Randomness in Six Bullets

• The big hullabaloo of elections in my city ended on a very apprehensive note. Though on one side, I thoroughly enjoyed watching our very dear Sheila Dixit wear a glum face and utter 'Hum to bevakoof hain na', the nail biting competition between BJP and AAP did not come to clear end. It is hard to bear the curiosity any further, which is why I feel a little frustrated.
• Remember a year ago, I wrote about one of my classmates getting married? Well, the O-Em-Gee news is that she gave birth to a baby boy, a couple of days back. Extremely fertile, no doubt and I remember one of my blogger friends warned me of this day. I had never thought it would arrive so soon. My classmate!!! She is married and a mother of a boy. A mother, I repeat. And I am just Twenty One.
• How do you respond when one fine day you open your Facebook account and find 78 notifications from an acquaintance who has liked raided your profile and albums completely??? #creep >.<
• The Supreme Court has highly disheartened me and many of my fellow Indians today. It was nothing less than a shock to read about the latest judgement which has criminalized homosexuality. What in the world is wrong with the Apex Court?? It's such a shame that in my country marital rape is legal while consensual sex between two adult homosexuals is not.
• Coming back to the virtual world, I don't know why most people on Facebook are so engrossed in making their personal comic strips which is nowhere near to being hilarious. I don't think it is too hard to understand for a man of average intelligence, how lame these Bitstrips are. I'm being cynical, yes and I like it.
• I have started watching the series 'Game of Thrones'. Wanted to know what the fuss was all about and also because imdb has rated it 9.4. So far it has kept my interest intact.

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P.S: Iloveyou for being a reader of Mirage.
Happy 11-12-13.

A Shame.

The veins have become achingly black and numb. The pain in the mind as well as in the soul is desperately hunting down a way to vent it out. This air that I breathe, that I'm taking in involuntarily, brings along the cries of those two withered souls. It brings along the whispers of those who were nothing but thick-skinned mute spectators,  who stood there, right there in front of them and indulged in extended conversations instead of covering the victims with a piece of cloth. Of the three PCR vans which were busy fighting over the jurisdiction for the case while they both lay in a pool of blood, on a chilly winter night. And above all, of those who are but demons in guise of men and who have wrenched the mind of every citizen with their gruesome and heart-aching act.

All such people, everyone, not just the accused, have blotted the term 'humanity' for me and for us. They have ruptured the small, little, tiny yet strong assumption which we had that 'we walk among respectable people and that the society wouldn't eat us alive'. They have ruptured it oh so badly.

It's such a shame.

Goosebumps? Ah..they have become a settled part now. The appalled and frightful look is losing its shade and sadly turning into an expressionless dead face. A face which is an overt portrayal of shame and disgust. An expression of helplessness which perhaps every woman in my country is wearing right now.

And yes, in the end, it is the society which has died. The beliefs. The values. The perception. The patriarchal norms. The blame-the-girl looks. The look-down-upon-her behavior. Everything! Everything has been crushed to death, along with that young brave girl. Because this time, it is so not about just that one girl. This time it is not like change-the-news-channel-and-move-on-with-your-lives. This time, it is about me, you, your sister, your wife, your mother and your daughter.

As this time, the nation cried!

#Iamtotallyfreakedout.

Crazy things have happened lately. I came to know about a very devastatingly shocking news that an old batch mate of mine is getting married this November. I cannot put into exact words how I felt and why I gulped down my tongue, let alone saliva, on confronting the news. It was HUGE. (Just capslock was not enough, you see.)

The girl is, by birth, a year older to me. But this fact did not bring me any morsel of relief. I was paranoid for the whole day. Not that it is any wrong of her to get married. It's her life after all. What worried me was to digest the realization that we both were classmates, once upon a time. So if she is getting married then that means I have really grown up to the age where people get married.

And if this thought was not enough to ruin my day, my mother stepped in to make it worse. Being abso-effing-lutely dumb, I told the news to my mother, not taking note of the possibility that it could ignite a similar thought in my fickle-minded mother's head. So here comes the bigger part. She, very politely, presented the thought, which according to her was flawless. And it was to get her sweet little daughter (Me, you dumb ass!) married to some pretentious douche, AS SOON AS THE GRADUATION IS OVER.

#WTF.

I so thank god for having been blessed with an uber smart and caring elder brother who came to my rescue that day and not some guy on a white horse. (Taylor Swift has surely stained some pure innocent minds.) He gave my mother a good lecture embellished with reasons on why I shouldn't be forced to get married while I, during the whole drama, was running after Frodo for he had some unknown object in his mouth (And I don't know why Mr. Frodo is staring at me right now, all drenched. Is it raining? No, I think he has taken a bath.. .Finally!)

Though the good talk between my mother and brother came to an end, I have tiny little teeny weeny embers of the fiery thought flying in my head. They make me think that do my parents too believe in the age old cliche that we girls should be given to another family as soon as we step into our twenties? I am aware of the fact that they can't go against my wish or they can't force me. But what if I cave in to their wishes and demands out of societal pressure? Out of pressure of my whole khandaan (clan)? What if?

#Shudders

P.S: 1. If you find me babbling anywhere in the post or throughout the post, then not my fault because like I said I am totally freaked out. :P
2. I came to know that some xyz Punjabi aunty developed an interest in me for some guy in her family owning a BMW. Yes, that was his qualification. Huh! >_<
#Pretentiousdouche

Hypocrisy Is In Our Veins.

Few days back, I was talking to a friend of mine (she's actually my roommate) about how India was a very broad-minded country and how its thinking was narrowed down because of the Mughal rule. Every time I think about it, I find it hard to believe that my ancestors were cool about love and sex. And here I'm talking about the era much much much before the Mughal Empire and before all that nonsense of pardah-system came into being and before a woman was treated not just as a piece to be protected and kept inside the four walls but as a symbol of Shakti.

Have you ever visited Ajanta Ellora caves or observed its carvings? Have you noticed how explicit they are apart from being one of the most amazing archaeological sites in India? Or Kamastura-a book written by Vatsyayana, an Indian. Or even the ‘Shivling’ which is a symbol of deity of Hindus i.e., Shiva and which represents the inseparability of the two genders and creation of life. Although our very own culture gives a divine nature to sex, we treat it as immoral. Ironical indeed.

Now let us come to the no-love-before-marriage cliché.

Love is something very godly. Yes? But we Indians have a different theory. We do find it divine but when it comes to our own children falling in love with someone else’s children we close our eyes and ears and go into an I-will-not-use-my-mind-no-matter-what mode. According to the views of our parents and their parents and so on, a person is selected for us and we are told to fall in love, marry that person and have sex with that person, procreate 3-4 children and make a happy family and lead a happy life. Wow! Such a well mechanised ideology. Huh.

Further, girls can hang out only with girls and boys can hang out only with boys till they are married off. A spark of doubt is ignited in their heads,the moment we tell our parents that we were with a friend of opposite gender.

And yes, how can I forget one more important notion which says that the seed of love can never sprout before marriage. It is a shame and should be crushed immediately if it does because the ideology tells us that it’s wrong. A spinster and a bachelor cannot fall in love. It is a slur. It is immoral. Ask them a reason and they will come up with ‘Tumhari abhi padhne ki umar hai’ (You are young and you should just study) or ‘Hum badhe hain, hume zada pata hai’ (We are elder to you, we know better).

Logic? Uhh...What’s that?

Sometimes I wonder that these simple things of life would have had an entirely different meaning if I were born in a nation of deep-seated and radical ideology, where I would have had freedom to not just SURVIVE on others’ terms and conditions, where this famous line ‘Do what your heart says’ would actually have carried some weight in my life and where people would have used their minds before using what had already been implanted in their heads by their ancestors.

“Only animals are told what is to be done and how it is to be done. We are no less than animals if we don’t use our brains.”, Divyank told me today.

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How impossible

It is to live on our terms.

Damn! Hypocrisy.

*****

The above Haiku has been written for the prompt #89 - Haiku Heights

Image source - deviantart