Saturday, February 21, 2015

Son of enemy

Poetry, Feb '15
By owais

I sit in a group
of young gay men
discussing all under the Sun.

One of them wonders aloud,
“Why do we support our enemies?”

Flummoxed, we ask,
“We do not do that; how can we?”

“Well,” he says,
“My mom asks me to be religious,
and I pretend so.” 

“And then
they kill kids and writers,”
he adds,
almost as an afterthought.

Someone blurts out,
“But those are Muslims; you are not.”

Suddenly,
I feel like a Muslim,
like that cousin of mine, who,
in response to my changing my DP
to ‘Je suis Charlie’,
had changed his
to ‘Our Prophet, Our Honour’.

I had laughed
and told him, in street Hindustani,
“Ghairat se bada chutiyapa duniya mein koi nahin hai Mian,
Ghairat ke bahane log apni betiyon ko halal kar dalte hain.”*

And for effect, I had added,
“Chaudah sau saal pehle bhi,
aaj bhi.”**

He got pissed with me. 
He has a ten-year-old daughter. 
He stopped talking to me. 
Until a married, big-boobed-cousin,
mother of two,
whom he respected a lot
ran away
with a random penile appendage.

Back in the gay support group,
I want to say
that we are all stupid.  
Ideologues more than Evidentialists.

Those who claim
to live by ideologies,
actually live by Evidence and Reason,
like the rest of us.

They also see hunger
as the evidence
of body needing food.

They also see being blown to smithereens
by a terrorist’s bomb
as the evidence of being dead.

They also see a leaky faucet
as reason enough to call a plumber.

They also find it necessary to travel in trains
that were developed as a result of Evidentialists
working on evidence,
using their reason.

They also use computers, television, electricity,
smart phones, modern medicine, scientific surgery,
air planes, steel utensils, CFLs, plastics, tooth pastes,
food cooked on gas, printed books, glass windows,
spectacles, braces, seatbelts, shampoos, helmets,
quartz watches, windscreen wipers, bean bags,
pressure cookers, hair gels, shaving machines.

Everything in their lives,
like in ours,
is a gift of science,
and her daughter technology;
both of which came about
as a result of some of the less stupid of us,
working on everyday phenomena,
using the evidence presented by those
and their own ability to reason.

Yet,
in the true fashion of a traitor,
they run down Reason and Evidence
and claim that what sustains their lives
is some random ideology
with which they were
indoctrinated as kids.

How long will the rest of us
allow these traitors
to kill their kids
and our writers?

All these,
for whom their ideology,
the product of a few mere minds,
is vastly greater than the Cosmos,
which every single day presents us
with evidence saying that truth
can only be arrived at
by looking at it with Reason.

Which is why
they are against the freedom of expression,
when it comes to their pet ideology. 
For to them too,
it is obvious
that the Freedom of Expression
is not that at all. 

It is,
actually,
the Freedom to Truth. 

For one cannot arrive at the truth
unless he is free to express. 
As also his teachers, guides,
witnesses, detractors, pupils,
sources and evidence.

And the arrival to truth
is the last thing
that ideologues want. 
Why? 
Because it will prove that their ideology
was not the same as the truth. 
Which they pretend,
despite knowing that it is not so. 

For if it were, why
would there be as many ideologies
as minds? 

And, why
would we need two words
for exactly the same thing,
as in, say,
Al Islam and Al Haq?

Thus,
knowingly,
they tell lies.

And they abuse their children
by indoctrinating them
with their pet ideology,
so long as it can be called
‘religious’.

And the rest of us
are supposed to not just
turn a blind eye to this worst of abuses,
but pretend to,
and sometimes actually
respect their bullshit!

And,
I want to say that we,
who are one of the more hated groups,
by ideologues of various hues,
merely for being what we are,
must stand up against them. 

For they truly
are the only enemies
we have. 

Rest of the people
are fine enough with us
because all evidence points
to the fact that it is indeed
natural
for some to greatly desire
what some others do less,
or, perhaps, do not.

So,
yes,
young man,
you are right. 
We do support our enemies. 

Perhaps because
we are the sons of our enemies,
indoctrinated like the rest
who unlike us,
actually like to make love
only to women,
or can pretend to do so.

What can we do? 
Our parents are our enemies. 
Their gods,
our gods,
are our enemies.

But back in the gay support group
I say none of this. 
Because I think what I say
will be seen like Aamir Khan in PK was,
an insult to the Sanatana Dharma.***

For few
in the gathering
will see themselves
as the sons of their enemies. 
Instead,
they will see me,
merely as a Muslim,
no matter apostate, but yet
the son of an enemy!

* “No concept is more stupid than ‘honour’. On that pretext, men kill their daughters.”
** “Fourteen hundred years back too, today too.”
*** Eternally True Way of Life.

owais calls himself the ‘sucker for love’ – for knowingly, he not only trusts, but lives on that rainbow which does not actually exist.

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