Bondage

As far freedom of expression and liberty is concerned, living in this part of the world is difficult sometimes. No, I will not thank God that I’m not living in Iraq or Afghanistan. I will not do so because India has a system is place that gives me the freedom to exercise my will regarding what religion I follow, who I marry, who I vote for etc without being under any kind of pressure from any quarter. I know someone who resides in the US with her parents and was slapped viciously by her father when she expressed her desire to marry her boyfriend in India. The reason was that the boy wasn’t from the same caste as her. This is the ugly truth no matter wherever we go, we carry this attitude with us. I know someone who is facing difficulty picking his girlfriend up from near her place (they both work at the same place) because people the people who’re present there every morning stare and gossip about them, and not wanting to be left behind, the neighbours are out spying too. These middle and old aged culture vultures are out on the voyeuristic prowl, imagining things that they fantasize in their dark dreams. If you’re one of those vile hypocrites who’d point their fingers and say that the girls parents must not be aware that she goes with the guy, I’d say you’re true and it’s because of people like you that they don’t know. There are people busy hard-wiring their children to live a certain way and to think a certain way; it cripples the kids without them ever knowing about it. I’m not against teaching good habits to your children but that is an aspect barely touched upon as seen in the kind of creatures that have entered youth, roaming in the city streets. Only in the beginning of this week a brawl broke out at the local KFC in which a boy was stabbed. People like talking about high principles and morals but lack basic manners and courtesy. Today CNN IBNs office in Mumbai was attacked by the Shiv-Sena workers. The reason was that this news network criticized Bal Thackery for criticizing Sachin Tendulkar for saying that he was an Indian before he was a Marathi. That’s the deplorable status quo of the national pride as seen in the leaders of political parties.
What does liberty mean in this society? It seems to mean that so long as you have money and contacts, you have the freedom to do as you like and the liberty to pay your way out of your deeds. Who are the people enforcing the law here? Gluttonous, greedy perverts that take ages to reach crime scenes and when they do, they’re inept doing what they’re supposed to and adept at committing unscrupulous acts themselves. I’ve known girls who’ve called up the police station to report acts of eve-teasing only to be discouraged by the voice on the other end of the line advising them against lodging a formal complain stating that it would be a tedious and a messy process that they should avoid. When I lost my wallet a few months ago and went to report it to the police station, the policeman was rude to me and said that he had a whole lot of work and careless people like me were increasing his work load. He went on to show me his wallet saying “see this, I have it for the past 20 years, I’ve never lost it.” I politely replied, “Even I hadn’t lost mine for the past ten” at which he frustratingly told me to go back and come the next day. I was lucky, that night, a gentleman walked up to my place with my wallet that he’d found in the parking lot. Last year in July when a bus ran over my father’s toes (and ripped the whole sole off his foot) and he was lying on a bloody stretcher in the hospital waiting to be taken into surgery, the policemen arrived. My father wasn’t in a state to give any statements. These bastards were being rude to him and pressing him to sign a paper that said the accident was all his own fault…UNBELIEVABLE! This was happening in front of my eyes. I was too shocked to see my father in that condition to react. A friend advised my dad to do so and not get into the mess for now because there was another important thing we needed to concentrate on; keep him alive.
Its sin to have a girlfriend but it’s ok to go around eve-teasing because in the former case, you’ll face the wrath of the society and in the latter case…well no one will bother to catch you. This is the liberal democracy I live in. People take the law into their own hands to punish people for falling in love and marrying (“Haryana’s Khap Panchayats), where nuns are raped to punish a community (how do these bastards get aroused in front of a resisting, crying helpless woman?), where goons try to gag the press, where a surprise check would reveal a staggering number of inebriated on-duty cops, where the common man is busy hard-wiring his/HER kids to be like him or something he/SHE always wanted to be but never was. Where is the bloody freedom to speak or choose, where is the liberty to develop and follow my own thought? We’re all slaves. I want more bloody freedom; this is not enough for me.