The Pathology of Rebellion

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.