Sarva Dharma Samabhava

Freedom at Midnight by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre was a life altering book for me. It speaks about the partition of India and the ensuing Hindu-Muslim riots which left millions dead, homeless. I had a new found respect for the Muslims who stayed back in India braving the riots, risking their lives.

Argumentative Indian by Amartya Sen was another book I really enjoyed. The basic premise of the first few essays is how the Indian, over the years, has been accomadating the people who visited India through the years be it Portugese, Persian, Chinese, etc and how this feeling is being tampered with by the VHP and Bajrang Dal like organisations who want to make India a Hindu state. He also talks about how the average Indian has always been argumentative which laid the foundation for the Indian democracy after independence.

These two books have made me very conscious of who I am as an Indian, about our diversity and our history. It has made me immensely proud of this country. I love the diversity and our(normally) peaceful nature.

The current book I am reading is called Communal Rage in Secular India by Rafiq Zakaria, (whose The Man who divided India -about Jinnah, I thoroughly enjoyed) is about the Godhra riots. I have just finished the first 2 chapters in which he details accounts of journalists and their witnesses during the riots. Its gut-wrenching to say the least. Some of the victims' accounts are horrifying and you can't help closing your eyes and saying a little prayer for them.

India is a largely peaceful nation, or so I would like to believe, considering the large amount of diversities that exist here. Sometimes, we fail to respect this. We have divided ourselves, according to caste, religion, region or any shitty reason we could give ourselves. Once these divisions are made we love to draw lines and act George-Bushesquely "you are with us or against us". Hindus hate Muslims, Muslims despise Hindus and there is always a rift between people on either side of the Vindhyas.

Another thing Indians seem to enjoy is typecasting people. Brahmins are elitists, Muslims are violent, Tamilians are tight-fisted, Delhites are show-offs, Bongs have egos. We like to castigate all the other communities except ours. We can't stand anyone else except ourselves and our types. A Hindu will think twice before befriending a Muslim but somehow when an Irfan Pathan takes a wicket the whole country celebrates, when Shahrukh Khan is in a movie people throng the theatres to watch him. Are these two guys beyond judgement and their religion? Why is that? Is it because they are famous? Does that change a person? Or is it just that he grows out of his stereotypes once he is famous?

What worries me the most is that we, the educated class, also have such notions. I think being unbiased in next to impossible, but I think it is possible to free of prejudice. Thanks to these few books I have gotten rid a lot of my demons and pre-concieved notions. I am not saying I'm totally unprejudiced, but I know I'm trying.

Hold me, kiss me, thrill me

First of all, a super new year to all of you. I had a super new years' ... spent it in Hyderabad. Thanks to Nitish " the perfect host " Khadiya ( I hope I got the spelling right) we had a super- duper time.

After all the long sessions of drinking and the intense leg-cricket matches, all of us sat down to watch the movie Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi. What a brilliant movie.

There are lot underlying themes and ideas running throughout the plot but the one that hit me the most were the love stories in the movie. Geeta loves Siddarth, who is a revolutionary, and wants Geeta to become one too. Siddarth leaves for the villages to propogate the revolution and ideas. Vikram is a small town guy who just wants to make it big and loves Geeta too. Geeta eventually follows Siddarth and falls into a lot of shit in the village and but continues to love him, instead of taking the easier option out and just marrying Vikram who loves her as much.

This is where my point comes in, is love really this blind that you get so selfless and are willing to forgive anything your partner does. Even in the Unbearable lightness of being by Milan Kundera, Teresa could have easily left Tomas for all his unfaithfulness but she hung on. These kind of stories are not just in fiction even in life I've seen lots of couples just ignore their partners' outright flaws and just going on .

I would never expect my partner to forgive my unfaithfulness, or give up her life and tag along with me because I believe in something or if I ever were to humiliate her or do anything that were to hurt her very bad. Is love really blind?? So blind that we are able to overlook things that we would normally find detestable. So if common sense were to prevail then, love should not be blind. It should be open to each others faults, to correct each other and also so that your partner doesn't land up taking advantage of your ignorance or "blindness" and to preserve one's own self worth. But common sense doesn't have a place in the land of love... if it did we would not have Romeo and Juliet would we???

I am confused (I know I sound it). I guess there is a thin line between being loving and forgiving and being used as a door mat. But I guess like other things in life, nobody knows where the line is... nobody knows when to stop... nobody knows when to stop feeling insecure or begging for the attention we love from our partners.

Love is to be felt and experienced. Everyone wants to be loved, I think that is one of man's biggest weaknesses, whether we want to admit or not. And everyone loves to be loved. I guess its best to just try and explore for oneself and remember that there does exist a line in love, too, that is not to be crossed, a line that keeps love nice and simple the way its meant to be.