Do I love you ? 4

If the Emerald Isle is at zenith of its beauty in spring, winter doesn't take much away from it. The orange canopy of trees and green shamrock carpet gives way to white snow.
On one such winter, Logan and I embarked on a road trip across Ireland. As the days had turned colder, the bond between us had become warmer and stronger. Our shared love of travel led to the trip. The barrenness was soothing as we drove along the countryside.
"You know, I, my brother and my Dad used to take these kind of trips." Muttered Logan, lost in nostalgia. "We weren't overtly affectionate but these drives helped us bond." Turning to me Logan said, "What about you ? I know India too has got some great places. Where have you been with your family ? I am sure you had great time with them."
"Family..." I gave a derisive snort. " They showed their love by spending money on me and I showed my love by spending as less as I can. That's the only display of affection we were capable of."
Logan gave me quizzical look. At times like these I wish my self censorship was efficient.
"Eyes on road, Logan. We don't want ourselves on top of a willow."
"Yes. And you were saying..." He prodded.
"Let's not go into grim things." I smiled dismissively.
We drove in silence for a few minutes, then Logan spoke gently. "Actually, let's go into grim things and tackle them. What ails you, love ?"
I sat calculating my next move. Should I or Shouldn't I ? I had never treaded these paths with anyone except  Ardaas. Can I extend the same courtesy to Logan ? In spite of my apprehension, i decided to be confessional. Something about Logan aided me to be. For the next couple of hours or so, I spoke. I spoke about the emotional abandonment that had pervaded my existence. I spoke of Ardaas who alleviated this state. At the end of my tirade I was in tears and to some extent embarrassed.
"I am sorry Logan." I sniffled.
"What for ?" He said consoling. " Look at me..."
"No. Don't. I am such a mess right now." I turned away from him.
"Mess... I thought we were untangling you." He brought the car to a halt on the side of the road and cupped my face. "Look at me...You are a woman of strength, courage and dignity. One who values herself and fights for what she believes in. A woman who won't give up on her dreams regardless of how many obstacles stand in her way. If that doesn't make you beautiful and magnificent, I don't know what does."
At this little speech, I felt a strange yet familiar tug at heartstrings. I had longed to hear and feel what I did now.

"And now we enter Mullingar... Home sweet home." Logan smirked.
I could see where Logan got the warmth and vivacity from. In no time I was ensconced in his family comprising of his parents, his brother, his sister-in-law and his baby nephew. I was glad to be part of their Christmas and New Year revelries.
On the last night of our stay at Logan's home, Logan and I sat on the terrace, star gazing.
"Back to Dublin tomorrow." Logan sighed. "We have to drop Mum at the airport. She leaves for London."
"Ohh... Has she got some work there ?"
"No." He smiled. "She stays there."
"Your mother stays in London, your Dad here. It must be irksome for them."
"Why should it be ? They have been living like this ever since the divorce."
"Ohh... I didn't know. It didn't seem like..."
"They are divorced." Logan finished the sentence for me. "Yeah, they do a pretty job at appearing otherwise. They were best friends, or so people say. Marriage was inevitable but the problem was they could never give each other the rights of a spouse. The froze at being just friends. They started resenting each other. They resented me and my brother. They resented anything that had to do anything with their marriage. For the greater good, they separated. They fell out of love...." After some minutes of rueful silence, he added " I hope we don't fall out of love."
"Huh !!!" It already was too much to take in without the firecracker he just burst.
"Oh... My bad. That was non-sequitur. I love you, Shaurya. I hope we stay in love."
"Huh..." I sounded dumb but in my defense I was in a state of disbelief.
"Oh ! Come on ! Haven't you felt something... something more than friendship between us."
"I did but I thought..." I was talked over by Logan.
"I had told you, if I was ever in love, you would be the first one to know. So here I let you know, I love you."
I always knew, even before I had met Logan, if I end up with anybody it had to be someone precisely like Logan. Logan came and gave a name and a face to my desires and aspirations. At that moment I knew, I just knew, the answer couldn't be anything else but, "I love you too."

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Five months out of the college and I was an assistant editor at a publishing house and Logan was the content editor of a lifestyle magazine, working at two opposite ends of London. Our work schedules gave us much less time, than we liked, to be with each other.
I sat at a Parisian style cafe waiting for Logan for a date.
"Shaurya Suri." Someone called out to me, which didn't sound like Logan at all.
"Ardaas Randhawa... Remember me ?" I was surprised to see Ardaas beaming few tables away from me.
"You... How come you're here ?"
"I am fine. Thank you for asking." he rolled his eyes. "I had a medical convention here and also I came to take you back since you weren't..."
"Missed you so much love..." Logan gathered me in a swept-off-the-ground hug and let go off me with a kiss. I hadn't noticed Logan coming. He flopped in the chair next to mine.
I glanced at Ardaas' baffled face. I was just about to explain myself when I saw realization flit across his face.
"Why didn't you tell me about your boyfriend Shaurya ?" He seemed calm but I could sense the cold fury simmering. "Why didn't you tell me ?" He added more forcefully this time.
"I had been waiting for your answer since last year. I had wanted a simple a answer. Either a yes or no. I repeatedly told you, your no wouldn't change anything." He dropped all pretense of calmness now. "I am a fool. I'm a fool for interpreting your silence as indecisiveness. I hoped your indecisiveness would tilt to a yes, weighing all the things we have been through together. I hoped for us, but I got this." He motioned his hand indicating Logan and me. "Why ?" He looked crestfallen.
I couldn't answer him. I was squarely at fault.I could never muster the courage to discuss the change with him.
"You could have told me at least for the sake of friendship. We are... No... No... We were friends." He approached me with a menacing stride, but he was interrupted by Logan.
"Mister..." Logan's voice was both placating and reproachful.
"I advise you to stay out of it. You know nothing about us." Ardaas growled.
"I know everything that has transpired between you two." Logan retorted.
"Wow...Shaurya." Ardaas looked flustered. "You could discuss me with him but you could not mention him to me. I am not wrong when I say we were friends. That's my place and thanks for showing it to me."
Ardaas left the place in a huff and that was the last I saw or heard of him for a long while.

*********************************************************************************
"Chocolate, it is." I said with an air of finality.
"Good Lord ! Shaurya, this is cake is for a wedding not a 7 year old's birthday. Let's have alternate layers of rum and orange."
I shook my head in disapproval.
We were at a confectionery, deciding on our wedding cake, a week away from the wedding day.
"Or..." Logan continued " We could have alternate layers of orange and chocolate."
I mimed barfing.
"Come on ! What person doesn't like the combination of orange and chocolate." exclaimed Logan.
Before I could comeback with a saucy answer, my phone rang.
"Hello, Miss Shaurya ? Dr. Raman here. Your friend and my colleague Dr. Ardaas had an almost fatal car accident. I thought I should inform you, since the two of you are good friends. If you could come down to be with..."
" I am coming." I rushed out with a confused Logan at tow.

"You will come back. Right ?" Logan asked gingerly while helping me with my bags. He had come to see me off at the airport as I was leaving for India to see Ardaas.
"I don't see any other way of this panning out than me coming back." I reassured him. "Let the cake be chocolate and Au revoir mon amor." I kissed him goodbye.

To be continued...

Yeh Humare Culture Mein Nahin Chalta

The Badaun Rape Incident has yet again brought to light the brutality that only humans are capable of and the morbid effects of misogyny and caste-ism in India and since it was not enough a smilar incident happened in Sitapur, UP. One would think after the perpetrators of the Nirbhaya incident and Shakti Mill incident were convicted and were awarded death sentences, it would deter gender-biased crimes. Well, that is what people were hoping for. The denizens of India bayed for the blood of those criminals, and rightly so. How wrong were we ! How wrong we were to think that hanging, considered to be the most severe of punishments meted out by the Indian judiciary, would solely impede gender biased crimes. Back in 2004, a person named Dhananjay was given the capital punishment for the rape and murder of Hetal Parekh , but crimes of these kind still continued to happen.

Where did we go wrong ? Let me answer that for you.

A few days back disturbed by these incidents, its frequency of occurrence and the irresponsible and callous behavior of the politicians, I Google-ed 'What's wrong with Indian men ?' One of the the search results threw up an interview of Goan men, concerning the rape and subsequent murder of a foreign national in one of Goa's beaches. The girl was a teenager on a vacation, on that particular unfortunate night she was apparently drunk and apparently wearing inappropriate clothing. They thought it was the fault of the girl, because she was alone and too friendly with strangers [ Read: Flirting or Enticing gullible men, I think this is what the interviewee wanted to convey] He said it might have been appropriate back at her country but " यह हमारे कल्चर में नहीं चलता। " [ This is not part of our culture ]

I wondered, "क्या चलता है  फिर हमारे कल्चर में ?" [ What does our culture entail ? ]

What kind of culture are we obliging to ? One that fails to honor human dignity, the basic, innate dignity. One that allows  XY chromosome to be somehow superior to the XX chromosome. Why ? Because an archaic law written by someone called Manu, a mythical progenitor of humanity wrote so. Why after eons do we follow those obsolete laws ? Are we not rational or analytic enough ? Why aren't we analytic ? Why do we fear so much to break away from rules when it clearly doesn't serve it's purpose in the changing times ? 

As per my perceptions, rules should serve as guidelines and not be bindings. Break the rules that doesn't honor a human or humanity.

Ironically, honor too has acquired a new meaning. Honor has been merged with vanity for the convenience of some people. In the interiors of Northern India, if you don't accept a person's choice of spouse, you can kill them and term that as 'Honor Killing'. 

Why the need to kill ? He/She married a person of another caste/creed/religion/gender or because he/she acted on his/her own will ? यह हमारे कल्चर में नहीं चलता। 

One can kill another in cold-blood, their own blood, who they were supposed to love and protect, an action that would find itself in the category of inhumane, thus making you something less of a human. [No, not a beast or animal, they by nature are incapable of such acts, maybe those people are something worse than them] yet they would all like to be called honorable men. Love and freedom are too inconsequential compared to the family name, the vanity of it and the supposed respect their dynasty commands in the society. 

Why is that only innocents suffer while guilty live without guilt ?

Another testament to the above statement are people who had been subjected to sexual assault.

The assault would be blamed on Chinese fast food, mobiles, globalization, clothes, the girl but never, never ever on the real cause, that people specifically some men can't control their lust. They have been conditioned not to because since when have women and their opinions been respected. Women they talk, sorry gab too much. It need not to be taken into consideration.

The assault is blamed on clothes, "It was revealing. She brought it upon herself." Seemingly, men's integrity and ethics are so volatile that a few inches of cloth more or less in your attire can make you a siren and a potential target to vent out their lust. If this is a criteria, then children and people in rural areas that wear what is deemed to be appropriate attire should be spared from this ghastly crime but I  don't see that happening. Therefore, I want the statement to be edified that wearing exposing clothes exposes females to the risk of sexual violation. The statement cannot be edified because its faulty, without any iota of truth in it.

The assault is blamed on modernization, "Rapes happen in India, it doesn't happen in Bharat." Modernization challenges our age old tradition. The age old tradition that makes the women of house to be quarantined in house, cooking, breeding, cleaning. Even if the women is educated, she would end up with these responsibilities, why spend money on education, this is the general idea most have. What they fear is education of females would bring  home the fact that they ought to be treated better. They can and should have opinions, express them and act upon them. They can earn, earn more and be independent. The non-adherence to the patriarchal system scares them. It means people who benefit from suppression would lose their power and power has always been a temptation for mankind.
The assault is blamed on girls, suggesting that they were suggestive. I don't understand what kind of behavior is deemed suggestive. Even if she was flirting which is not immoral if done for fun, when she says no to sexual advances, she means no, a resounding NO. Women cannot be polite to strangers or smile at them lest the innocent gesture is considered to be flirtatious. Neither drinking, nor being out, late at night should make her a target.

I don't wish wish to convey that all are misogynistic, many are brought up in a gender neutral, one that doesn't conform to gender stereotypes, loving, respectful environment and some go on to become exemplary people but those that don't agree with changing times have disrespectful and violent ways to put forth their disapproval. They distort the meaning of culture.
Recently Article 377 that deals with homosexuality has come under scrutiny because the Supreme Court of India did not repeal it. Homosexuality is looked down upon, it is thought to be a contagious disease, some disorder. Me thinks, homophobia has its root in the exaltation of machismo, anything that is not a MAN, is thought to be weak. "A man loving a man, shameful ! A woman loving a woman, don't we, the men have the right over them."  The homophobes argue that it is not the natural way for a person to with the same gender, who is to decide what is natural and what is not. Why should any civilized person bother herself/himself with what other people do in their privacy or who they chose to love. That's why, often homosexuals are bullied, mentally and physically.

Let us not live with misinterpretation of culture. Let's look into the eye of the problem and call a spade, a spade. Let's not brush the problems under the carpet of tradition and culture. Let us change for better because nothing is bigger than simple goodness.
ज़मीर बदलते हैं, हालात खुद-ब-खुद  बदल जाएंगे।
Violence has always been a weapon of choice for oppression. Let's move away from violence, violence is never an answer to get things done one own's way. Children should be inculcated with the idea that both the genders are equal, and one should be considerate towards another no matter how different the person is from one's own self. I don't expect an overnight change but we all can work towards a better future.

Here I would leave with an endearing scene from Swades that suggests what should be our attitude towards our traditions and culture.

  LET'S RAISE THE SONS BETTER, SO THAT THE DAUGHTERS COME TO NO HARM.