Taking sides

In the beginning there was plain, vanilla me. This was when I used to believe that everybody in the world should be tolerant and there should be no fights and of course that everybody thought like me. I spent a surprisingly long part of my twenty-seven years as a homo-sapien, conditioned to think like this. This is perhaps the single most important reason behind my inability to form opinions on any matter.

I grew up on a standard diet of Amar Chitra Katha, immersed in the story of Padmini and Jesus with equal aplomb. It served as my introduction to world and Indian history, and religion. I knew all the stories of all the kings, all the wars and all the gods. It was how I learnt to look at things from the perspective of the storyteller, and I was always eager to trust him (because where is the fun in the story if you do not do that!). When I wanted more of history, I moved to my mom's college books and when I wanted more of religion, I moved to Vivekananda. Soon my staunch allegiance to any political/ religious/ philosophical view was suspect. I reached a point where if I could not argue against logically and beat to the dust, again logically, a particular point-of-view, I was not really against it. So going by the contra-positive of that statement I was never really for any thing/ party/ ideology. It may be that I do not posses the ability to argue as diligently, or that I am easily convinced by another, but in the end it has to fit to the tee in my twisted frame of reference or it does not count as taking sides.

I could do this with almost everything, except perhaps religion, because I had never really argued about it with anybody. Not till recently anyway. But I'll not go there. I have learnt an important lesson in tolerance, and I have learnt it well I suppose. There is no one right where faith is concerned, and even though I might be the most liberal of all liberals, I might still be horribly wrong as far as you are concerned. The lesson is not this though. The lesson is that one cannot fight this, or rather one should not fight this. Not for someone else, not with someone else. It does not work. The only fight that seems to work, is the one we have with ourselves. So now you know why I am a conflicted personality.

One might ask though there are other things to the world other than history and theology. Of course! I never hinted otherwise, There is ice-cream! And if you haven't read my previous post, there is Meg Ryan and chocolate syrup! There is science and art, you might add. I have already argued about those two in the past! There is love too, about which the intelligent-(x such that: x > 0 times)-bitten people know, it is entirely futile to argue.

Never mind my sermons though! There is a more relevant point to this defense argument I've been preparing. Recently, when I was faced with a question like, "What do you think about the quota/reservation issue?," I was at complete loss. Why? Because I can still argue both sides. So, I prefer to stay quiet, and mostly listen. Over zealous people hence, have had a tendency to label me spineless. Well, I don't really care for designer labels, and would rather put my spine to the better and more tiring use of holding up body. Then why this long rant, you might ask. Well, I had to write something for a blog post, and I did not want to write about sex, lies and videotapes, so...

And besides this way I get an endless supply of post-worthy material, because I keep getting labeled in all sorts of peculiar combinations. You think that is common or easy?? Try being pretentious and honest to same person!