Have you ever gotten that feeling? Where you take the newspaper in the morning and you have an overwhelming desire to kill someone. Anyone who thinks contrary to your ideology. I think I’d have killed Modi or Bush hundred times over. Or even our beloved Prime minister. But, I can’t in real, can I? Now, it is not the question of can I or should I, but that of why I should not. I should not because that is not the answer. The same reason why Rang De Basanti is an utter idiotic film in my view. It introduces you to certain problems and the solution is taking the life of a perpetrator. Somehow, it stops us from pondering why people are so. Who elects these leaders? We, the people. Yes, I’m sickened by what we have become and I desperately want to change it. But, who am I? My patrician upbringing has its own limitations. I can type up and post my thoughts on a blog. But the question is whether or not if I’m ready to stop getting just frustrated and actually do something outside my comfort zone. Yes, I know, I’m becoming deafeningly incoherent. But, bear with me. Am I ready to step up to the role I never was brought up to take, but I know in my heart that I have to? This is not a Tata tea commercial, with the guy telling us to wake up, vote, stop corruption. This is about me and several others like me who are awake, vote for the best of the worst and still get an itching feeling that what we do is not enough. I want to kill so many people. But, I shouldn’t because from a drop of blood, a thousand new will spawn. The ideal is to not spill that drop but rather to eliminate the need for spilling. Sometimes I feel that the central problem of humanity is that we have not evolved as much as we make it out to be. We haven’t out grown the primate phase where we had to use physical prowess than the mind. For everything the answer is some kind of force. We push and we persuade and we snatch. Then we blame everything on the weaker side. Ever wonder why there is a conflict? It is such a silly thing to do. I grew up thinking that from space we could see that India actually had the geopolitical boundaries. I thought it was an isolated unit. I could never understand why people would make such boundaries. What was the need? How can we own something that is not ours? If it is ours, why don’t we take proper care of it? I still can’t comprehend why this demarcation is there. This idea is reinforced by anthropology that humans migrated from Africa and developed into different races. History tells us that we never inherited the regions. (Fascists are so lucky they are blind as otherwise this disillusionment would’ve been their end.) Then why should migration be political? That’s the first reason for terrorism. Make the natural resources in any corner of the world available to anybody and the world becomes more egalitarian. Not exactly talking about globalization here. What happens when climate changes happen (natural, not human induced, that is an entirely different topic) and whole populations have to shift? Should they be taxed or be refugees because they happened to live in a particular region? I didn’t inherit my belongings from my parents, because it was never theirs. I didn’t inherit my education. It should be my right, not something that is exclusive to me because I was born into a family with the means to educate me. My only inheritance is my genes. And partly whatever life has taught me. If anything, I should say that I inherited the whole world and all its problems. Reminds me of something my dear Calvin said to Hobbes “ Can I refuse to inherit the world?’. Hobbes replies ‘I’m afraid its too late.’ Its too late. I’ve inherited. So I’ve to deal with it.
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