Love in the time of holler-a…

Ever since I became conscious of the fact that the world is not all flair and roses, I knew that to spend some decent years here would be more like locking horns with a bull… it would suck every ounce of the energy…

As if growing up (which involved going through the puberty phase, raging hormones and the grudges which family members have with each other discussed right in front of your young eyes and ears), completing studies and moving away from home (in search of independent pastures and uneven terrains) had not drained me enough of the last drop of spunk that was there in my bones, it was the ‘falling in love’ part that broke all records.

I met a beautiful man when I first ventured out of home and to be honest, I fell head over heels for him…right from the word ‘Go’… I still don’t know how! Of course he wasn’t perfect… His imperfections became all the more vivid when it finally hit me that he is a Hindu… a Hindu Brahmin. I am a Khatri Sikh. Initially, we used to make a joke out of it… he would introduce himself saying – My name is Aditya Kaushik and Kaushiks are Brahmins… so I should consider myself lucky to have known him. Never the one to fall behind in a repartee, I would reply that I am a sikhni from Ludhiana; he shouldn’t ever doubt my ability to stand up for a cause I believe in and be dramatic in the process. Even though it came with a bit of salt (and perhaps pepper), we took it well. But then, as the first few months waned away, the feeling that we were different… well-matched but different started to settle…first in my abdomen, then my brain. I used to look at him and feel heavy… my legs would give away… my head would hurt… the things I had heard ever since I was born… Hindus being referred to as ‘Lalas’ (nothing wrong with it, but my nascent brain interpreted the word as ‘different and of a different texture’) … the 1984 tragedy… How Sikhism was a sect which grew out of Hinduism, they being rebels with a cause and so obviously more powerful… all of it kept coming back to me every now and then.

Thus, the rut began…

Over the years, we have had several enlightening yet painful discussions… where he treads ever so softly, trying to explain how both religions are equal… assuring me that, all his life, he has been a secular man… but, whenever, if ever, even when hallucinating, I sense the slightest bit of superiority in his voice, I flip out… and cry… The poor guy is left fumbling and scared, not being able to understand why this is an issue… at all. It’s an issue because the lines have since long been drawn… and the biggest misery is that I cannot see those lines… I am blinded by the glare… but I cannot see what is dividing us… I don’t want him to be treated differently from any other man who is a good (read ‘turbaned’) prospective match for me… because I expect the same from his parents…

The deepest wound has been inflicted by our leaders, politicians, the voices which holler and haunt us… Whenever a politician issues a statement, foolishly declaring that in the next one or two decades, almost every Indian would be a Hindu, I look at him with suspicion… And how can I forget – Once, one of my relatives had very wisely told me that when a Hindu man takes a non-hindu bride, it is all an agenda… migraine attacked me the next couple of days…

But, if you instinctively know you are with the right person, you equip yourself hard to be a part of this steeplechase… So that is what we managed to do… We have made this battle between a Brahmin and a Kshatriya – a scholar and a warrior – an extremely luscious one. For example, I attended a kirtan ceremony at his house once and he was so nervous, knowing that the sikh tradition does not allow people to dance at a religious observance, which is exactly what was happening in their house… He kept looking at me to make sure I was alrite… clarifying that this happens once in a year or two and is not a daily routine… That I had a lot of fun is an understatement. Also, I became a vegetarian around the same time I met him… It was something that I’d long wanted to do… instead of considering it a healthy development, the people around me not only worry about my proteinless health but also secretly invent jokes over it. I am having the last laugh though. He has met my Old Man a couple of times and the response that he got was nothing short of cold and spooky… it has led him to conclude that there is something about our blood which makes us utterly transparent, that hiding our true feelings is an art that we neither know nor wish to learn. I flash my sheepish smile and nod my head but I do feel bad for him… almost every day… even though his species is in a whopping “majority”… but that is perhaps why he is under constant pressure to prove that it is not contrived… that he is not a propagandist.