sushupti

Consistency is one quality that we Indians are consistent about. Our apathy to our history is now a stuff of legend: that we had no clue that Aśoka existed until the Britishers told us so. While such lapses of memory might be incomprehensible to those outside the subcontinent, the explanation is trivial for those of us going through the daily drama. With a billion people every where, who has time for the long dead? But what about the living? While the Israelis are an example of bringing back a language from its grave, we are the example of the opposite. Forget Sanskrit, what about our present languages?

Obviously there is never a rant for nothing. Today’s rant has its origins from a link to an article by Chandrahas Choudhury. And yes, consistency. Once again, it’s a Westerner who is trying to shake our apathetic souls into action. To act before we forget our languages.

Unfortunately, most of us are too obsessed about the perceived insults/denigrations that we almost never listen to what we are being told. In this case, we have been failing to realize that these academicians are interested in our literature, a lot more than we are. It’s insulting, probably. But it definitely is stupid on our part to get angry that they are misinterpreting our literature without having read that literature ourselves. Does it really matter if their interpretations do not agree with our sensibilities, us who do not even bother reading our own literature before forming our prejudices of what our literature is about? For the past couple of centuries we Indians have been gradually compromising on our own past for our survival. Till the generation before us, there were acceptable excuses. What about us? What about the generations immediately following us? Are we going to put a stop to this slide away from our our identity? Do we have it in us to say, “Thus far, and no further”?

acedia

I think I am a fool. A fair case can be made of that, I think. Not in the grandiose sense that most of us fantasize about– like those crusaders for ideas that are ahead of their time etc– no, I think my foolishness is of a far more basic nature. Something that is trivially comprehensible, and hence, possibly the silliest.

A case, as an example illustrating this foolishness, is this incident during my +2. One fine day early in the morning, I felt like skipping the tuition class because I wanted to take a day off from getting drenched in the rain and pushing that stupid moped of mine through the rain for a couple of kilo-meters before even the Sun got up. I did. The next day the lecturer wanted to know why I skipped. He wanted to know if I was ill. I said NO. To this day I am not sure if I answered so because I believed that two wrongs don’t always make a right, or if I was lost in the logical maze that was the way out of the perceived wrongs… whatever I was honest, not in the bragging sort of a way, but in a sheepish way. The lecturer, in what I still consider to be a reaction a load of parsecs away from what would’ve been commensurate with my behaviour, possibly feeling that I was being insubordinate I am sure, told me that it is better that I stop attending the tuition if such were my attitude. I couldn’t figure it out on that day, I don’t fare much better today either. What confounds my sub-social intelligence is that I might be alone in limited company in so far as offering ‘laziness’ as an excuse is concerned, and that too, often. I find it strange that people can cite reasons for most of their actions. Most people, that I know, are irritated when I admit my laziness rather than think of some excuse. And I find it stranger.

I stopped attending that tuition. And that was not the only occasion that I had to give up something for such a reason. I don’t know if I regret that. It was not the last time. I don’t now if I should regret that.

BigBrother

“How inconsequential, and desperate, has Britain become in today’s world?” is a question that not many even bother to ask. Yes, that’s how bad it is for that kingdom that once challenged the Sun to set on it. How bad can it be when your foreign secretary is so spectacularly jobless that he is going around with a junior MP of your ex-colony that you are desperately trying to put down just so as to stay in the news? What’s worse, it’s not even election time in India! For a country that forgot it’s own vocabulary, I wonder how low is low enough for them to realize that they have passed miles beneath the lower bounds of decency and are deep inside the realms of shamelessness.