As an
armchair bloviator, I’m going through a period of fictitious existential crisis,
i.e. whether to do a ghar wapsi – a reconversion to Hinduism - or to go back to
college.
Ghar wapsi appears to be a safe option in the current environment. There
are lot of things in favour of that option. Let me elucidate here, as Scat Cat
says in Aristocats. The factors in favour of the first option include dodgy videos
that could feature you, guy on TV with loud voice, the best police force in the
world, lawyers, phone calls that can scare even old seadogs, squares who want
their kid to go to cultural universities for education (unlike them), etc.
When you have these
many forces arraigned on one side, you want to play it safe and be on that side. Imagine the
best police force on earth – the Delhi Police (DP). How do I know? The DP chief
(whose term got over a few days ago) himself told that on TV. He said DP is
even better than NYPD. He had been to New York and was not impressed by NYPD.
Need proof DP is the best? Some months ago, they received a distress call that
a group of mallus were secretly eating beef. Within seconds a platoon was at
the site kicking some beefy mallu ass. Even NASA has confirmed this. Mallus had
to prove their innocence (an ancient DP custom – people are guilty until proven
innocent).
Coming to lawyers - the term, in pre-Vedic Sanskrit, means “people
who take the law into their own hands”. You wouldn’t want to rub them the wrong
way. They make their own rules. And the DP outsources some of their kickass projects to them.
Then, there are the right-minded people. The biggest factor. Regular people, people who probably
were counting condoms back when they were in school, but became squares when their kids started going to school and they came into some
money. These are people you definitely don’t want to offend. Many of them only
recently found their middle class alter ego, which is quick to pass the death sentence on,
or exile to Pakistan, anyone that they are instructed to dislike. They are the
nation. The nation doesn’t want to know the minutiae. It wants only bullet
points, in bold capital letters.
Many of the members of this nation are
nostalgic of the good ol’ days, when their ancestors knew their places in
society. When some of their grandparents were taking bath in the temple pond
and going in to pray, some other grandparents were hanging around far outside,
bare boobs and all (because they didn’t pay their boob tax). Oh, those were the
days. Their aim is to return the nation to its former glory, cleansed of alien
concepts such as democracy and free speech.
Did Chanakya, with that icy look of
his, ever talk about democracy or free speech? No. He talked about powerful,
autocratic father figures who make intellectuals and anti-nationals poop in
their langots. We finally have reached that stage of development, which countries like Saudi Arabia had reached much earlier. The
authoritarian father figure is now there, whose chest size we know. With this new
parameter in place, I can only imagine sleazy British tabloid headlines if a woman
becomes the premier –“New Indian PM; 36-inch Rack”. Anyway, if at all I go down
this path, I think I’ll join the upper-est caste available, y’know, the crème
de la crème of castes, whichever that is. I am not interested in being a Mala, or
just an Iyengar or a Nampoothiri. I want to know who was at the top of the pile
that came out of Brahma’s mouth and I want to join them. There is a small
issue. What would I tell my kids, who are registered as having no religion at
their school? (They’ve recently started showing interest in Dinkoism).
Now the
other option, i.e. to go back to college or not? This is very tempting. It’s always cool
to be a student - bunking classes, playing cards, smoking, drinking, counting condoms, singing
songs about freedom (Aretha Franklin in the Blues Brothers). Again? You want to do all that again!?
Well, those slogans are kinda catchy. Infectious, in fact. Can I? No? I’m too old? OK,
then I’ll settle for Scat Cat (Everybody wants to be a cat).
