Relax machan

When we talk about parallel universes, essentially rules being weirder than exceptions, we seldom consider the peculiarities of this world. We forget how all the parallels and all the obscurities can be and most certainly will be found in this very universe. Why am I talking like this? Because I am mind fucked. I am shocked at the way people behave. And this is not a late reaction to Justin Bieber’s albums hitting platinum. It’s just that recently the people running this country have been acting like a bunch of pussies. The whole Jaipur Literature Festival thing, Taslima Nasreen again getting something to talk about, many other such embarrassing news feeds and now the fact that there could actually be an “issue” carved out of the whole ‘porn in assembly’ thing. Sorry, I refuse to call it porngate. But politicians have always behaved like spineless, greedy wolves, always pointing their cannons in the wrong direction. It’s the citizens, you and I that have pissed me off. We devote all our attentions where none is required and we display absolute lack of energy where any level of speaking up for a cause is needed.

A few days ago I mass emailed my work buddies. The subject of the email is irrelevant here. What is relevant is that I had intentionally added a few regional jokes in it. The thing is, when we were going through our training phase, we used to make fun of each others’ state. So the fact that my email had some semblance of racism, did not seem like a big deal that time. But apparently people were pissed off and I was informed about it by a display of clenched fists. Well, my email was very stupid. It was so insignificant that it shouldn't even have been read. The jokes were obviously stupid. And I obviously did not mean any of it. It was all in jest. But then why the hell is everyone reacting as if Jay Leno said something about the Golden Temple on television? Even that was supposed to be a joke. I understand why the government did what they did, but learned young minds, with future of the country in their hands, acting like a bunch of Bajrang Dal activists? It’s preposterous, to say the least, especially when they have no vote bank politics to take care of. And when what they’re outraging about, is absolute bull crap, then, especially then, this whole talk of moral indignation due to someone’s racism seems forced. It seems like an act of someone who is bored and was only waiting for something like this to happen, so he can prove his significance or rather, his existence in an act of such desperation. These moral naiveties and half cooked, confused sensibilities are exactly the kind of things Indian people and Indian culture has suffered from. Even if we forget about the political implications, this still is anti-free speech. So please, my fellow young Indians, let there be racial humor. Let there be cross cultural jokes. Let the priest be a pedophile and the Sardar a dumbass, at least for the sake of harmless comedy, because we all know these things don’t matter.