Sunday, November 15, 2015

The despicable aloofness of the social animal

I don't understand the world anymore with my rather constrained view on good and bad, on reality and pretensions. All I can say from where I am, is that this notion that sorrow is something that happens only to them, it'd never happen to me, is the first thing that'd ruin whatever is left of this world. But then my thoughts don't count, I am on the other boat altogether, I don't even have an option to dream about things I want, I am just waiting to lose whatever little borrowed happiness I can find in my otherwise barren life, I'd of course be saying negative things.

So, for a while I tried to do what I despise so much, I showed off to the world that even I can be happy. Boasted of having a blast of a Diwali on Facebook, just as I had mentioned in my last entry, I pretended as best as I could. Don't be mistaken, I indeed had a good Diwali, it'd have been equally good even without my showing off. It gets on your head, how many likes, how many comments one is getting. E.g. I have 271 friends on Facebook, and I get between 20-40 likes to my posts. Luckily for me these are mostly selfless likes, I get these without having to reciprocate the act. Some people are very particular, you like my pictures, then only I shall like your pictures. It's a competition of showing off, Facebook is. Hence it is a novel experiment for me in social science whenever I chose to be active on Facebook.

Today, and I guess for a while to come, the trend would be, Diwali remnants, bhai duj remnants, show off, show off, personal occasions, boast boast, oh my cooking skills, oh the food I ate, oh the movies I watched, wait, wait, of course must throw in some solidarity with France (must do my bit, else people are just waiting to misunderstand me and to call me selfish). Ask these "happiness personified" people to picture getting gunned down in the middle of the road while cruising through their "bed of roses" life, they'd retort, "such things will never happen to us"...I, being the unhappy soul, have time enough to sit and think that perhaps Aylan Kurdi's parents must have thrown a party when their son was born...celebrations would have gone on all night, perhaps Syria was not burning yet? Who'd have thought then that they'd see this day?

I have been heartless myself, bursting all those crackers when Nikhu and Badam were cowering in fear. I didn't make any noise, but the flames alone were terrifying for them. But how could I throw away my crackers for their sake? Need to have my share of fun till it lasts...

My grand parents came to India as refugees. Before it happened, I am sure they never thought it could be a possibility. One aunt of mine, dad's own sister, was lost forever from the camp. Till that time they were rich and powerful landlords who wouldn't have ever thought that any disaster could probably affect them.

Every act of threat and sacrilege scares me. The Ebola epidemic scared me. The lynching of a single person in Dadri, all because of his alleged food habit, repulsed me. My religion forbids me to eat beef, but when I did taste it, I found it ok enough and had no qualms about eating it again. Let alone a bomb attack, I cry for every bit of heinous crime and mindless accident that happens on this earth. You see, I have the time because I don't have a life. They say riots are man made things, terrorism is a man made act. Damn it all, religion itself is a man made concept. Money, power, color of skin all are bloody man made double standards. See where these notions have brought us now. Today someone would kill, tomorrow the same person condemns terrorism. And we are not disgusted, we clap, because these are the leaders we have chosen for ourselves. In fact who has the time to choose a proper leader? One is way too busy with one's own life.

Since I'd probably never be able to give birth to a child, I feel so very protective about the entire world. Live in peace so long as you can live. The world is heating up anyways beyond control. Huh, fight and win over a world with frail and sick children, broken people, which gets destroyed the very next day under nature's wrath. Is that what anybody in their right mind can probably want? I wonder.

And for God's sake when would the world stop being so self-centred and so depressingly pretentious in the name of being social? Nobody needs fake solidarity, if possible think that this might really happen to you as well.

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