Honnasiri's Catch

Pride before a fall, they say. The only thing they don't say is how long before the fall. Let's take a case in point. India prides itself on a lot of things. Among those are secularism and a rich & envied cultural history. We're well known for our food,  dance forms,  and indigenous sciences,  among a long list. But what about the pride this fame brings? Unfortunately,  all those who hope that the saying is true are right. It's what happened with Nupur Sharma, Munawwar Farruiqui, Mohammed Zubair and every person booked under IPC section 295A. All of these cases were filed by a random single individual and blossomed into nationwide movements. If the previous sentence doesn't call out the glaring faultline that this pride rests on, and makes it obvious, the next one will.  All it took for statements, addressing the expression of pride, by a free individual to be eligible to be counted as crime is for another such free individual, over-stuff...

Time, despite the inevitable changes, needs a few constants otherwise we lose ourselves, like manners i.e. civility, grace, respect - that age-old value that can seem really old school sometimes. The manners that maketh the man, they say. They also mark the man apart by miles from those people with lesser or, worse, none of this standard. This golden role can be offered no excuse, none at all. The problem, however, arises with the ongoing intense political age where person and politics know no boundaries. Intentional politicking usually involves supporting one side in total, including its bad parts, to avoid the fallouts of the other side(s) in total to achieve the best world possible yet. Depending on how desperate you are for that world, reason starts to fade, irrationality takes its place and you can't make out the difference between the two.  That's when you lose the manners that maketh you. Name-calling, condescending, patronizing and other collectively influenced adverse...

Sometimes it takes what seems like the wrong punch to get the right effect by an expected person - like the recent backlash by many Muslim countries about Nupur Sharma's statements on Prophet Mohammed. Just a disclaimer though: their response is not a complete defense of what many Indian Muslims go through in a stated secular country like India - whether it is by the 1976 assertion of "secular" in the Preamble or the claim that Hinduism is anyway secular making the former unnecessary. The international response is on an equal level to how many Muslims are made to face struggles at home in India. The mirror just flipped. It's all show and no substance, just with a different name.  The countries, which registered their opposition, practice a somewhat equal intolerance of beliefs other than theirs, as does the Hindutva brigade that has been on the rise in the past few months, whose words these very countries have raised an issue with. They, both, have the same cultura...

 India is rife with cultural-socio-moral uncles and aunties who allege that Indian culture is being "threatened" with the cool crowd joining their gang lately. Their list of grievances ranges from Hindu temples being lost or neglected to the mass switch to choosing western food over Indian food. While they may have a case, let's take a deeper look at this threat that they perceive. It has four main stages: the emotional, the delusions, the justification, and the damage. The Emotional We know that sensitivity runs high in India. It's deep in our blood. We're, after all, an emotional bunch. What we're particularly sensitive about status quo. It defines who we are basis our relationship with somebody else. It's like always defining India via the idea of Pakistan, and not what India is inherently without Pakistan. It's our norm which becomes our comfort & soon enough our identity - and then all we know and love (however toxic the idea). The Delusions ...

The way we play politics tends to be magnetic, just like we are inclined to only choose leaders who display a 'magnetic' personality. When we pick either side, we stick to it wearing loyalty on our sleeves until death (or so it would seem). The only sin you can commit is changing sides, just as much you as you can never go wrong by sticking with your side, regardless of what it makes you believe or defend.  You've got to be a team player, or you're no player at all - even if you don't see sense in the strategy. Sometimes, that includes randomly taking one for the team, ironically. This results in diametric opposites in views - boxised versions of how best one's country must be run: capitalism vs. socialism/communism, welfare vs. earned privileges, affirmative action (reservation) vs. society benevolence, and the topic of this article: equality vs. equability . The whole context to this war over ideology is, on one side, the belief that the happiest world is one...

When information overwhelms us, oversimplification is the order of the day - or that is the modern state that we have evolved to (if you'd like to call that modern). We are not capable of the patience of taking in, and keeping every detail, while we build a story that's truly worthy of all of them. That is the unfortunate case with how we react when we most need to, like the Nice killing.  Let's look at the information and calculate the oversimplification. We can, then, get a clearer picture and choose an adequate response.  The Information :  The adherents of extremist belief have decided that their belief ranks above humanity, enough to consider another human worthless (and worthy of death) just because they celebrate other values. One set of sacred values directly, and oppositely, clashed with another like they were sworn enemies to begin with - except that they were not.  It's just the wrong place for both to exist together. The...

The Sushant Singh Rajput - Rhea Chakraborty media fiasco is like the nth lesson in a multitude of social behavior patterns that we refuse to take as a learning opportunity. It's giving us the opportunity not to do what is our most tribal response and rise above it to seek better horizons with better instincts.  Let's do a top assessment of its latest developments, without going into the details. An actor is dead. His girlfriend is suspected. His family and his girlfriend's family start a cycle of tit-for-tat: you speak, I oppose, and is currently in the nth Inception style sub story of that cycle. A state police started the investigation. They didn't move on it. Now with public pressure and a media trial, it went to the CBI. But the frenzy hasn't stopped. The only defense of ot is that all people want is #justice for..  some for Sushant and some for Rhea. They swear by the details that he said this and she said that. The strength in the details, they beg, is in thei...

We've just turned a new leaf in India's history that closed one wound with the building of a temple. Like every other, this one redeemed itself, but in the process, it festered another - innocently, of course. As much as wounds need to be healed, we also need to recognise that it is wounds that cause other wounds in a perpetual cycle that we've set off for generations and decades now. The world has come far, in pain and time, with history repeating itself in bigger cycles than the last, on and on.  Pain inspires justice; by that, I mean vengeance. And that inspires violence, which gives us these wounds. All this is because what we need is healing, and that's the only thing we never seek.  Wounds can be of many kinds - the death of a loved one (or people), continuous cultural oppression, being robbed of identity and/or dignity, preventing people from opportunity, etc. Each wound is, first, personal, then multiplied by the community that feels it. For this, vengeance is n...

It's never wise to throw the baby with the bath water, even if you didn't understand the figurative meaning of the idiom but just the literal. It fits in with a lot of events, especially of late - statues being taken down, cancel culture, objectionable history trying to be changed/addressed. The phrase literally originates when, in days long ago with non-existent plumbing like today, water had to be brought with difficulty and used for the entire family to bathe, before being thrown out. The last one in was the baby, being smaller and easier to forget about. Hence, the phrase. The figurative meaning is that we should not end up throwing out the attached or easy-to-miss good while throwing out the bad. This origin and meaning has massive likening to us today, as we are i.e. we are the last ones (yet) in a long line of whatever culture and values we hold. We're way younger than our ancestors when they championed it. Now, while we celebrate it, we could still have a lot of t...

As we speak, the world is getting terribly polarised everywhere. We are stretching our capacity for ideologies and beliefs to incredible extents, letting the cracks speak more than our views themselves. We're creating islands and we're not even trying to build bridges between them. This is making the ideas in our heads increasingly idealistic.  It's worth taking a step back and just, for a moment, consider what brought us here. Is it the pressure that blew, pent up for all those decades and centuries, that it just had to blow? Are our differences really worth it? Let's delve in without trying to set everybody else on fire for not aligning with what we hold true. We need to understand, first, that all political views begin with identity, which is why we are so vehement about them. When someone's against you, it's like they are being denied a part of what is essentially, undeniably, and unarguably themselves. It's as sacred as anything can get. Even if a set ...

The COVID-19 crisis in India has unleashed the mass movement of poor migrant labourers (the key word here) that has people rightly up in arms.  Whether you blame the government or not, it is something that cannot be right and needs to be righted. In response, some people have used the twitter hash tag #metoomigrant to say that they, too, are by definition migrants i.e. they migrated from their hometown to another place to make it, just like these people. When the migrant labourers came from nothing to nothing to (relatively) bargain for a little something, the #metoomigrants came from something to something else usually bargaining for a lot more (else they wouldn't even come).   We are all migrants because we all come from somewhere. Even if it wasn't us who made the arduous journey, we are here in our privilege because someone else did. That is why we sit pretty with that privilege today. As long as your ancestor many generations ago didn't move a micro inch from where t...

For those with the simplistic understanding of Government, there are only two ways that responses can swing to the many cases of police beating that has/has been happening in India under lockdown: I don't know what to do but this is ridiculous or the police know what they're doing so the person must have done something wrong. For those with more nuanced understanding, it will be: The police have a stressful job handling the lockdown, a part of which is a small percentage of error or this is wrong and the result of the lack of sensitisation. For those with a heart, it will be: this is wrong and this must stop.  Ever since India has been under lockdown till April 13th, the police have been given unusual superpowers to maintain law and order. This, itself, isn't unusual. What is, though, is the eagerness they are ready to use the stick with, when people are moving about within rules of curfew and when they aren't. All states have allowed shops selling essentials to...

COVID-19 has been turning our world upside down. People who always had maids are doing all the housework. Recipes that were hidden, feared and unknown are coming out of the woodworks. People are bucking up and learning how to stay with essentials for longer. Most of all, people have been given their right value in society faster than the blink of an eyelid. It's like a grand return to humanity. That's the biggest upside down.  The whole crisis is happening primarily because people are in ultimate danger, not businesses or economy. It brought forward the supreme perspective that people, the soul of industry, are always never indispensable in any scenario, however competitive our business instincts get. It's almost as if the world discovered the morals and ethics that they were ignoring all these centuries and decades, well influenced by an industrialised society. If we really didn't care deep down, and we are cold hearted, we wouldn't b...

One look at a map of all the world's regions, while looking up their history hand-in-hand, will tell you a tale that's wider than what any of them stand by as their cultural identity today. You will easily notice a filtered down version that's only a figment of the big picture that was decades and centuries ago. Countries came, changed, got abolished and went before the century could blink into the next one. What was communities and freer movement became polities and boundaries. When did this happen? When did we become myopic? More has become less. Multiple has become singular. Heterogeneous is becoming homogeneous. Multilingual has become unilingual. Multicolour has become black and white, or just black and white. If this hasn't happened yet, it's happening.   At a closer look, the crux of the issue is between identities (where you're from, what you eat, how you dress, what language you speak) and boundaries (i.e. political divisions i.e. countries i.e. l...

During the last few days, you would have heard much sloganeering, thanks to the opposition to the Citizenship Amendment Bill and the almost proposed nationwide NRC. To those who choose a different political voice, it can be a big nuisance to the head and the ears but there is something eerily common about the Left-influenced big, loud, brash protest style, the opposite (seemingly) rational response to issues and the main stream in-power method of creating their solutions for the country. Though each style points to different preferences, they are all trying to do the same thing for the ones who practice them—use their voice and power for the end they want it to serve. The Left (and all associated and similar) is rooted in people movements among the lower strata of society. These people don't have a big say in matters of politics. In most recent history, power had eluded them. Their voice will seek to demand what they want when they themselves can't bring it about. Speaki...

Many world disasters we'd rather forget start with a conspiracy theory told to the least secure but most empowered sections of society. "Original" inhabitants vs. the "non-original" natives. Locals vs. immigrants. Pure blood vs. Mixed blood. 'Right' born vs. 'Wrong' born. One skin color vs. the other. One religion or culture vs. the other. What starts as cognitive dissonance of the majority with reality becomes fear play and then power grab so that their worst fears can be kept from coming true. You have to reasonably discount their cognitive dissonance and, in effect, their very response as a result. This sequence of events is not surprising. The secret lies in majorities and minorities. The division between them is the fact that history runs deeper than we know. When we try to balance its innocent-then evil bits, those who benefited from them over generations and centuries have a blood reflex. Though those positions of power cease to officia...

In a troubling time, where culture is playing kingpin and zeal is going for the over-kill, it is a good time for a full reminder of what place each element has in the mix. There are five major truths that create stable, sensible people and country. The sole goal is individual happiness  Society must enable every individual toward this end Government, a mirror of society, ensure this is in spirit and letter  Nation must not replace Home Consent on awareness is absolute Before I unravel them, there's an all-important preface: Home . Home is the sacred temple . It is an individual phenomenon that every person has an unquestionable right to practice and honour. It is everything we are, from the language we speak to the food we eat to the religion we practice to the values we practice to our sensitivities. Collectively, it is the first lab of humanity, and different for everyone with a lot of partial and whole overlapping that occurs - in either ...

Let me open with: Between the two—being Indian or being from your home town, what are you (if one had to be right and the other wrong)? The catch: One is true, automatically making the other one false. In my case, it will be Am I Indian, or am I Bengalurian ? Chances are that the one that's true will have to be  I am Bengalurian . Being Bengalurian first makes me Indian as much as being from Dusseldorf or Reykjavik doesn't, and being from Pune, Delhi, or any place in today's India makes someone else Indian. If you're still confused, get your probability calculators out and figure that one out.  That the case, being Indian has to, therefore, be a sum total of being a Bengalurian, Dilliwalla, Kolkatan, <every single Indian place with people>...n.  This exhaustive list incorporates every element of life including food, lifestyle, religion, social values etc. that each of these people live by, even those that don't make the common majority o...