Perfumes of Arabia

Photo by Silas Baisch on Unsplash

Parts of this country has literally been burning for months - years, in fact. North India is a veritable mess of communalism and a marked lack of sanity. South India is cashing in on the opportunity to prove their superiority, but honestly, it's as big a mess as it ever has been.

I went on a couple of dates recently with someone I'd been talking to for like, 2-3 years. One of the things that brought us closer was cats. The other was the fact that he worked in Dubai. When I finally met him in person, I realized that Dubai was a subject we both loved more intensely than I had realized. He was brought up in India, notably in Bangalore, and shifted their to work. I came round to things the opposite way. And while literally all of my Indian friends know next to nothing about Dubai, none of my friends from Dubai are interested in eulogizing the place the way I want to. This put my date in a unique position in my friend circle - he loved praising Dubai, and so did I. At the same time, I also realized that I was far less radical about my dislike of Indian inconveniences, and far less effusive about my praise of Emirati conveniences than he was. And that's a hell of a U-turn.

When I began blogging in 2008, I was at the beginning the process of leaving my homeland forever. It's been at least a good five years since I've last seen it now. And back in the day, faced with the prospect of moving to India - and more specifically, to Kerala - I felt certain that I would not survive the move. I felt completely sure that this was a change I could kill myself over.

The hope of fixing the situation effectively distracted me from the prospect of suicide at the time. I failed to fix it, ultimately, but I did learn that I was far more adaptable than I'd previously thought. I began to speak Kottayam-accented Malayalam and broken English to fit in. I would be punished for not speaking English along with the rest of my schoolmates, as if it were no big deal. This transition was partly made easier by the fact that nobody there understood me when I spoke in English - I spoke too fast, my sentences were too grammatically correct.

"A body can get used to anything, even being hanged, as the Irishman said," after all.

While living in Kerala gave me a far more nuanced perspective than I'd previously had, it did nothing to erase my long held beliefs. Yes, there were shades of grey. But this was not a society to be praised or patted on the back. This was a society filled with self importance, proud of its glaring flaws, pitting itself against the mythological "Western Culture" monster. This society had normalized a terrifying way of life for its female residents and natives, and ably exported the same outside Kerala. And yet you will not find many people readily agreeing with me on this. That's part of the normalization process.

I'm saying I don't know many people who will call Kerala a terrifying place to live, but that is exactly what it is. Coming from the sort of privilege I do, I was able to shake a lot of it off, and ensure that I didn't have to return to Kerala for any reason. But the lack of privilege that takes away from the perception of terror is precisely what makes this place so dangerous. The Kerala I know is filled with moderates - moderate conservatives and moderate liberals. Being moderates, they more or less get along with each other. And in the current political climate, criticizing this state has become an even more complicated affair.

This brings me to India in 2018, after 4 years of being run by the BJP. The 2014 elections were possibly the first time I really got into politics. I came into it from a more or less black and white perspective of naivete - I wasn't opposed to the BJP as much as I was opposed to Modi. Modi was embodying all the worst stereotypes attributed to the BJP, wielding the kind of power democracy promised us insane radicals would never wield. He was a mass murderer, I reasoned. His actions led to so many deaths - to a pogrom,  ethnic cleansing, call it what you will. Even if none of that were true, why would you hold out such a person as emblematic of your nation? Why would you want to be represented by such a horrifying type of (alleged) killer?

I figured that sane people would oppose Modi, even if those who stood to gain from his power weren't troubled by such moral scruples. I found out I was wrong - there was an evil greater than attempted genocide - and it was the evil known as money.

"Money" is of course, an oversimplification. Modi swung the "moderates" with the promise of economic development. He dangled the shiny in front of their eyes, and they forgot their reservations. These were people who were "proud" of their country, who didn't feel the need to pander to white people or western governments. But deep down, they lusted after the idea of clean, smooth roads, efficient transportation, lack of pollution and not having to live next to slums. They wanted the world to stop viewing them as "poor" more than anything else, and if that meant voting in a guy who conducts and promotes communal riots, well, that was a small price to pay.

In fact, these moderate rationalists and budding economists were so blinded by the promise of wealth and status that they forgot about actually performing their little logical exercises and economic analyses on Modi. They. didn't. bother. Instead they set about gaslighting people who attempted to take the moral high ground, acting as though the fact that they placed economic interests above murders from the past made them somehow more intelligent.

I saw a thread from one such person today, talking about how he was naive, and genuinely believed that Modi's position in the spotlight would prevent him from creating communal chaos. The same argument was condescendingly put to me back in 2013, when I was aghast that somebody that wasn't a radical rightie might support him.

Those individuals who condescendingly made such arguments back in the day were certain that those of us who were worried about morality were stupid. They believed they were objective, ergo more intelligent. By some coincidence, most of the people I knew protesting Modi back then were women, and the people taking this pseudo objective approach were mostly men. In my mind, a sort of gender divide opened up - one that was later reinforced by the concepts of mansplaining, gaslighting, and generally criminal obnoxiousness coming to light.

Today, all these moderates who were swung by the economic development rhetoric are firmly back in the Anti-Modi camp, trying desperately to act as if they'd never left. Funnily enough, they tend to shout louder than those who have consistently been making the same points all along.

Even more interestingly, Modi's antics have brought my home state of Kerala back into focus. Kerala has had a history of 'communist' governance. Therefore, quite possibly, we've been more consumed by classist riots to be as bothered with the communal ones. As I'd previously mentioned, the fact that moderates on both sides of the divide outnumber radicals also means that people generally get along despite their various types of bigotry and biases. This has made it rather difficult for Modi's BJP to gain a handhold in the state - BJP has no history here, and people tend to get bored or annoyed by communal rhetoric.

The frustrated BJP has made various ham handed efforts to insult Kerala, all of which have backfired spectacularly. This has provided the male rationalists of Kerala with the perfect vehicle to stage their anti-Modi comeback. All they had to do was couple their rediscovered moral high ground with their sense of nationalism.

Just as a pre-election assassination swings a sympathy vote, it is now the in-thing to praise Kerala. To compare its developmental statistics to that of Modi's Gujarat, and use that to jeer at the BJP's efforts to "improve" Kerala. The attack on beef was taken greatly to heart by this beef-loving state, and many hundreds turned out to protect their birthright to eat cow. (I'm right there with them, of course, but then again, I've always been here.) I'm now witnessing a miracle Kerala, somewhere someone like myself would be proud to live...

Yeah, sorry, rationalists. You lost me. Even as you've been happily praising Kerala, Kerala has happily and quietly continued to be as messed up as it always was. The recent Hadiya case is NOT an anomaly - it literally happens all the time. Keralite parents think absolutely nothing of locking up adult daughters. Breaking a wayward daughter's kneecaps is an ubiquitous threat from kind, loving fathers who do everything in their power to feed and educate their daughters. The bottom line is clear: if the well fed and well educated daughter sets one foot off the beaten path, she will find herself locked in her room until she can be safely brought under control again.

The only difference here is that Hadiya managed to get married, and therefore gained a champion willing to create a major movement in her favour - an option that was not made available to privileged, smart, beautiful ex-classmates of mine in recent years.

Middle class moderates and liberals proudly declaim their communal bigotry in Kerala. Casteism is alive and well across religions - millennia later, we're all determined to keep claiming Brahmin ancestry regardless of whether or not our current religion makes any reference to Brahmins. A family member was derided for his choice to marry a woman from a poorer background (the family member himself does not hail from a particularly wealthy life). They're all struggling, but they've got to step on those who are struggling more.

Oh, and you can well keep dreaming about gender equality. My parents are frightened of letting my brother and sister out on the bike after dark, lest they get arrested on suspicion of "Being a couple."

When faced with these discrepancies, the Kerala praisers will (a) point out that North India is WAY worse... Would you like a cookie for being less horrible or something? Why are you under the impression that this is an argument? They will also (b) attempt to exempt themselves and their respective communities from blame, by pointing out that other Keralite communities are more regressive than their own. (????? They're all equally bad, man.) Mostly they will (c) run far away to a safe place where their opinions can be validated by other people like themselves so they don't have to deal with any of this.

It's the year 2018, and my country is going exactly the way I feared it would in 2013. Despite that, there are parts of this country that I'm happier living in than I was in Dubai (!!!) but Kerala has stubbornly kept itself off that list. And the idiots who were shouting the loudest about how they're right and everyone else needs to shut up and listen to them... Well, they're still doing the exact same thing. They just shifted base by a few inches.

These people never learn, do they? I look forward to 2022, when the mess in Kerala hits more fans, and these morons are frantically attempting to shift base once more. Or perhaps they will merely emigrate to Europe/ Australia, in the proud tradition of all of our ancestors, so they never have to deal with any of it.