Now a days, a new disease has hit the markets –
rebellion. Walk into a classroom and you will see all testosterone filled
bodies sporting a half-trimmed beard whose proper name is yet to be invented;
it is not even days from a rock star movie that sales of colored,
designer dhotis in a metro city starts putting potatoes and tomatoes to shame.
And when every other sense organ of the body is enjoying the bliss of
Rebellion, why would the tongue stay behind – like waist lines of a talent-less
actress, common phrases start shrinking to a point where their mere mention
becomes an exercise of facial muscles. Yet for some reason secret to a rustic
like me, it is widely claimed in the Rebel world that that new language sounds
pleasing (Read – ‘cool’)! The time is not far when the proud Rebels of
my country would put all other English speaking countries to shame by their
innovative invention of new words and squeezed phrases. As you can see, the
time has clearly come for a shift in history and leaving all other Indian
demarcations (religion, gender, language, caste, locality, choice of bike and
car…) behind, we, the youngest nation of the world are headed towards joining
people together – soon, one would only be a Rebel or not. Nothing else will
count! What a marvelous thing for national integrity!
Now before the Rebel group starts working on the sacred ritual of my
assassination, please let me assert that for reasons lingering in dark corners
of my heart, I am a part of you – unaccepted, unwanted, unyielding, and
everything else that makes up our disease. Though as far as dressing and
appearance are concerned, my crimes are only limited to repeated defying of my
school’s dress code; not sure if the general absence of a dressing-sense counts
as crime in both worlds, but who gives a damn!
Other symptoms of my disease:
a ravaging, iconoclastic madness, a carelessness, fearless, and a perpetual wondering if a place exists where things
make more sense. So, you see, I am one of you. However, I am different! Why
wonder? – even bacteria mutate. Whereas your bacterium tells you to be free of
everything and everybody else, mine tells me to be bound to myself. My symptoms
range from being foolish to the extent of doing something for somebody else
even if that act threatens my very existence (Mr. Darwin, please forgive my
bacteria here!). Needless to say that in such transactions, there are no
returns! The acute inability to follow someone popular is common in my kind
(the tendency of reading a book that someone recommends doesn’t count here).
Often, and in stark contradiction to my mainstream Rebel brothers, my kind
follows the rules – but only if there is a greater good involved, and only if
someone might get hurt in doing otherwise. Perhaps I am the primitive kind,
who, in a burning desire to appear different, doesn’t end up following a mirage
before finally becoming a second kind of what I disdained in the first place. A
kind for whom lines between self and others and not drawn on stone. My kind are
people hung in a place where gratitude and time still have a resemblance, and
where in our hearts, still remains a corner for all those who might need us at
times.
Yet the mind, the stubborn
rebellious mind, would walk with a resolve of not hoping for anything in
return. If you like my kind, your mutation is not difficult.
