Is this the summer of our discontent, when the front pages of newspapers carry photographs of gassed Syrian children lying in a heap? When all you can do is try not to look hard at it before reading the sentence that President Trump blames it on former President Obama, and you know fully well that there is no point in blaming, for it is unlikely to lead to remorse or correction and that this is probably not the last time you are going to see such a photograph anyway. Do you, then, look harder and allow those hollow eyes and those harrowed lips to make an imprint in your mind so that you don’t have to brace yourself the next time and you can shrug and move on?
When next to them lies Pehlu Khan, beaten to death in Alwar for transporting a milch cow he had bought, whose papers he had secured carefully, just in case he ran into trouble with gau rakshaks , and which, he is likely to have realised in those terrifying hours before he died, afforded him no protection at all, for there is now nothing that will help explain what someone with his name is doing with something that turns out, while not even our species, is still our mother. When perfect strangers, and non-government players, as they are called, are allowed the freedom to poke into our refrigerators and examine what we are eating, and if they don’t like what they see, no one can help you, not even the god on whose behalf everyone seems to be working.
When, because they are in our homes looking in our kitchens, who can stop them from wandering into other rooms? Like the story from Moradabad where 40 policemen barged in, hot on the chase of a man who they knew was meeting a woman. He was her tutor, and they were collecting some papers but, really, who would not consider the possibility that a man and a woman alone are likely to indulge in some love?
When love is a bad word, a term terrifying entirely, that we can barely contain our panic at the amount of hate it is inducing. When you have to confront, every day, close to a dozen video clips of boys being pulled down from motorbikes and scooters and kicked and beaten, while their lovers — their heads wrapped in shawls like an embalment of the living dead — plead with the men to let their lovers leave. When the call to murder makes you a hero, the call to love can only be villainous.
When the educated and the empowered would rather not waste their time worrying about the nobodies, because what matters really is the question of development, by which they mean roads that let you fly, no matter the colour of the sky it begets. When it doesn’t matter that the water is poison and the air is venom, because hey, when it comes to development, sacrifices have to be made, and have you seen China, and don’t you want to live like that? And if China is too much for you to imagine, we shall settle somewhat at Singapore at least, where the government “is so impressive, man, with rules for everything,” though when in India you are loath to even drive on your side of the road.
When the school parent-teacher meetings are so fraught because, how dare the fees are hiked again; where WhatsApp groups are created and protest marches are organised, to which the parents come driving in their very fancy cars, for which they have the money, but paying teachers is not a priority. When Google is at our fingertips, and it is free (!), what is the need to pay talented educators? 2 + 2 =4, everyone knows, and the real reason fees are high is because schools are forced to take the poor, and really, how much of an ass do you think we are to ask us to share a part of that burden?
When you are only and exactly what you were born as — a Hindu, a Telugu, what is your surname, so let me guess your caste. Oh, isn’t that lovely, same as me, so now we can be friends. When the Other is bad, a potential for evil really. If you don’t agree, man, why don’t you go to Pakistan?
When we are told to step out of the bubble, rid ourselves of our “liberal notions”, the world has changed, did you imagine Brexit, did you predict Trump? We step outside the bubble, where bigotry is unbridled. Where the competition is over whose words are more venomous, who can take on history and who can shred it to pieces, who can tell you that... well, this is our way, love it.
When choice is ugly and hate is lovely. When all else fails, we’ll vote with our wallets. That’s development, baby, and to hell with everything else.
Is this the summer of our discontent? Or is this the future?
Veena Venugopal is editor BLink and author of The Mother-in-Law