We get pissed, we get excited; we get contented and we get poignant but we Indians know how to give words and voices to our moods. We express the fair, but conceal the dark in any of the four chambers of our hearts or any gray cell in our cerebrums. But we divulge them when time comes and we travel sleeper class and we use their toilets and their walls.
I remember one of the walls shouting at the-then-hot-political-agenda in Maharashtra. Biharis shouting at Marathis and calling them goons and the latter calling the formers outsiders and job-snatchers; a classic tussle scribbled in grimy handwriting. There was a rough caricature of a renowned firebrand politician with a frog like face, hidden behind rimless spectacles and well-gelled hairs combed neatly. There were poetries and shayaris and randomness. Any politician pouring his liquid gold down the drain could have sensed the unrest but they travel first class and use their toilets but not their walls. Their wall is called the Parliament.
We are a sex starved nation. Though Vatsyayan wrote the 1250 verses of Kamasutra in the 2nd century CE for Indians to learn and memorize, But we have continued to enlighten the west and we have continued being the land of snake charmers and Sadhus and Software Engineers and Call centre executives. So Sex is perhaps the least discussed but the most thought over topic in India. We keep concealing it till we find the wall of liberation. So they draw, they write and they croon about their wildest sexual fantasies. The outer guise of a gentleman or rather a pretentious godly creature is flushed down by rusty manual pipe of the lavatory and the gentle, inventive Satan clouds the white walls.
Relationships and breakups are all immortalized in this temple. Love stricken hearts praising their lady loves, one sided lovers writing their undeliverable love letters to the damsels, broken hearts shouting at their once-a-goddess-now-a-whores; Some even making their mobile numbers public, their way of taking revenge banking on the fact that once a urinating deity will read it and impart justice. Fair? Unfair? Their and theirs to decide?
Unpleasant letters to parents, frustration about receding hairline and bulging paunches, complaints about existence and every dark emotion which is not conceivable under the sun finds its mention inside the temple of liberation and its sacred walls which is better selling than the best bestsellers bringing a smile, a frown or any emotion every time a reader reads it.
India is a land of Public speakers and private thinkers. We shout, we fight, we forget. We smile on their faces, we crib at their backs and we love to hold grudges. We are a shining metal pot, but our water tastes of rust, the inners are not that well polished. And when we come to ourselves with no human scent around, we feel liberated. And we shout and cry our worries out. That’s our way of lightening ourselves. A marker and a washroom wall is what we need, the most disgusting civic practice but we love it.
I remember one of the walls shouting at the-then-hot-political-agenda in Maharashtra. Biharis shouting at Marathis and calling them goons and the latter calling the formers outsiders and job-snatchers; a classic tussle scribbled in grimy handwriting. There was a rough caricature of a renowned firebrand politician with a frog like face, hidden behind rimless spectacles and well-gelled hairs combed neatly. There were poetries and shayaris and randomness. Any politician pouring his liquid gold down the drain could have sensed the unrest but they travel first class and use their toilets but not their walls. Their wall is called the Parliament.
Relationships and breakups are all immortalized in this temple. Love stricken hearts praising their lady loves, one sided lovers writing their undeliverable love letters to the damsels, broken hearts shouting at their once-a-goddess-now-a-whores; Some even making their mobile numbers public, their way of taking revenge banking on the fact that once a urinating deity will read it and impart justice. Fair? Unfair? Their and theirs to decide?
Unpleasant letters to parents, frustration about receding hairline and bulging paunches, complaints about existence and every dark emotion which is not conceivable under the sun finds its mention inside the temple of liberation and its sacred walls which is better selling than the best bestsellers bringing a smile, a frown or any emotion every time a reader reads it.
India is a land of Public speakers and private thinkers. We shout, we fight, we forget. We smile on their faces, we crib at their backs and we love to hold grudges. We are a shining metal pot, but our water tastes of rust, the inners are not that well polished. And when we come to ourselves with no human scent around, we feel liberated. And we shout and cry our worries out. That’s our way of lightening ourselves. A marker and a washroom wall is what we need, the most disgusting civic practice but we love it.
