Freedom

Showing posts with label Freedom. Show all posts

It is a grievous mistake to suppose that hatred is congenital—that it arrives with the child, like a birthmark or the shape of the nose. No, hatred is not a blood-born inheritance, but an infection of the soul, introduced by suggestion, nourished by imitation, and hardened by years of unexamined grievance. We are not born clutching hatred in our tiny fists. Rather, it is pressed into them by those who came before—sometimes unwittingly, sometimes with malevolence that masquerades as tradition.

If one consults the findings of prevailing psychology—as I occasionally do, though not uncritically—one finds that children, left to their own devices, exhibit no innate animosity toward the stranger. They must be taught who to fear, and more importantly, who to blame. It is as Rousseau once lamented: “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” Hate is one such chain—cold, deliberate, and forged not by nature but by nurture’s more sinister hand.

This notion—that hatred is acquired—does not comfort as one might wish. The truth seldom does. There is something profoundly unsettling in the knowledge that what corrodes our common life is not some wild impulse, but rather something cultivated, like a garden of weeds left to thrive in the corners of our souls.

Throughout the years, I have turned this stone over countless times in my mind: what is it that we truly hate, and why? Each time I believe I have found its root, it eludes me—like some nocturnal creature burrowing deeper into the thickets of the human heart. Hatred is nothing if not clever. It dresses itself in the garments of loyalty, of patriotism, even of justice. But if one dares to strip away the masks—however delicately—they will discover fear. Fear is the face that hatred dares not show, and yet it is always there: primal, shivering, unresolved.

Freud, in his somewhat gloomy wisdom, might have called this a projection—the self’s trembling transposed onto the face of the Other. Kierkegaard, too, spoke of this shadowy unease—an existential dread that, when denied, curdles into aggression. How often have we seen men lash out not because they are evil, but because they are afraid, and cannot admit it?

Now I must confess—my life, by most measures, has been comfortable. This comfort, far from being a refuge, poses its own peril. Hatred does not always thrive in the crucible of suffering. Sometimes it germinates in the plush quietude of privilege, where imagination atrophies and the sufferings of others become invisible. In such a state, one ceases not only to feel, but to see.

Rawls warned us against the complacency that privilege breeds—a kind of moral sleepwalking, where one mistakes the silence of injustice for the harmony of peace. The soul, dulled by comfort, becomes fertile soil for suspicion, for resentment, and ultimately, for hate.

But let us not delude ourselves with the modern superstition that hatred can be exorcised through legislation or silenced with slogans. The roots of hatred are too old and too deep for such measures. It cannot be defeated merely by policy; it must be confronted in the quiet moments of honesty—where one dares to ask, not “Who do I hate?” but “What fear am I trying to bury?”

I have been asked, often with subtle accusation, whether I harbour hatred toward those who malign my faith. The question itself is a snare. It demands a binary where there is none. I do not hate those who revile me—not out of saintliness, but because I refuse to let their darkness dictate the weather of my soul. As the Stoics rightly said, it is not what happens to us that matters, but how we respond. And to respond with hatred is to surrender one’s sovereignty.

There is, too, a kind of meanness that arrives with a smile. It is the nastiness of the polite persecutor—the one who questions your legitimacy with the soft cadence of civility. Here we encounter what the sociologists call symbolic violence, but which the Christian would simply call hypocrisy cloaked in charm. These are the hardest faces to confront, for they wear the mask of concern while slipping poison into the wine.

And yet the fault, dear reader, is not only in them—it is also in us. We inhabit a world that rewards noise and punishes nuance. In such a world, to hate is easier than to think. We scroll, we sneer, we shout. We are reactive, not reflective. And in this tyranny of immediacy, the quiet disciplines of charity, patience, and introspection are trampled beneath the feet of spectacle.

Consider the upheavals that erupt in response to perceived slights. They may seem disproportionate to some. But people do not riot over trifles. They riot because something deep and sacred has been bruised. This does not justify their violence—but it does demand our understanding. It is too easy for the West to scorn such reactions, forgetting that its own past is riddled with witch hunts, lynchings, and book burnings.

It is a grave error to think of hate as merely a sentiment. It is, in its most potent form, a structure—a system that defines the margins and exalts the centre. The furore over books, films, and ideologies is not always about the content itself, but what that content awakens: old wounds, buried shames, and ancestral shadows. Jung was right—what is denied in the collective returns with a vengeance, demanding to be seen.

And now, in our digital coliseums, hatred has found new arenas—amplified, monetised, and algorithmically curated. The same hand that scrolls for entertainment can now be enlisted in campaigns of vilification. Words become weapons. Civility becomes weakness. And truth becomes whatever sells.

This is not merely unfortunate—it is dangerous. When free expression is strangled in the name of safety, or criticism mistaken for hate, we do not diminish hatred; we give it a masquerade. Nietzsche warned us of this—of ressentiment, where morality becomes a tool of vengeance, not virtue.

It is tempting to meet provocation with silence or sarcasm. But if I could, I would rather sit at table with the provocateur—not to shout, but to question. What do you gain by wounding the already wounded? What glory is there in deepening division?

This, I believe, is not naïveté. It is a form of survival. Societies do not endure by suppressing conflict, but by transforming it into conversation. The alternative is not peace, but fracture.

History has taught us, time and again, what lies at the end of such fractures—Bosnia, Rwanda, Germany. When men cease to speak truthfully and listen charitably, the abyss opens beneath their feet.

To be tolerant, in such a time, is not to be limp or listless. It is to practise a discipline—an act of will, even of courage. It is to bear the sting of insult without recoiling into vengeance. But tolerance is not the same as acquiescence. I will not strike you for disagreeing with me—but neither will I flatter your falsehoods.

True freedom, as Spinoza knew, lies not in reacting blindly, but in understanding deeply. Frankl, too, saw that between stimulus and response there is a space—and in that space lies our power, our dignity, our humanity.

To be tolerant is not to be passive. It is to walk the narrow ridge between cowardice and fanaticism. It is to love the truth more than one’s comfort, and justice more than one’s reputation.

And here, perhaps, lies my deepest unease with the contemporary secular vision. It claims to celebrate diversity, but too often it demands uniformity in return. It opens the gates, but only to those who sing its tune. In such a theatre, the truly dangerous man is not the fanatic, but the thinker—the one who dares to dissent, to doubt, to ask questions that are not pre-approved.

But maybe danger is necessary. Camus spoke of the rebel—the one who says “no” not to destroy, but to affirm a deeper “yes” to the dignity of man. It is often the dangerous ones who rouse the world from its sleep.

And sometimes, the most dangerous thing of all is to be still. To step out of the dance, to resist the rhythm of outrage, and to think. In a world of performance, reflection becomes rebellion.

For in the end, wisdom does not lie in echoing the prejudices of our forebears. It lies in questioning them. And when we do, we become more than mere heirs of anger—we become architects of something nobler.

This, I believe, is the task set before us—not to abolish hate by decree, but to disarm it by courage, by charity, and above all, by truth.

Loneliness, it would seem, has silently ripened into an affliction of epidemic proportions in our modernised aera. Not that solitude was unknown to those who came before us, but they bore it with a kind of dignity—fortified by convictions that tethered them to individuals somewhat than possessions, to collective significance relatively than milestones. They busied themselves not solely with the accumulation of awards, but with the cultivation of endearments. We, on the contrary, reside in a world increasingly unmoored from such anchorage—a world wherein deeds are too often done not for the still voice within, but for the clamour of applause without. We pursue illusions, chasing shimmering mirages across the desert of present-day existence, rarely pausing to examine whether the oasis we long for lies not without, but within.

In like manner, when the fundamental turns to marriage, I am bound to question—what might the world resemble if we approached this most consecrated of unions with vaster astuteness? What if we chose our mates not purely with our passions, but also with our prudence? Could we not imagine a civilisation wherein the attentions and natures of our progenies are nurtured in the fruitful loam of concord and reciprocal attachment? Might not our communities sprout more harmonious, our efforts more rewarding, and our homes more secure?

For the gospel, while often enshrouded underneath the noise of contemporary cynicism, is that a wholesome marriage possesses the taciturn competence to make us not only happier, but also, in many cases, healthier in physique as well as in psyche. Offspring raised in the shelter of parental protection—where kindness is exchanged like quotidian bread—are spared many of the perils that plague the young: the lesions of isolation, the bewilderment of internal neglect, the stumbles of educational struggle, and even the ailments that afflict the anatomy when the vitality is wearied.

Conversely, when a marriage sours—when bitterness replaces tenderness and reserve fills the place once occupied by laughter—it wrests a grievous knell. It damages the partners first, but not them alone; the children, those mum witnesses to adult anguish, schlep the ache long into their own becoming.

To stay continually in an atmosphere of discord—to engross in or even essentially endure chronic conflict—is to submit the soul and body alike to a sluggish undoing. Such discord does not exclusively steal our order; it diminishes the very quality of our days and the virility of our endeavours. Indeed, the toll it exacts is not wholly impassioned or intangible, but biological. Novel studies have revealed that telomeres—those mysterious guardians capping the ends of our chromosomes, entrusted with the stewardship of our cellular youth—show signs of premature erosion when the human heart is subjected ceaselessly to the tempests of relational wrangling.

Thus, the picking of one’s spouse is no minor matter of sentiment or fleeting fancy; it is a decision that reverberates across the breadth of one’s existence. It shapes not only the tenor of one’s circadian hours but casts long glooms into the future—affecting the rational, emotive, and even physical well-being of one’s broods, whether born or yet to be fantasised of. To marry sagely is to lay a foundation not only for one’s own jubilation, but for the flourishing of generations.

Here, then, are a few ways by which one might begin to take the cherished covenant of commitment with the seriousness it truly solicits—by exploring a liaison that elevates the imagination and fortifies the soul, rather than endlessly pursuing the sudden solace of mere carnal companionship. Let the aim be not naturally to marry, but to marry up—in character, in emotional resonance, and in the muted metier of joint psychological well-being.

(Don’t marry) to substantiate something.

Rightly or wrongly, our culture has adorned the utterance of “I do” and the signing of a civil document with a host of symbolic laurels—success, prosperity, happiness, maturity, and the longed-for stability of a life well-ordered. Thus it is that many enter the pact of marriage not as a divine joining of hearts, but as a ritual of performance—an emblem to be displayed before the world or held up to the mirror of self.

Some wed in haste to declare to their parents their independence and newfound adulthood. Others do so to convince an erstwhile sweetheart that they have not only survived heartache but transcended it with an element of treasure. There are those who marry as a means of flight—from the confines of their family of origin, desperate to demonstrate they are adept of individuality. And many, perhaps more than we realise, marry in the hope of convincing themselves that they are on the correct track—that their lives are promising, respectable, and, above all, “normal.”

But marriage, in the definitive reckoning, attests nothing.

If there is something to prove, let it not be found in the pageantry of vows or the rite of legality, but in the still, daily sweat of ardour. Prove instead that you can sustain a relationship of integrity in the present tense—that you can communicate with candour, give with gladness, and hold dear another not for who they might become, but for who they already are.

(Don’t marry) to take care of someone or to be taken care of.

The longing to care for another—and to be cared for in return—is no mere mawkish whim; it is a yearning etched into the very fibres of our nervous system, a design written unfathomably within our being. To desire affection, to wish to love and be loved—this is wholly natural, even virtuous. But there is a line, often subtle, yet crucial: it is one thing to chase comradeship, and quite another to hunt for someone to mend the broken places in us that we ourselves are unwilling to tend. And equally, it is no virtue to take upon ourselves the burdens that fittingly belong to another, imagining we can live their life for them.

A sturdy symbiosis insists that each soul stand first on its own feet—that both man and woman be whole and distinct persons before they attempt to become one. Without such inner sovereignty, the lines blur: the load of another’s unfinished business becomes confused with our own, and what once appeared the tender act of carting another’s burden quietly becomes the crushing yoke of co-dependence.

In time, the self—the singular, God-breathed self—begins to fade. You are no longer you, but a vague echo of the other, no longer a participant in love but an outline within its fortitude.

A happy marriage, then, is not built upon interactive neediness, but complementary solidity. It is a true partnership, forged by two souls capable of holding fort independently and yet choosing, with joy, to walk together. And to arrive at such a partnership, one must first learn the art not plainly of cerebral retreat, but of delighting in it. For until you have learned to be content in your own company, you are ill-prepared to offer that company as an offering to another.

(Don’t marry) to feel self-worth.

At last, you meet the one who implies to inhabit your every reverie. They are everything you are not, and in their presence you feel—for perhaps the first time—whole, worthy, complete. But if such feelings surge upon you like a revelation, take heed; raise the signal of caution—for here lies not the treasure of true love, but the glittering deceit of fool’s gold.

What you have encountered is not the unobtrusive, steady devotion that forges lasting bonds, but a figment conjured by inner emptiness. For if you have never known what it is to feel sound and sufficient within yourself—apart from the embrace of romance—then this combining, however intoxicating it may sound, will ultimately betray your expectation. No other soul can confer upon us a sense of merit we have not first recognised and nurtured within ourselves.

Before you pledge your heart in earnest allegiance, learn to dwell peacefully in your own company. Learn to delight in your own being—not in arrogance, but in the quiet assurance that you are already a person of value. Only then will you be ready to enter into a confederation not of dependence, but of requited offering—a love that strengthens, comparatively than substitutes, the self.

(Don’t marry) because you think you are running out of time.

It sometimes happens that a man or woman, having reached a certain season of life, sighs inwardly and says, “Very well, I suppose I ought to marry—what else is there left to do?” They look about and see friends, peers, and colleagues stepping into the hearth-warmed rhythms of domestic life, and a quiet dread begins to stir—the fear of being the last one unpaired, the friendless figure at the edge of the gathering.

Pride murmurs that to wait any longer would be to fall behind; fear suggests that one must settle before the final curtain falls. And so, driven by a mixture of vanity and trepidation, they take the plunge—often before their heart and spirit are truly prepared.

But I say: let yourself be the last one standing. Stand you must—and stand with courage. For nonetheless the waiting may be wearisome, and the hush daunting, a few years of patience may spare you a lifetime of disappointment. To rush headlong into a merger with the erroneous aide is to invite dissention, disillusionment, and raw regret. But to wait, to cherry-pick astutely and not barely promptly, may yield a marriage that brings not only comfort but true well-being—a collaboration that withstands not only the passage of time, but sanctifies it.

Better to walk alone in truth than to lie beside another in quiet despair.

(Don’t marry) to have the family you never had.

The scars of childhood are not easily mended. They lie buried beneath the surface, cavernous and tender, and one of the most seductive illusions the heart can entertain is that marriage will serve as a liniment—that in binding oneself to another, one might at last receive the family that was never truly given, but always deserved.

It is a beautiful dream, and a dangerous one.

Many enter matrimony with a bashful oath: I shall not repeat what was done to me. They believe, earnestly and with optimism, that love will redeem the past—that all the distress, negligence, or even cruelty of their early years can be alchemised into something exceptional: a new home, a new lineage, untainted by old grief.

But alas, the mortal soul is not so neatly rewired by ceremony. The pain we have not faced—have not named and brought into the light—follows us like a shadow. No spouse, however devoted, can carry what we ourselves have refused to touch. Until those inner wounds are tended—whether in isolation, in the quiet counsel of a friend, or under the gentle probing of a knowledgeable therapist—they shall continue to haunt the halls of your heart, rustling their old scripts into every new beginning.

Do not, therefore, look to marriage as a substitute for healing. Take this pensive time before the promise to turn inward. Aspire to know yourself as you truly are—your history, your pain, your patterns—and begin the slow and holy work of mending. Only then will you be ready not merely to marry, but to love—and to be loved in return—freely, wholly, and well.

(Don’t marry) because people think otherwise about your sexuality.

If one remains unmarried beyond a certain stage, the world—ever restless for answers it has no right to demand—tends to murmur its suspicions. Idle gossip begins to circle, casting veiled questions upon one’s inclinations and personality, as if a soul’s inmost truths might be discerned by something so outward as a marital status.

But take heart, and hold fast to what you know to be true of yourself. That knowledge—stoic, steadfast, and unshaken by the chatter of the crowd—is testimony enough. Let not the fear of false labels compel you to contort your life to satisfy the trivial mentalities of those who cannot recognise what it means to wait for something real.

To enter into an alliance utterly to gag wagging tongues is no remedy—it is, in truth, a self-inflicted torment of the cruellest kind. Love must never be forged in fear. Wait, slightly, for the one who makes the very ground under your feet tremble—the woman whose presence awakens something exemplary and stirring within you. And if the same bell bongs within her heart at the thought of you, then nothing—neither time, nor slander, nor doubt—can stand in the way of that intimacy.

Until such a thing blossoms in its own good season, pay no heed to the gossip-mongers. Trust instead in the loyal fraternity of friends who have stood beside you—not for appearances, but out of love unmarred by question or condition. Remain with them; they are your true kin. What matters, in the end, is not the configuration of gender, but the firmness of the support and the constancy of the love it offers. Happiness, after all, is not measured by public approval, but by the quiet assurance that you have lived in accordance with your truest self.

(In) conclusion.

Loneliness, I am convinced, is among the chief reasons why so many rush—often unwisely—into the bonds of marriage. The distinction between loneliness and the serene ebullience of seclusion is one that many find elusive, their temperaments trembling before the prospect of being truly comfortable in their own company. Society, with its many voices, has long ingrained in us the fear that to be alone is to be somehow incomplete or abnormal.

It is precisely here that I wish to share some musings—not as a philosopher or sage, but just as a brother—offered to me not long ago by Imran Abbas. To the world, he is architect, athlete, poet, singer, and actor; but to me, he is simply my brother, a man who, like myself, navigates life without pretence or regret.

These thoughts of his, combined with my own, may serve as a lantern in the dim walkways of your inner self—offering clarity where confusion reigns, and inviting you to discover a graver, truer apperception of yourself.

The stereotypes that often come with leading a single life are generally categorised into one group: loneliness. It is so often assumed that those who have not yet found that special person who makes the world a little perkier are experiencing those god-awful waves of loneliness. In reality, there is a magnificent difference between being lonely and being alone.

Being lonely is that kind of aching that resonates in your chest. That dull, constant feeling that follows you around all day long. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing or whom you’re with, it’s impossible to shake that feeling. Typically, these feelings are most prominent after recently losing that person who made your world a little sunnier.

Loneliness arrives accompanied by a host of unwelcome confidants: the relentless tide of memories, the unyielding grip of sleepless nights, and a bewildering fog that clouds the brain. It lays bare the finest treasures of one’s life, only to cast them into stark relief through their throbbing absence.

Loneliness provokes the most troubling questions—Why? Why me? Why does fortune’s favour come across as so cruelly withheld? Why does providence deny even the simplest stroke of luck? It is a yawning chasm within the soul, a void that stubbornly refuses to be filled, regardless of how fervently we attempt to fill it.

Loneliness is the restless spectre that visits at the witching hour, when the world is still and thoughts roam free. It is the mournful melody that drifts from the radio—so potent in its resonance that one must swiftly silence it, lest the sorrow overwhelm.

Yet to be alone is an entirely different circumstance. Being alone is a condition of one’s very existence; loneliness, by contrast, is a torment of the intellect. When you find yourself alone, you are undeniably confronted with all that you lack, but more importantly, you are obliged to confront the honesties within yourself—those honesties obscured when your days were spent in the service of another’s shade.

To be alone is to grant oneself the sacred knack of rumination—to ponder genuinely what you truly yearn in another, so that when love next calls, you may wield all your faculties to guard against ever succumbing again to that desolate malady called loneliness.

Being alone is to sit below the canopy of a tree, lost in the pages of a book, savouring every second with a gratitude born not of necessity but of choice. It is to engage in solitary undertakings not altogether by oneself, but for oneself; to cultivate one’s own closeness as a laudable and treasured ally.

Of course, there are flashes when the path of exultation crosses with the silhouette of loneliness. It is in such times—perhaps while browsing unaccompanied for a new garment—that your eye is drawn to a couple, laughing inaudibly in some distant corner. Their elation resembles to spark like a flame against the dullness of your own heart, and for a brief instant, that old sting stirs anew, a whisper of what once was.

Yet this pang, though sharp, does not linger.

To be alone can, in truth, be one of life’s most profound and empowering gifts. Should you allow loneliness to take root and grow, you risk forfeiting that precious, rare opportunity to discover and come to terms with your own self—your firmest crony, ever at hand. Loneliness will aim to coerce you to seek that sustenance in another, but every soul has its lawful place in the world, and yours was never meant to be wholly subsumed within the life of another.

To be alone is an art—a delicate, righteous craft to be learned and embraced with audacity and grace.

(Foot) note.

Remain free of needless anxiety as you journey along the path that life, in its inscrutable wisdom, has laid before you. Do not fret over what lies ahead, for none among us truly knows what the morrow shall bring. Live fully in the present moment—embrace it with all your heart and mind—because what unfolds today will inevitably shape the contours of your tomorrow. The events of this very day, like seeds sown in fertile soil, determine whether they shall bloom again in the days to come.

While we nourish the illusion of control, the truth remains that we hold none. Never have we possessed it, nor shall we ever. The lever that governs the course of our lives rests in hands beyond the grasp of our common understanding—whether divine or cosmic, this authority eludes our mortal comprehension.

Therefore, I urge you: breathe deeply, release your cares, live with intention, love without reservation, and know that this—this very striving and being—is enough.

In the learning of anthropological psychology, through the lenses of reading, reflection, and the rich tapestry of personal and relayed experience, I often find shape and form for my thoughts and hypotheses. These musings are, in truth, an intricate weave of many influences and insights.

I am grateful to you for your time and attention.

The grotesque side of being a heterosexual in a society obsessed with other sexualities!

My business partner and I were meeting a rather renowned marketing expert for coffee. He asked us for our visiting cards, and when we gave him our visiting cards, the gentleman examined them carefully and queried, “What is the significance of the four numerals that constitute the name of your company?”

“They are birthdays,” answered my business partner.

“Of?” asked the curious fifty-year-old man.

“Both of us,” said my business partner.

“Oh, really,” said the man with some animation, “are you homos?”

“I am afraid we are not,” replied my business partner calmly.

I asked myself what on earth had made somebody who did not even know us want to leap to such an empty extrapolation. Surely, age should have given him a sense of healthier wisdom as opposed to such a petty perception. Then again, he was not at fault, because it was the wafer thin mentality that is currently in fashion (regardless of age) in which there is something fundamentally wired wrong that prods people in deriving cheap thrills by speaking with such stupidity.

If I were in the place of the man, and I was to set my eyes on a name as unique as that, I would have first complimented the duo on being remarkably innovative, and then I would have probed about how and why they had started their company with such an approach, and once concluded with drawing the reason behind such a name, a warm second compliment inclined towards the closeness and bonding would have been my outcome than an unwise gibe at sexuality.

The childishness of the situation triggered me to pen down a few points on notions that I feel have gone entirely awry in the frothy society that we are living in today.

Case 1

Mervin and Lawrence have been best friends since childhood. They studied together. They were on the same football team, and are quite inseparable if one were to put it in one word. One day, after a gruelling game of football, Mervin had soaked himself in the Jacuzzi, and Lawrence had fallen asleep in soiled clothes in Mervin’s room. Seeing that Lawrence was napping, Mervin trotted naked to his wardrobe and was scouting for something to wear when Lawrence happened to wake up and saw Mervin’s unclothed back that was facing him. “Dude,” said Lawrence in jest, “I am surprised that you have such a little butt in comparison to the rest of your toned body.”

When Mervin narrated this to us over wine one day, we had had a hearty laugh, and the topic was never brought up again that evening because it did not make a difference to any of us, except, of course, to one friend, who whispered into the ears of another friend that Mervin and Lawrence were gay.

I know of friends who have bantered harmlessly at their friend’s genitals. I know of women who have shared notes on their bosoms, and none of it even remotely infers that it has anything to do with sexual undertones.

I wanted to tell that friend who was speculating that being ‘with’ men is entirely different than being ‘into’ men. And that if you want to hang about with men, do. And if you want to be a man’s man, be. There is nothing sexual about both, and so long as you know what you are, the rest of the world can take a hike with their assumptions and presumptions as such inquisitiveness is the fixation of the absurd.

Case 2

A friend from Delhi recently moved to Bangalore and was frustrated at the unnecessary poking of people’s noses in the lives of others. “Bro,” he expressed one evening over a meal, “in Delhi we have this healthy culture of walking about in our briefs, or hugging our friends and not caring about anything,” he paused and dissolved into a grimace, “also I’ve lived in hostels since my school days, so I care a hoot when I see a bare butt or a sausage dangling, but the culture in the South is a bit stilted. Any sort of closeness with your male buddies raises eyebrows here. This is so fucked up, man!”

I could empathy with him – there is an undeniably absurd level of idiocy in people around here, especially with the educated classes, and not so much with the masses. The educated, most strangely, do not seem to mind their own business, and sexual discussions are rife on any occasion and almost with everybody. It startles me how these weasels find harmless camaraderie so shockingly violating to go about scandalmongering about it. They don’t understand that it is not about sexuality, but about brotherhood.

Case 3

Why go too far, my business partner and I are like Siamese twins. We are quite the endorsement of the misconception that if you are not born to the same parents, you cannot share the same bond that any two biological brothers would share for each other. A common friend had most aptly said years ago that we are like ‘checks and balance’ – such is our bond. And we are not sexually interested in each other, and we would not be sexually interested in each other as that is not what our sexual orientation is.

We have had our fair share of women and wild sex, and since we are not answerable to anyone, we do not advertise our women, and that leads to some dense minds wanting to babble behind our backs. To such buffoons, as uncouth as it is, we show our middle finger.

Furthermore, I asked Sameer, who has been a close friend for the last twenty years, whether he thought of the closeness between my business partner and me as odd. His instantaneous response was – “Are you serious someone even thought so about you both like that bro? Man, I’ve always envied you guys. About how closely knit you are, and somewhere I always wanted that kind of connect with my own brothers, or some of my male friends.”

Hearing those words only ascertained in me the fact that healthy minds thought healthily, and yes, people at large might newsmonger, but such people with perverse beliefs are best left to rot with their own sorts. Some might say that I am giving more importance to Sameer’s opinion over the opinions of others simply because it was favourable to me. Well, to that, I have the same to repeat; such people with perverse beliefs are best left to rot with their own sorts.

Case 4

M and V are two friends at our club. M is married and V is not. M and V are thick as thieves. When M is not with his wife, he is with V, and when V is not with M, he is busy at work or playing cricket. When quizzed about why a smart lad like him is not with a girlfriend, his standard response is that he is not into casual flings and arm candy is not his style. As expected, it raises eyebrows in a society who is preoccupied with everyone’s sexuality than bothering about their own lives.

V is even cooler when it comes to such bigots; he asks them to come and join him for a threesome if they pry a bit more than required.

These perverted blockheads, who have no occupation than to keep meddling with other peoples lives, should know that heterosexual men who are comfortable with their sexuality would not shy away from being around men of a sexual orientation different from their own. At the same time it is important to never forget that two people of the same gender can love each other like siblings do, and there is nothing wrong about it. People feel different things with different people, and just because it is beyond somebody’s capacity of understanding does not allow anyone any rights to judge or suspect, and if you find yourself in such an awkward situation then do away with such immature homophobes from your life for good as these ‘unhealthy’ people are not fit to be a part of your circle of friends.

Case 5

Vikram and Aditya are two brothers. They share an amity that would make anyone want to have such a relationship with their own blood. It was amusing to hear the word wafting around one day that Vikram and Aditya are in an incestuous relationship. Although Vikram was not concerned, Aditya lost his cool with someone who tried to irk them with their nonsense.

This is where I feel that some people are beyond redemption, that they are ailing mentally, and one simply cannot apply a limit to their lunacy. Aditya was not adroit enough to let it go and indulged in a verbal scuffle, but bear in mind that people like these thrive on sensationalism, and the idea of knowing what they are saying and doing has an effect on you. Never give them that comfort. NEVER.

And to men out there who would be facing such situations, and might buckle under the pressure of, “What would people say?” My only advise to you is not to bother about such inconsequential arseholes. Do not be perturbed unless you think you have some issues to deal with regarding this issue.

Case 6

A couple I knew had been married for twenty-five years. They were quite the epitome of togetherness for many of us. We were shocked to learn that they had filed for a separation. Since we were close, we preferred not to snoop into the reasons for their decision to part as man and wife, but no sooner had the news reached other ears, people began hypothesising that one of them might have fallen in love with someone of their own gender and that was the cause of their divorce proceedings.

One of the most misconstrued and misused notions is this – “Oh, he has passed the permissible age of marriage. Think he must be gay.” Or, “He and she were going just fine. The stories of incompatibility must be a façade, either he must have fallen in love with another man or she with a woman.”

I find myself appalled at such reckless rants. People do not marry for various reasons such as freedom or space, or because they enjoy their own company and are not seeking somebody else to fill in because they are content in their own skin.

I wish we could say with pride that gone are the days when one had to yield to parental or societal pressure when they had found themselves entangled within a marriage that was more a prison than heaven. Sadly, those days are very much prevalent, and we suffer the loss of so many souls to such brutalities.

The sliver lining though is that a handful of the people reach that stage of ‘I don’t care for the world but only for those who care for me.’ These people are impervious to the empty blether, except for the vulnerable. And it is these vulnerable individuals who have to make themselves understand that humanity thrives on rumours; it is great fodder for them, and what it does at its barest level is shows the world how ill one is in their heads with respect to such matters.

Case 7

I workout at a fitness centre that is primarily frequented by the expats, and by way of lifestyle they are inclined to strip and walk from the lockers to the sauna or steam. Or even when they are changing, they most carelessly do away with their knickers and slip on new ones. For them it is most natural, except that there was an Indian man who kept staring at these people who undressed and then made it a topic of discussion with the others around. I heard it once, and then couple of times over the succeeding weeks. Although it was none of my business, I requested him one day to go see a psychologist because he seemed obsessed with the anatomy of men. The man went ballistic and said I was foolish to have assumed he was interested in men’s penises when he was only surprised at how and why these foreigners could change in front of other people. I did buy the idea, but told him that his conversations were never about the ‘changing’ but about the ‘penises’ and if he did not repair his needless fixation with it, it could land him into further trouble. He called me a gay bastard and stormed out of the locker.

When we happen to, even by a slight chance, glimpse upon the penis of another man around us, we tend to inspect it for that dot of a second – this is a natural human tendency – something that has been hardwired into men since the inception of man. It is to do with the survival of the fittest. It is to do with the man who was the strongest, who is celebrated to be the most virile, and therefore, capable of expanding his family by planting his healthier genes. It was all about breeding then, and it is all about breeding now, so why then behave like we are prudes, and have sinned if we have seen another man’s member?

As harsh as it may sound if you focus on anything more than necessary in life then you might have latent concerns that you might have to address under the guidance of someone who is equipped to solve your predicament. Do not be touchy at such times. Be bold. Get to the root of the problem and fix it.

In summary: going to a gay bar, or being there for a bisexual friend would not make you one. This is something I see that many heterosexual men are terrified about. Be there for ‘people’ and not for what they ‘identify’ with. Also remember that most of these stigmas attached to the sexual spectrum would be null and void had we no society to judge us. If we were to develop a manner in which to supress the section that harbours such influences we would be happier people.

Care two hoots about the world. Live the way you feel you want to live. Love the way you want to love. Do not be intrusive in the lives of others. Mind your own business because what any two people feel has to do with self-shared mental and physical intimacy that only they understand, and that is why perhaps the word bosom buddies was coined to begin with in the first place. So go on, find your bosom buddy and live life on your terms.

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