goldenboy

“That’s what bothers me about India the most, the resurgence of fundamentalism. Any excuse to get rid of your neighbor who doesn’t share your faith is a good enough excuse.”

-Khushwant Singh, writer of Book- Train to Pakistan

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The dramas of human interaction, the games people play, the holy alliances (read groups), the sacred friendships, the simmering hatred in hearts, the crowning of the beautiful, pretty and attractive & the envy that they attract, garlands for a few and a cold treatment for the less glamorous- the corporate can be a test of fire for a person who would like to see the world as a place of fair play and equal opportunity.

So each time that reality hits me hard and gets on my nerve, I have a tough time dealing with the strong feelings that well up within me as reactions to my new corporate environment. At times I strike out, and in the end find myself being one of the herd. At times I hold back my anger, and end up feeling choked with the poison of reaction that was contained within.  

-x-x-x-

I stayed away from this very world for almost 2 years. Some place, I believed, there was that perfect world, that Ethiopia I had dreamt of as a teenager at college. The perfect world.  

When all the time I did know that the real world outside was different, nowhere near the Ethiopia I wanted it to be.

-x-x-x-  

At times, I wonder how good if I get circumcised. Then I think of the repercussions of this in event of Hindu- Muslim riots. Nowhere in the world perhaps, it matters as much in India whether you still have that foreskin, as Khushwant Singh says in one of his novels.

This is the country where people are burnt alive in trains. Where the chief minister then orders the police to lock up Moslems in their very homes and then burn them alive as the entire building is set up on fire.  

This is a country where a police officer gets a gallantry award for a fake-encounter in which an innocent is killed in the name of a terrorist. This is a country that does not honour its side of promise of a UN plebiscite and continues to repress the people of a State- Kashmir, which has not seen any development in years and where the youth has been forced to take up arms against the government for a separate state.

Massacres continue in Sudan, the Tutsi tribe is crushed in Rawanda, Serbian Moslems are killed right under the nose of UN troops.  

Where is fair play in this imperfect world, Suresh? What do you expect inside the four walls of your corporate world, when the world outside continues to burn in hatred and ignorance. Where nationality rules over patriotism, where selfishness is called modernity, where ignorance is masked in rhetoric.

I tell myself, choosing not to participate in this world is Cowardice.  

-x-x-x-

A close colleage at work, Mrs.Kaur tells me that I am bluntly honest and that really hurts people around. She wants me to drop the anger from my honest statements, so that they don’t hurt. I wonder how would I do it.

She advises me to drop hatred that wells up in my heart often for a certain person at work, and I tell her I am not a saint and that my dislike is justified though restrained.  

I try to read Sukhmani Sahib ( the book that confers peace to one’s mind) and find that it fails to reconcile my mind to peace, and only attracts me away from my polytheistic faith toward the idea of a single, all-loving God.

And ironically as it might be in the post-9/11 world scenario, in a country where your life depends on whether you have a foreskin on your dick… I find myself attracted to Islam.  

And Yogesh, as I always do, I cannot apologize as profusely as I want to, for being myself.