It has been nearly four years now that I am away from my
home, India. A perfect time to realize that am not as nationalistic anymore to
ignore whatever is going wrong in my motherland and stay benign, and at the
same time the initial bedazzlement of the “Big American” dream has faded as
well. So to put in simple words, after sixty-five years of our freedom am a
refugee once again, this time in an intellectual no man’s land. So I sit today
to write and speculate about my experience in this place far from a place which
I used to call home.
I start this essay with a very insignificant and seemingly
mundane conversation that I had four years back with my American lab mate. I
was telling her that I hate someone very profoundly. In response she gave me
the first tour of a very American life philosophy. She, with her loving eyes
told me I must not “hate” anything, as that is too strong an emotion, though I
have the right to dislike. Right then I was not sure how the other side of
hate, love, once again a strong emotion is acceptable whereas hate is banished.
I must emphasise here that in my subsequent years in this continent I have come
across this idea several times. “They” have defined hate, anger, frustration,
depression, violence as very negative emotions which should never be expressed,
at least in public domain. So strong is this belief that they consistently try to
remove the word hate and replace it with more benevolent emotion dislike in
their dictionary. On the other hand I represent that weird cultural heritage
where discrimination is taken as karma but at the same time being
argumentative, loud and passionately hateful is encouraged. Think about any
college campus in Calcutta, and am sure this is true for all of India. We all
have debated, fought and shouted with our friends on issues like socialism,
communism, religion etc amply expressing our hate in favour of one or the
other. Hence when I was told that hate is a rather bad word, it was so novel to
me and so elegantly civilized that I thought I must like that. But as I
mentioned in the beginning, right now I neither belong to the Indian tradition
of accepting my karma nor do I belong to this culture of imposed positivity, I
have become a weird composition of my own wit and emotions. In spite of trying
hard to stop hating things and people, I failed miserably. And the funny part
is this failure does not disappoint me. Somehow it tells me I will still bleed,
but at the same time as I do not have the bias of belonging to any tradition
anymore, I totally can appreciate that vengeance is not an answer to any form
of hate. It was a strong hatred towards the existing systems that gave us
wonderful ideas, wonderful people and not through either dislike or vengeance.
Just to elaborate it was just not a congenial dislike of the upper class that
caused French Revolution, Communist Revolution, revolt against all colonial
powers, Civil Rights Movement, Feminist Movement and more recently the LGBT
movement. So I am glad that I still have the capacity to passionately hate,
although I am constantly reminded of the social isolation that might bring upon
me as a consequence. I am happy that I am still alive.It has been nearly four years now that I am away from my
home, India. A perfect time to realize that am not as nationalistic anymore to
ignore whatever is going wrong in my motherland and stay benign, and at the
same time the initial bedazzlement of the “Big American” dream has faded as
well. So to put in simple words, after sixty-five years of our freedom am a
refugee once again, this time in an intellectual no man’s land. So I sit today
to write and speculate about my experience in this place far from a place which
I used to call home.
I start this essay with a very insignificant and seemingly
mundane conversation that I had four years back with my American lab mate. I
was telling her that I hate someone very profoundly. In response she gave me
the first tour of a very American life philosophy. She, with her loving eyes
told me I must not “hate” anything, as that is too strong an emotion, though I
have the right to dislike. Right then I was not sure how the other side of
hate, love, once again a strong emotion is acceptable whereas hate is banished.
I must emphasise here that in my subsequent years in this continent I have come
across this idea several times. “They” have defined hate, anger, frustration,
depression, violence as very negative emotions which should never be expressed,
at least in public domain. So strong is this belief that they consistently try to
remove the word hate and replace it with more benevolent emotion dislike in
their dictionary. On the other hand I represent that weird cultural heritage
where discrimination is taken as karma but at the same time being
argumentative, loud and passionately hateful is encouraged. Think about any
college campus in Calcutta, and am sure this is true for all of India. We all
have debated, fought and shouted with our friends on issues like socialism,
communism, religion etc amply expressing our hate in favour of one or the
other. Hence when I was told that hate is a rather bad word, it was so novel to
me and so elegantly civilized that I thought I must like that. But as I
mentioned in the beginning, right now I neither belong to the Indian tradition
of accepting my karma nor do I belong to this culture of imposed positivity, I
have become a weird composition of my own wit and emotions. In spite of trying
hard to stop hating things and people, I failed miserably. And the funny part
is this failure does not disappoint me. Somehow it tells me I will still bleed,
but at the same time as I do not have the bias of belonging to any tradition
anymore, I totally can appreciate that vengeance is not an answer to any form
of hate. It was a strong hatred towards the existing systems that gave us
wonderful ideas, wonderful people and not through either dislike or vengeance.
Just to elaborate it was just not a congenial dislike of the upper class that
caused French Revolution, Communist Revolution, revolt against all colonial
powers, Civil Rights Movement, Feminist Movement and more recently the LGBT
movement. So I am glad that I still have the capacity to passionately hate,
although I am constantly reminded of the social isolation that might bring upon
me as a consequence. I am happy that I am still alive.
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