In India, Love is War..

I have been thinking for quite a long time now to write on this subject.. Quite a long time really.. And in every few days something or other happens that reminds me of this and re-enforces this thought that In India, Love IS a War.

It isn't exactly the love-hate relationship, its more of what I've learned through personal experiences. I dont know about the world, coz I haven't ever stepped out of India. India is where I belong, my heart my soul. I'm proud of the feeling, the feeling that every Indian has, of being an Indian.

India is a country of emotions. They say Indian cricket team also plays with emotions. Indian markets are based on sentiments. Every small little thing here is about emotions, feelings. Yet we lack the basic ability to understand them. I would thank our college, SIIB for making my perspective more clearer on the subject by subjecting us to an MRA camp. We learned there that values are absolute and that one of the values is 'Love'. It can either BE or it cannot. Its simple you can either love someone or something or there is no love at all. There is nothing like thoda sa love or something between love and no-love. It seems a strange thought at first. Thinking it over for sometime makes you realize, its true. And then thinking brings on one more thought that the opposite of love is not hate, its absence of love. Hatred is still a kind of feeling. Absence of feeling is the worst treatment you can subject anyone to.

So, by now we have a rough idea what this post might be all about. But the subject is still untouched. We all know there is something called love. We all might have different definitions and explantions about it, but the essence remains that you care for loved, u feel emotionally attached and to an extent you are ready to sacrifise for your love. In the Indian context this 'sacrifice' has been given the center stage. Love means sacrifice and if you do not volunteer for it, others will make you do so. Isn't it brilliant? I'll demonstrate you more..

Say for instace, you  belong to a particular religion and believe in a particular deity. You love ur religion and your God. You worship him, keep fasts/roza or whatever for him, you call his name in times of dismay and you thank him on your achievements. But lo! This is not all. If you love your God, you need to prove it. You need to prove that you love only your God and that your God is only yours. If you cant, then you are not a true believer. There have been innumerable incidents in India where people have fought in the name of religion. Thousands have been killed ruthlessly so far, in the name of religion. Trains have been blasted, homes burned, all in the name of 'Love' for a religion. Love....?!! Not once, not twice, it has happened so many times, at so many place now that we Indians have gone immune to it and take such issues as just another mishap. Sad..
Not long back, a group of self proclaimed leaders surfaced and formed Khap Panchayats. They are people from same community. Read on a popular site that Khap panchyat imposes its writ through social boycotts and fines and in most cases end up either killing or forcing the victims to commit suicide .All this is done in the name of brotherhood and its honour. In some Haryana villages, the young girls are routinely threatened, abused and killed all under Khap verdicts. It is acceptable for the families to feed pesticide pills to the teenage girls and then dispose off their bodies by burning them without any police records. Makes me wonder where are we headed to..

God (and religion) have been inefficient to create love.. The Godsent parents also are these days misled and they are also failing in creating this precious value called 'love'. Our gurus, the so called social and religious leaders are also caught up between God-ism and Humanity. Materialization, commerialization is killing the very soul of each human being. Will there be any will to love..? Where will that feeling come from? That purity? That bliss?? If just thinking about love can bring so many disturbing thoughts, how would anybody dare to love..??

Long way to go it seems... Or may be, already a long way that we've come..

What is it with Alcohol???

"When the wine goes in, strange things come out" -Johann Christoph Friedrich You must be wondering, my first blog on this site, and about alcohol! ;) Well, thats what precisely even I would have said to myself if I were still in my grad years. But now we are grown up (Atleast, calenderically!) And so, supposedly our thoughts and thinking... My experience with alcohol is as vast as the types of alcohol in the market. I know exactly with what type of drink and at what quantity, a person would blurt out what all things. And let me tell you, this experience is much more enjoyable having being drunk yourself! Ofcourse, you add to the merriment if you yourself are drowned too.. :) I had my first experience with, let me call, 'Alcohearing' during my grad years. The person is most dearest to me (you can make out with the double superlatives... just kidding!). And one of his dialouges, I would never ever forget. It goes like this: "Anki, I vow on the winds blowing below my nose, that I love you and would love you all my life" Thats super romantic! I wonder what does a drink do to the mind to make it work like poet/philpsopher/lover/thinker... Whatever it is, I've always loved the way people express when their outer beings get dissolved in this volatile liquid. There's this saying which goes, "Not everyone who drinks is a poet. Some of us drink because we're not poets." Poet or no poet, there is some subtance in these drinks which gets u stimulated. I hope, science could come out with some invention which would help people retain this state of enlightened thinking... There's other side of the story too. People who drink to drown their sorrows. I pity such people. They dont know a simple fact that sorrows know how to swim.. They'll always come to surface, they'll catch oxygen, and get fumed more. I really should thank my friends, who made me realize this and never allowed me to even smell liqour during my 'not so happy' days. In my short span of learning, I can say this thing confidently, "Alcohol gives a man nothing... it only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost." So drink to your desires, but let not your desires drink you...