Flashback

Written when I was younger, but it still makes a point, unlike what i come up with nowadays. Who'd have believed it ???!! In the Organisation of Life, i must be the Pointy Haired Boss, rising to absolute incompetence with age :)

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As I read the paper or when i glance at the news-at-eight a strange terror strikes me deep. I wonder what i'd do if I were confronted by a mad mob determined to murder anyone not their own. A mob which fuelled by religious sanctions, rapes and kills. A criminal mob driven by politics and fascism. Maybe I would cower shamefully and submit and beg them forgivance or owe them allegiance.
As an Indian, today I'm entitled to kill in the name of religion. In good style I can also fulfill all my other satanic urges, humiliation, rape and arson. Someday soon our dodo impulse might possibly lead to gender based cleansing. All the men trying to kill all the women and vice versa. That is not a very absurd thought considering that extreme atrocities which affected either, or rather, all sides in Gujarat have been accepted by most of us, without more than a shudder or a public squeak. I have the birth right to be extremely xenophobic. I think i'll first eliminate the muslims, then the christians, then the sikhs, then maybe the subsects within the hindus itself. In fact i'll eliminate snotty nosed children and oily haired bus travellers also to make sure things turn out aesthetically comfortable for me.
It'll be such a long and satisfying scalping...one after the other, forgive me if i've forgotten anyone. In the end I can sit and watch the ruins. I think it'll be a nice and unique picture. Saffron and green can mix into a very exciting blood red.
I want today to leave this country. I want to leave it because I'm scared, scared of what it will do to harm me, scared of what it might make me. Leave it or make it disappear. Make the blinding bright shades of saffron and green disappear. A few years ago, a younger me was very thrilled when i felt patriotic surges as i heard the National Anthem. Today I am drained, without feeling, even ashamed at times when I begin to think that being an Indian is one of the few identities i have left.
Maybe we could drop these calling cards of being hindu, sikh, muslim, brahmin, christian, dalit, adivasi, communist, malayalee, maharashtrian, bihari, pakistani, indian. Maybe we can just be human. But that would be a Utopia and i would have wasted your time. The point is.. today I just want to be left alone. By everyone made dangerous by defined boundaries like belonging to "X class" or "Y caste". All of these killers and hatemongers have 2 legs and 2 hands, the same as me.
I'd much rather fight purple hued aliens or 14 legged killer ants. There would be dignity in that.