Long time, no writing!! I had to really scrub and dust and grease this blog to galvanise it.
Better start scribbling something before words start shying away from me and my fingers start freezing.
So, I had an awesome time in India, totally cut off from the Internet world with ears purposely plugged against anything happening in the world. And back here, I see all the sites agog with the poor, cornered Shilpa Shetty.
Well what happened to her was definitely wrong but before pointing one finger at other countries and their people for being racist, we should point back three fingers to us, as a nation of racist people. Although India has been independent for 60 years now, but still each one of us is from head to toe imbued with discrimination – against race, religion, occupation, color and each single factor that makes two humans different. We breathe, we portray, we live in discrimination all the time against the likes of us, talk about other people who are actually different. We are such hypocrites, we are such people, racism runs in our nerves, a part of our DNA.
All those who are quoting homilies about equality and human rights, just sneak a peek into their homes and welcome to the pellucid facts. We all have a marathon of people working for us, doing jobs we hate to do or are lazy to do or are too busy to do and how do we treat those people.We hire people to clean, to cook, to do the dishes,to bathe our kids, to dress and feed them. But although she is the one who cooks your meals and washes the pots and pans , but for her tea there is a cup reserved in all the households- the one with the broken handle mostly or the one which is left alone out of the bunch of six or twelve, the one whose siblings have demised already. And they are given an old rug or a plastic stepstool which they can sit on inside the kitchen , just on that – every other corner is cordoned off.
Our infants sleep in her arms and she is supposed to tuck the baby in the bed but she should do it in such a manner that no part of her clothes or body ever wander on the bed. And if it does, she is adequately reprimanded.Just because these people do not have StarNews and XYZ News cameras following them,does not mean they are not discriminated against.Just because someone said something to somebody rich and famous, everyone has raised cudgels.That untouchablity has been abolished is the biggest cliché.I am certain that to date,all cannot share the water of the same well or lake in our villages.
And not only against poverty and occupation, we are prejudiced against people with different eating habits too. The strict vegetarian people will not eat anything or even drink water at a meat-eating household.As if all their pots and pans and spoons and bowls are tainted with meat, which cannot be sanitized. They despise meat eaters but given a chance, they or their family or cohorts steal opportunities to dig their teeth into veal.And the same people will order vegetarian food at a restaurant which uses the same dishes for vegan and non-vegetarian food. The guy at the back must have stirred your food with a meat-sauce laden spoon and you don’t even care enough to bat an eyelid.
There is not an iota of sense in all these small acts but we love to do it. Our self righteousness and self ascertained supremacy is all we are about. We love to differentiate and to place ourselves on self appointed thrones from where we can look done upon others who are different. So why all this khalbali over one remark.