Category: 2019

Circles

Published on by Harpreet Chhachhia

I got into this thinking mood – well, when I have never been in a thinking mood – but let’s just say I got into one that made me want to write this down. I met a friend after ages. We had a falling apart and then he returned and I talked to him again and whenever he wishes to meet me, we do. I am not one to call people and ask them to meet me… unless I really feel lonely or I want to celebrate with them an occasion. So he came over and we got to chatting about our lives.

He talked about how my world view has altered and it has, I’ll be the first one to admit it, but I don’t think I have changed except for the fact that I have understood things better. I may still want the same things but I know now they either come with a price or a compromise. I have learnt that people are flawed and it is their flaws which make them who they are. Flaws can be relative too. I may have a flaw which others may think of as a virtue. Now I am not calling myself virtuous, in fact, if there was one thing that I believe is all subjective is virtue.

Now that being said, I had a heart to heart about a lot of things and I realized in our conversation that I have no patience for unilateral thought. I want to associate myself with people who have minds and who are willing to look at the world from another point of view. I have always been proud of the fact that I can do this. The moment someone is talking to me about a particular situation or person, I tend to look at the other perspective. I am the classic Devil’s advocate.

This tends to either irritate or broaden the mind I am conversing with. If the other person cannot seem to gauge what I am trying to convey, I pull back. I don’t malinger with my point of view because I have realized that I cannot have a conversation. It will be a monologue. Once that has been gauged, I am afraid I lose hope. In that moment in time, I withdraw and I make my own judgements (which I am aware of, but I am human, too) and I make a mental note to either avoid the person, or the topic of conversation – if the person cannot be avoided.

Fight or flee, they taught me in college. Well, I tend to do both. But with people I fight with, they need to be doubly aware that I do not fight with all and sundry. Fleeing is way better option with people I know don’t really matter in the larger scheme of things. Flight has helped me many a time, in fact, I envy Superman for this reason more than any other. I fight or rather, lay down my point of view, only when I know it is necessary for the person I am giving it to, understand, because I would like that person to be a part of my life and by that demarcation, have an understanding of me. I would have said an appreciation of me, but that would be pushing the buck.

Over time I have also come to realise – and which this conversation I had tonight with my long-lost friend – is that I used to want to be appreciated. I wanted people to like me. I used to go out of my way to be more than who I was – and with all modesty, I can say that that is quite a lot. People came and people left with alarming population. My home became a thouroughfare for almost a decade.

Through the age of 24 to the age of 34 – give a take maybe a year or two here and there – I met with thousands of people. After my mom went through cancer treatments, and after I lost my daughter, Zoe, I came to the healthy realization that all who come into my life were not meant to stay. They came into my life, played their part and then they left. There were a few, a number that I can say still accounts for a large one to most recluses around the world, who chose to stay in my life because of who I am and what I brought to their lives and minds.

I was just saying how I used to think that the world was my oyster. Through school and early college, I was landlocked. The bell was tolling for me, because I was insecure, self-conscious, horribly shy and crucially aware of my homosexuality. I wore all these things on my sleeve and I was tossed about – literally – even by my own father. But I came into my own, in my final years of college and yet, I couldn’t perceive that the world came to me because I was still accepting it on its own terms.

I believed what it told me. I read books and chose to live how the characters lived. I watched Julia Roberts in movies, and thought that somewhere there will be a millionaire who would climb up a fire escape for me, too. Of course, there was no millionaire, or anyone who made love to me on a piano, but I did have relationships with lovely men. The realization that I didn’t have to find Richard Gere, but become Julia, came much later in life. Even later, came the dawning that Harpreet could be Harpreet and still get someone to climb a fire escape for him – and for that matter, even if no one climbed up the damned stairs, Harpreet could climb down himself and get into that limo.

There are these concentric circles of our lives. The innermost circle has the ones I can turn to when I need love and help. There is a circle beyond that, and another, with people thriving in them, closest friends, closer friends, close friends, friends, acquaintances – all coming and going. People choose to move inward or they can choose to move outward. I don’t barricade this, I have let things remain fluid. It needs to have a life of its own. But I do know the innermost circle is unfailing in its boundary.

Where the lost things go

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

Mary Poppins was a wonderful movie. It took me to a place where the lost things go. It reminded me of why I was called Peter Pan by a friend so many years ago.

In the middle of life, I grew up somewhere, some time, and I lost perspective of the things that mattered.

Friends and siblings have grown up. The conundrum is that I look for independence and maturity in people I choose to build bonds with. I look down upon the ones who don’t think, who hope extensively. But I’ve also realized, especially when faced with people who are alien to emotion and responses based on the heart, I do not think that they will be happy in life.

I set a lot of score in things that have no real tangible source of happiness. A good wad of cash gets good things that are wanted, tangible, things that can be touched and – perhaps even loved. But these things, along with the cash, do not really matter, in the end. We are human beings – unfortunately – and we need love and we need the succour provided by the Other.

Death becomes final, if there is no love. Memory makes the person immortal. Experience and history are what carries you into the future, into existence forever. The poets and the writers and the painters tried to capture this into art and transcribe it into the tangible. I have known people who have moved away from sensibility and into sense, but I have also seen them despondent and eventually, I have seen them float into the sphere of feeling, sometimes unwittingly, sometimes deliberately and sometimes, fighting tooth and nail.

I have seen how sense takes flight and sensibility takes over, with a vengeance. It is almost as if she wants to wreck love with a violence. She seeks to punish, and she feels it is right as is her wont. But I have dealt with emotion my entire life. I grow weary of her. Sense has come to me while sensibility has been told to wait in the corner. I haven’t discarded her. I just wanted to talk a bit with her sister. It is as Mary Poppins says, it is the time between the dark and light. And sensibility hides quietly.

Some people I loved died, and some, tragically, have grown up. Yes. These elite have no need now of sensibility. They haven’t just taken a break from her… or so they like to think. They wish to do without her. They wish to draw boundaries. They wish for rules. Lines. Space. Independence. Finding themselves. But they do not realise that sense isn’t the only thing that will lead them to peace and fruition.

I know that when my child died in the middle of my home, she left for good. The floor she lay on is just a floor. The home she breathed her last is just a house. Sense asks me to know that death is final. Dreams are dreams and fears are unfounded. But somewhere from the dark within, sensibility whispers, gone but not forgotten. Trust, she says. Love, she reminds. And I turn to the dark, searching for the place where the lost things go. And I trust and I love and find her in me – sitting right next to Peter.

What ‘poor’ signifies, IMO

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

When someone else calls us poor, we don’t like it. Irrespective of the fact that in 2015, around 170 million people, or 12.4%, lived in poverty a reduction from 29.8% in 2009. Poverty in India is a historical reality. The world has 872.3 million people below the new poverty line, of which 179.6 million people lived in India. In other words, India with 17.5% of total world’s population, had 20.6% share of world’s poorest in 2011.

Now consider the fact that Homosexuality is mostly a taboo subject in Indian civil society and for the government. Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code makes sex with persons of the same gender punishable by law. On 2 July 2009, in Naz Foundation v. Govt. of NCT of Delhi, the Delhi High Court held that provision to be unconstitutional with respect to sex between consenting adults, but the Supreme Court of India overturned that ruling on 11 December 2013, stating that the court was instead deferring to Indian legislators to provide the sought-after clarity. Mental, physical, emotional and economic violence against LGBT community in India prevails. Lacking support from family, society or police, many gay rape victims don’t report the crimes.

Historical literary evidence indicates that homosexuality has been prevalent across the Indian subcontinent throughout history, and that homosexuals were not necessarily considered inferior in any way until about 18th century.

So in effect the colonial law still prevails here. I don’t get how we get upset about what one business man says about our country which is statistically accurate but we don’t when Indians still abuse human rights for our own people in our own country. Where is this outrage then??

The health ministry says, Our culture doesn’t back smoking by women. A politician says, “Boys and girls should be married by the time they turn 16, so that they do not stray… this will decrease the incidents of rape.” One says on the matter of rape that “this kind of rape should not occur.” Another says, “we should avoid the use of computers and English in India.” There is the quote regarding malnutrition in a state talking about figure conscious girls being on a diet. Another says, “90% rape cases are consensual.” And if we talk about being poor, one politician states, “Rs 600 per month is enough to feed a family of five.”

But these comments do not gain notoriety.

Ten years after their first such survey, the Delhi-based Centre for the Study in Developing Societies (CSDS) and Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS), a German foundation associated with a political party, conducted a sample survey on 6122 respondents in the age group of 15-34 years in 19 Indian states. The findings were released on Monday.

As regards the point about phones and social media and the usage of the same: Half of all young people had never used social media. Among those who had, Whatsapp and Facebook were the most popular. Over 80% of young people reported owning a mobile phone, of which over half were smartphones. Over a quarter owned a laptop.

The survey shows that support among young people is low for what are believed to be progressive issues. More young people support banning movies which hurt religious sentiments than oppose it, more support the death penalty than oppose it, and more disagree that the consumption of beef is a personal choice. These opinions vary sharply by religion; Muslim youth are more likely to oppose the death penalty and 69% disagree with any objection to the consumption of beef.

While there is relative support for equal access to education for men and women and for women leaders, many also subscribe to deeply patriarchal views with over half saying that wives must always listen to their husbands.

Close on the heels of the debate over racism in India, just 63% of young people say they wouldn’t mind an African neighbour.
A majority also believed that religion (47%) should take precedence over science (33%).
Despite an increase in the share of young people who approve of inter-caste marriage over time, the share of people practising what they preach is miniscule; just 4% had an inter-caste marriage, and just 3% an inter-religious one. The vast majority – 84% – had an arranged marriage and just 6% had a love marriage. Love marriages were more common among dalits (10%) and Muslims (7%). Among those who had love marriages, three out of ten were inter-caste.

The comment by one person regarding our country puts us in a flutter. All we do is bluster and get angry, we want a ban. Why don’t we look and see what can be bettered then: our mind sets, our work ethic, our outlook toward the different and broaden our collective consciousness to be an encouraging part of the world?