Thou Shalt Not Question My Mask

“YOU ARE AN ANGEL. WHY DO YOU WANT TO COME DOWN TO MY LEVEL? BE THE GREAT, EXALTED SAINT THAT YOU ARE”.

“Thank you so much for being kind and generous to all my nasty and angry behaviour. You are truly an angel. Only you could have borne all this, tolerated my unacceptable words and actions, and still be with me”.

She just melted away as she heard her hubby tell this to her on their anniversary. She felt so relieved and thankful that she hadn’t reacted to all that was meted out to her in the past.

She made a double resolve to continue being the “angel” that her husband really needed her to be.

Why do we say things we do?

We could easily snub this question away, and trivialize this as a matter of expression – “We speak because Human beings are wired to express”.

Why do we express, in the first place? 

More accurately – why do we feel a compulsive need to express? 

What happens when we have a compulsive need to express, and we aren’t unable to?

All expression is driven by our inner energies, which we identify as emotions. Everything we say is driven by our emotions. And whether it seems obvious or not, much of what we say – including, and especially the nicest things – are driven by NEGATIVE emotions. Guilt, by far, is the biggest driver of our most benevolent, loving and generous expressions.

On most occasions, people express either to hide something, or to influence others. In either case, the goal is to get others to do what we want them to do, and act in accordance of how we want them to behave.

Of all the dozens of modes of influencing – the finest and most artistic way to influence people and get them to act in a certain way is to give them the corresponding self-image to act upon. An “angel” would never harm you even if she wanted to.

“Flattery” is the most powerful and handy tool of manipulation.

What have we been told time and again about what the biggest strength of India as a civilization has been down the centuries?

We have been eternally fed with lies that the biggest strength of India was to let all toms, harries and especially dicks to barge into India anytime they wanted, and murder, pillage, loot, plunder and rape to their heart’s content.

We have been influenced to be eternally grateful for all those plunderers for giving us the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the music we listen to, the lifestyle we have today.

Hell, today I figured out that we have not been sufficiently grateful to them for contributing “nose-ring” to the repertoire of jewelleries for our women.

We have been constantly encouraged to feel grateful and think – “What would we be had you not plundered us endlessly!!!“

Those who looted us and went away were the lesser benefactors.

Those who stayed back, and continued to loot, decimated our entire culture, kept squeezing us for centuries, cut out every vein of our civilization – from the jugular to the tiniest, are the ones we need to be eternally grateful to. These are the people we need to constantly supplicate to and tell – “What would we be had you not plundered us endlessly!!!“

Apparently, we need to be grateful to them because they created the “melting pot” that India was.

This “melting pot” churned out one delicious dish after another, each cooked in the blood-broth of our ancestors. But that’s precisely the beauty of our civilization, isn’t it? We should not be like the brutes of the rest of the world. We should be what we were always known to be – kind, accepting, assimilating, forgiving, and of course grateful for all the food and clothing and architecture and music and other forms of lifestyle, because – “What would we be had you not plundered us endlessly!!!”

That generosity, we have been brainwashed to believe, is our biggest strength.

Not only do the manipulators sell this to us, even the most illuminary ones amongst us buy into this, and propagate this to look and feel like a “global citizen”. I have come across phenomenally intelligent and successful Indians taking pride in this “Melting Pot” of India and sharing symbols of barbarism as an evidence of the “greatness of India”. All because the Gospel of The New York Times said it so.

If you want to destroy someone easily and effortlessly, you just need to give them a self-image of a “saint” – someone who is divine and infinitely generous and supremely compassionate – who can take blows after blows and yet be kind and compassionate to you.

Isn’t it amazing that those who took upon themselves to carry the divine messages – “Turn the other cheek on“, and “Do not take an eye for an eye” are responsible for killing 500 million people in their tiny history of less than 2 millenia? A large majority of these killings were done in the most torturous ways using the most horrifyingly painful contraptions.

Why would someone preach you to “Turn the other cheek”? Why would someone want you not to “Take an eye for an eye”?

One would do that simply to ensure that when he slaps you, you do not slap him back, but turn the other cheek.

One would do that simply to ensure that when he gouges out one of your eyes, you bless him while he runs away with that eye.

Indians have been manipulated into being weak and spineless, by praising their historical display of impotence all through the century, and we took on to wearing our incapacity as our badge of honour. The set of people with amazing tales of martial arts and warriorship suddenly started finding glory in taking blows rather than protecting themselves and those who they were responsible for.

Rather than stories of valour, they started measuring greatness in the number of wounds that had been inflicted on them.

What drives the actions of any human being?

When do human beings take a certain action, and when do they desist from taking a certain action?

The golden rule of this age and all ages is simply this – People do what they can get away with !!!

When we undergo various experience, it generates a myriad of emotions within us, which are powerful surges of energies gushing within us. As these energies move around within us frantically, they get us do the things we do. Our bodies and minds need these energies to be let out so that we can feel at ease again.

However, we are also almost aware, where an expression of these energies is feasible with safety, and where such an expression would get your heads chopped off,  or have you burnt at the stake.

So, suppose you have been triggered off by the acts of the religiously fanatic. Your emotions are running wild, and your inner energies are going crazy, driving you to give you a compelling need to EXPRESS. You need to scream it out. You need to let the world know about this unacceptable Wrong.

But – you do not want your head to be chopped off, and you do not want to be burnt at the stake.

So, what do you do?

It is simple and obvious. You do what you can get away with!!!

The hubby who utters the opening dialog of this article goes through wild situations at office. His boss gets his hormones run wild. He needs to express it out. 

Can he do that with his boss? 

That’s why he needs an “angel” at home. 

That’s why intellectuals of the world need religions like Hinduism, because they need to direct their energies, emotions and expressions where their heads are not chopped and bodies are not burnt. They have already found out their “angel”, who will indulge everyone’s freedom of expression and still be kind to them. Heck, they would be grateful to them for all these insults.

So whenever intellectuals want to feel superior, they direct the darts of their energies, emotions and expression to the safest bulls’ eye. This helps them to open their safety-valves, let their steam out, feel at easy in their bodies and minds, feel elevated, feel grandiose about being a sensitive global citizen, and still have their heads and bodies intact. 

What is a better deal than that?

All the best being great, kind, compassionate, generous, accepting, assimilating, forgiving. Angels do not last long on the earth.