famished for meaning

Gasp!! I sat there in shock. And as the gravity of what had just happened became clearer, the shock turned to grief. The gasps turned into wailing. It couldn’t be. Life was not supposed to be this way. How could Amitabh get killed. He was ‘Muqaddar ka Sikandar’. He was the hero. Heroes don’t die. They always win. What would become of the world now that the savior lay dead. I would never get to meet him now. I was inconsolable. I was still in grieving next day in class 1C. During recess a cheeky bastard said Amitabh was just an actor and he was a fake. I kicked his ass. Sorry, Abdul Kareem Ice Cream (It was funny then). That incident earned a call to mom.

She concocted this whole story about Amitabh faking his death to trick the badies. This made some sense. But I needed solid proof. Mom had lied about the tooth fairy last year. That friday dad grabbed another pirated bollywood movie. Sure enough there was super cop. Talking smack and kicking ass. The world was going to be okay afterall. Faith was restored. Mom wasn’t such a big liar. For weeks after that I would sing ‘Rotay hoay aate hein sab’ while riding my bicycle to and from school. I would stand on the pedals, Hands off handles, Doing lazy Ss, the works. Good Times.

But dont let that story leave you with an impression of life bollywooded. Movies were a special occasion. To be enjoyed by the whole family. Once a month, maybe. And they were sources of material for the obligatory entertainment routines. We weren’t allowed in the drawing room with guests. Lest we embarrass our parents with our manners and gluttony. But at a certain point during the evening we would be entered to perform our tableau and earn our treats before being sent of to bed. I had a repertoire of numbers down pat. A good entertainer keeps his material fresh and is always ready for an encore. I specially liked doing “Aega Shehri Babu, tum dil pe rakho qabu”. Another favourite was “Jaanoo meri Jaan, Mein tere Qurbaan” and I would cheekily subsitute Pakistan for Hindustan in the next line to even greater applause.

Somehow, we managed to remain cute and not be the “prepubescent little dorks”, that rocky mentioned in her comments a couple of posts ago. We even grew up to be abnormally honest, sincere, even innocent. In later years, we saw a lot more movies and TV, even stuff we wish we hadn’t seen. We were raised by our parents though, and that seems to have been the dominating factor. I really believe children mirror the adults around, not just in words and actions but also in attitudes.

(guest post courtesy of the artist formerly known as alibhai)

(for the prologue, click here)

So, yeah. Apparently what I wrote hit home. Several times. I’d make a baseball analogy here, but then the little pink mafia would take away my rhinestone-encrusted tiara, and as we all know, a queen without a tiara is just a bitchy straight man. And that would be very bad.

I’m not advocating a ban on relationships, period. Nor am I encouraging people to stay single and content with their platonic friendships, because lets be honest here…no one’s actually really content with the idea of being single forever. There may certainly be acceptance of the possibility, as I’ve found in my own case, but sticking with the case study of Sin, I know that I’d happily prefer to die having been in a meaningful relationship with someone rather than without. But really…does it have to be an all-or-nothing game?

This is not game theory in Advanced Economics 101 people. It’s really much simpler than everyone thinks, and perhaps I can say that smugly from on top of my high horse (how high? It took a step-ladder to get up there!) because I’m not currently going through the ennui, but who says that you have to choose between friends and lovers? And more importantly, why can’t friends be lovers (and vice versa)? I’ve never believed that you can love someone without first being friends with them, and that view is one of the few in my life that hasn’t undergone a radical metamorphosis in the last decade or so.

Conversely though, it’s not necessary that a friend become a significant other. I think the biggest problem that gay men face in their lives is that even though we never want to admit it, we’re all secretly scuttled by the “Newer! Bigger! Better! Shinier!” plague. Who and what we have is perfect while it’s present, but we never seem to stop prowling and being on the lookout for something more, something that we’re convinced is lacking in our current straits, even though it may not be. And part of that, I’m convinced at the risk of generalising indiscriminately and carelessly, is because our own self-esteems are riddled with more holes than a particularly large hunk of Swiss cheese. I can count the number of gay men I know who had healthy, self-affirming childhoods on one hand, and I think that there are certain emotional and intellectual scars that never fade, no matter how much they may scab over. Scar tissue is still ugly, even though it may cover gaping wounds. Most of us remain convinced that there’s something wrong with us, something terribly, drastically, horribly unheimlich, and that no matter how good our lives become, we’ll always be the outcasts, the children who were different, the people who didn’t make sense or seem quite right. And convinced of our own fallibility, we project a combination of ideals and our own insecurities onto those people whom we adore, maybe subconsciously, but mostly with a sense of guilt that comes from deep inside, those dark corners of our minds and souls that we don’t like to acknowledge. Friends, lovers, family…we hope that they’re not perfect, because we’re certainly not. We hold them up to impossible standards that we don’t want to admit are impossible, or at best highly improbable, and in some ways they turn out to be dark mirrors of who we are. All of our failings, our dirty little habits, imperfections, secrets and lies, we pre-emptively start to accuse the other people in our lives of them because it’s easier to denigrate shortcomings when people other than ourselves display them.

This is turning into one of those “I’ve not slept for three days and am roaringly drunk during my college days, so come on, we’ll have an intellectual conversation at two a.m.” passages, isn’t it?

But I think it’s true. I don’t think any of us like to think of it that way, but come on…isn’t there always that tiny part of you screaming “It’s never going to work out!” each time someone new (especially in the romantic context) enters your life? Sure, it’s easier with friends: the demands and obligations, not to mention expectations aren’t quite as intense or as omnipresent as they are with boy/girlfriends, but who hasn’t had a knock-down, drag-out, hair-pulling fight with the people they’re closest to at least once? And the forgiveness is always a bit easier, because the whole thing humanises friendships, turning them into comfortable zones where you know that the other person will never have the ability to walk away from you unless you do something truly unforgivable. Because hey! They’re not infallible and ergo, can’t expect you to be either!

There are, of course, the lucky few who do manage to live happily ever after. But we all hate them, don’t we? Or at least we envy their ability to wade through the maelstrom and come out standing, in one piece and largely undamaged.

But mostly, we (and by “we”, I mean “I”) hate them. In a loving, tender way, of course.

(courtesy of the sexiest, smartest, wittiest blogger on earth)

MORE A LOFT THAN A DAMASCENE CONVERSION

“An eye for an eye and the whole world goes blind” -Gandhi

There is little better deconstruction of selective religion than this. Nowadays religion is used to lend authenticity to things people want to do anyway. Ali’s post citing the one verse in the Koran that refers to the allowance of beating a woman whilst many others appear to contradict that stance is mirrored in Western Christianity. Domestic violence here is frowned upon, and yet it exists and in many areas appears quite widespread. Murder, rape, assault, GBH etc. are criminal offences and yet the “eye for an eye” verse of the old testament is cited and seemingly used for justification to extol far greater international conflicts.

It has always puzzled me how people wishing to use the bible to defend reactionary and fundamentalist positions only ever seem to use the old testament. Is it that they do not know the new testament or simply that they choose to ignore the more progressive teachings in it? After all “eye for an eye” is in direct contradiction to Jesus’ principle that you must forgive those that have wronged you 77 x 7 times - no-one would think of taking that literally and, breathing a sigh of relief, kill their neighbour on the 540th time s/he has wronged them. So why do they cherry pick the parts to take literally? It is because it suits what they wish to believe in nothing more, this isn’t religion it is more a fundamentalist political doctrine based around an outdated notion of theology.

When it comes to the interpretations of the bible itself I remain astonished that some wish to take it all so literally to deflect scientific study. If you had a science book that was 2000 years old you might well expect that much of it would have been superseded by modern studies. That does not degrade the study or the original premise, nor does it do so to the method of study which can well form the basis of future expansion in this area. However to disregard well-researched and backed up scientific principles for something which has been written by a bunch of enthusiastic laymen some 2000 years ago is utterly barking and does the human race neither credit nor good. It seems that the more scientific evidence contravenes what the dogmatic theologians would have us believe the more said clerics seek to bury their head in the sand with a “La la la I can’t hear you” hands over the ears approach.

Islam is purported, were you to believe the hype out of the West, to be the other side of this great clash of civilisations. It is portrayed as a strange, violent, fundamentalist religion to be feared. And yet we are expected to believe the same is not true of Christianity? This in spite of the fact that the two religions are both mono-deist and in fact share very many of the same beliefs not to mention the same figures of worship. In fact of all the religions practised by humanity these two along with Judaism are perhaps the most homogenous. Perhaps therein lies the problem. Besides this great clash of civilisations hardly seems at the forefront when the Western leaders deal with the House of Saud who preside over one of the more repressive regimes in the Middle East.

It reflects poorly on us as societies that we seem to have such basic irrational concepts when it comes to a more metaphysical outlook. Is, and more prevalent, should religion be immune from the scrutiny to which we subject science and technology? If it is then we are destined to be constantly dragged back to a regressive and arcane past by outdated conservative tenets. It is time for religion to evolve or die.

I ought perhaps to declare that personally I think organised religion is horse shit but then many people think the same of socialism which I do believe in so it’s all dogma really isn’t it. It is all about giving you the guidelines by which to form your advanced moral code and live your life. If people choose to do so in an aggressive fashion then they will look for any justification by which to do so. It’s just that religion makes it so easy for the zealots not to even have to work for a bloody reason.

/rant!

(guest post courtesy of the red baron)

Three out of four voters in california believe medical marijuana should be legalized. They have passed the measure at the polls in opposition to existing American laws. I was recently talking to an otherwise young and healthy friend who also happens to be a strong supporter of the californian position on medical marijuana. He kept on pointing out the various opiates, barbiturates, steroids, and whatnots that are legally prescribed by doctors. Possession of such drugs without a prescription is illegal. Similarly, possession of marijuana would remain illegal without a prescription. The only reason why common sense wasn’t prevailing, he believes, was because of Big Pharma influence. For somebody with an impressively broad knowledge of various drugs, he just couldn’t understand the difference between a controlled substance and an illegal drug. You can beg your friend who went to the dentist for some leftover oxycontin or you can hand over a mini fortune on the street. But you can’t grow it in your backyard. Pot, you can grow in a pot in your studio apartment. Kids on street corners will hook you up for 10 bucks. Morphine is controlled in vaults. It is administered in controlled doses in controlled environments. Once you put such controls on medical marijuana its cost will shoot up and everyone will be looking for stronger stuff at similar prices. Or they will still get it on the street. The californian voters in favor of medical marijuana are not in favor of legalizing drugs. Or maybe they are. Damn hippie spawn. The american govt. stance against such measures is not trying to punish those already in pain. Or maybe it is.

Laws follow attitudes. If you are angry about the one verse in koran that allows hitting a wife, get angrier because there are many more verses that allow taking slaves. In wars past muslim warriors were even allowed to take the women of their enemies as slaves. But so did everyone else those days. There is still slavery going on in the world, even when it is universally illegal. No one is using religious texts or cultural norms to defend or justify them. There is a clear understanding those who engage in such business are doing it for the profits.

There are over 6300 verses in the Koran. Search for “wife beating islam” and Google spits out thousands of pages repeating the same single verse that allows hitting a wife. One could say even one verse is one too many. But there are many more verses that tell us to cherish and treat women with respect and equity. Those are not paid any attention either. I am not going to say that hitting a woman is not allowed in Islam. It is. But women are not hit because one verse in the koran allows it. I have never seen, heard, or read of any instance where a man has justifies his violent behavior by bringing up the Koran. They are hit because the men feel they have no other avenue left in the confrontation. Some men take that street at the first instance. Some men don’t know that street is even on the map.

Domestic violence in islamistan is not inspired by that singular verse. It is a cultural thing like every other culture. And at the heart of the matter, it is a personal thing. It needs to change but the change is not going to come out of questioning the Koran. The muslim mind becomes completely unreceptive at the first hint of questioning the authenticity of the text. The change has to come out of the culture. Every second Bollywood film has the male lead or other good guys slapping the woman when she gets out of hand. Watch old hollywood movies and the women are getting slapped around like nothing. Different cultures and different rates of change. One day soon one would be able to pick up a blunt OTC at the corner sav-on-drugs, and people will stop beating up their women. Or maybe not.