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.