Facet of the Diamond I

  Why do I behave as if the world owes me? It is quite the other way around actually: I owe it to the many people who make the world. Family, of course, but other relatives... and friends.

   Thought about this many times. I should have resolved the issue by now but I have not. Perhaps it is too deep-rooted to just vanish. 

    My attitude springs from some unreachable and queer depth it seems, but  I wonder if I was ever a sweet kid at all. Did I have in me what it takes to be an amiable person? 

I remember being loved. I have been loved by my parents, my siblings, an aunt and yes, I have been that sweet normal kid till the early years of the 1970s. 

Thereafter my personal credibility flounders. Huckleberry Fin replaces my childhood heroes like Dhruva and Nachiketas. The great and moralistic Indian 'myths' are replaced by the West's more bargain-like pragmatism and my rioting hormones at adolescence adapt well to the utilitarian craft of surviving rather than to the more difficult gratitude and self-giving.

Something of the noble samskaras, those which come with the intrinsic racial cultural baggage remained. They conflict in me from time to time. This, it seems, is the soul's colouring. All souls must have it, but some cultures have charted out these tendencies upon which to build a noble collective life. Amongst these high, noble cultures, my own,The Indian culture tops.

While growing up I acquired and adapted to paradharmic aspects, making my soul stray from its natural course on God's Sunlit path. I strayed into woods and thorny bush; I got lost in the world of predators. I became defensive and anxious to hide my complexes. The moralist yelled at me until he could no more and the doors of self-aggrandized sane society were shut to me.

Being on the defensive is an aggression. It is an attacking strategy, a more advanced form of defense. When you attack the aggressor even before he charges he will be intimidated. He may growl a little but he will go, leaving you to peace or brooding or whatever that you like doing best. I have adopted this strategy in dealing with the world.

Two girlfriends called me over to tea yesterday. I was glad to go. Across the spread of samosas and puffs and quite rightly brewed black tea we began talking. I noticed during the course that most of the lines I said were lines uttered by a shy kid who wanted to belong but knew not how. There was a constant attempt to be self-righteous and in that a need almost to puncture the comfort bubble of my two friends. We were chums, happy to meet after long, but I could not keep up with the smoothies. I wanted candidness. I wanted not to compare personal myths but rather merge in the one truth of cordial togetherness. I could not be sarcastic. That would be ignoble. I can not let go of my samskaric nobility; I would rather be brutal, call spade a spade.

These girls seemed convinced about my impishness and intrinsic villainy. I thought they compromised the truth of their being for sophistication and Francophilia. But an altercation was tactfully avoided and we parted as good as friends part.

I had half a mind to join them for dinner, but my angst had no place in their pleasantries so I declined.