A person cannot enjoy someone else’s happiness if he/she is not happy himself/herself. That’s the basic human feeling. It happens to the very best of us. If you say you are not one of them, well either you live in denial or you are the happiest man/woman on the planet.

It is as simple as this. You are a student. Your friend too is a student. Together you study for a test. Your friend cannot understand a particular concept. So you, trying to be selfless, stop studying for your own test and help your friend understand the problem. Eventually both of you give the test and your friend scores more than you. Will you feel happy? Yes, you might, momentarily. But after the initial happiness, what do you feel? Regret-for helping out the friend or anger-for being stupid to give up your time for your friend? So where did all the happiness go? It didn’t go anywhere. It did not exist at all in the first place.

We think the selflessness and the happiness exists, but the fact is, it is a mask worn by us to show people how great we are. Only a truly happy and satisfied person will have his real face synonymous to this mask. And in humans, that’s a rare breed. For us, the most important thing is to our own selves. As long as we are happy and content, nothing in the world can deter us. But of course, we are never happy or satisfied. The world we live in does not let us be satisfied. Because the moment a person is satisfied with what he has, he is termed a loser with no aim in his life.

And the irony of the whole thing is all of us know this blatant truth. We know we will eventually regret helping a friend as there is nothing in it for us. But we still do it. We still go out of our way in doing as much charity/social work we can do. Because we all know it’s better to have a mask of a happy person than have nothing at all. Because at the end of the day, even though we feel low and depressed about our failure, we can somehow calm ourselves by taking the credit of someone else’s success.

And that makes us, human beings, the smartest of all creations, sad.