The Reason

Disclaimer: Yes, this is another note where I am not talking about any person living or dead, the resemblance is neither uncanny nor eerie. Especially politicians or ministers or chiefs, I fear them and I have my reasons. I dare not speak against the ideology the majority is in support of. 

This is my first attempt to write something about the future, a dystopian future to be precise. The idea of a dystopian plot is to predict the future bearing in mind current changes. That being said, I think a Zombie apocalypse is the first thing I would have predicted after a global pandemic. Zombies? These slow creatures that are bloodthirsty because they have none, they do not have souls, they do not have minds, they just have greed for blood. I’ve always felt Zombies are closer to greedy, self-centred leaders political or otherwise, who crave just one thing power. More Powar! Pawar over mODIfication over everything names of cities, stations, teams of Shivs’.

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

“I do understand loss… and the phases of grief one goes through. 

Although, I’ve been rather enthralled at what happens to the mind of the lost after death, or after being brainwashed to follow the path of destruction or just a forward towards complete silence. One such loss was the passing away of Chingi a long long time back, she was a cute little ball of fur, my cousin’s pet dog. Another similar loss was, the passing away of Simba which probably was the first time I understood loss, he slipped and fell, 19 floors down on the 8th of May, 2015. Before the cremation, when I took his still and hardened miniature body in my hand, I felt a nerve-wracking chill through my body much as if my soul had left my body. I told myself that he is in a happier place now. I lied! 

I wonder…I don’t want it to happen to me again and that includes you…”

“… dad, but what has this got to do with me joining MEOWS?”

“For someone who calls themselves something as cute as MEOWS aren’t you guys aggressive ?”

“… but, dad! All we are doing is following the laws set by your generation. I am told that the current state does not need police, they were just there to mindlessly follow orders. You know what happened when the 1949 Constitution was rewritten. This movement of change of mindset requires someone as convincing as MEOWS - the Modified Established Order World Sena…”

“Yeh, about that, you’ve got your whole history from those burgundy-coloured textbooks which were authored by the people who wanted absolute control not only over the capital or order but also the mind…”

“…what rubbish dad, had it not been for the Modified Overall Family Order, you would be living alone in a hut and not in the joint family asylum that we presently stay in…”

“Tell me something do your burgundy books talk about choice, freedom or a thought process for arriving at a decision, if one wants the MOFO then great but what if one does not need the MOFO. The concepts are flawed, your system is corrupt and you are the one who has been brainwashed. Your mother tried to stop you from getting drifted away in this tide but the forces of the order and the then newly founded MEOWS were too coercive, she has since taken a vow of abstinence”

“… Dad, I’ll have you persecuted and this time it’s not a warning and secondly she has chosen the vow of abstinence…”

“That is because she had no other choice!!!”

“…Dad what is wrong with you? Why are you fighting with me today…, don’t you understand today is a very important day for me, today Rishiduttji is going to hand me the sacred thread…” 

“Passing of the sacred thread is the duty of the father and not some leader you younglings follow and in return he gives you the responsibility of a pseudo vigilante for separating Shuddh from the Mishrit, for the destruction of sacred places, for renaming places and beating up anyone who is against you. Great! even after elucidating for you every ounce of actual true history, you will believe in what Rishidutt will have to say”

“…Dad, I can’t have this fight daily, for once and for all just get it all out… YOU … Tell me what the truth is, YOU tell me where it all began… But I beg of you to make it as precise and concise. I am calling you, treating you, and providing you with food and with respect, this is what the Order has taught me, to respect the blood-related elders unless they talk against the Senapati or the state.

I must tell you that after hearing you I will choose and you will not pinpoint every decision I take for this household.…”

“If only, you were making choices that were truly available to you. You are just following the choices, the orchestrated chaos, that leads to destruction! Son, there was a time when we could express ourselves in magazines, newspapers, and online platforms… revolutions or strike against the state really did mean something. The only issue was it was the minorities who were participating in the big flights, which let me be honest were politically motivated in one way or the other.

2024 – it was yet another majority win, they had lost a lot of their vote bank in their sensationalized fight against Corona Viruses and hence they wanted the youth of the country to support them. Hence they introduced the ‘WUSS’ app which you now call the ‘CC4 or crime control for all’. Even then we knew that this is going to burn the nation. 

The WUSS App was simple, it was to be downloaded and permissions for mobile camera usage were to be given. With mobile cameras having 100X zoom, it was beyond effective. The entire structure of the WUSS app was democratic but the mindset of the individuals using it was despotic and vendetta-centred. For Example, A user was to click a photo of someone who had broken the signal and upon live voting be the judge of the situation and punish the criminal too. This broke the entire fabric and foundation of the criminal justice system where an accused didn’t have time or opportunity to present his case, he was guilty without trial and punished without mercy. 

To be honest, it worked pretty well for a few years where in case of a cheque bounce of Rs.3 Lakh Deepak clicked his cheque’s photo along with the dishonour memo and complained against Ravi. He won the first round of votes to punish Ravi within seconds. Consequently, the option for punishment was left open to Deepak, so he with an eye for payback just broke into Ravi's house and sold off all of his gold and got Rs. 10 lacks in the blink of an eye. Initially, all of this had to be recorded so that the same could be shown on Doordarshan Bites but then Doordarshan had to find private players as the number of users grew. This led to the private players also joining the tyrannous gimmick. 

Once the private players joined, the entire scenario was focused on the capitalization of WUSS. It was as if, two animals were fighting in a ring and the audience was losing their money and sanity in the fight, we didn’t know it then but far away, the authorities earned plenty. As the Chiefs imposed heavy taxes on WUSS’ new feature called DREAM ‘ss’ which were other users intelligently guessed a consequence of one’s punishment based on past punishments of users… it was literally betting on the punishments and the consequences. Governmental control was lost, it was as if under the guise of atmasantusht (internal satisfaction) a subject’s internal rage was getting capitalized, exposed and exploited. The entire idea of WUSS was marketed as a peacekeeping factor but none of us had inner peace … ever! No one had a sense of contentment. Such was the idea of commercializing hatred. We couldn’t ever fathom the intentions of the government which was in connivance with the private players to bank on this mass hatred. It was as if we were all born as Alois Schicklgruber and became… … Adolf Hitler… as if we were being manufactured by an amalgamation of the political and private factories. 

After a few years as outrage grew, the payback punishments became severe and the users banked on the public outrage to obtain votes. Like for example, if a shop/seller in a scarcely Jain-populated area delivered meat, it was totalled only because the people from an altogether different region voted in favour. The WUSS app was not geographically tagged, it was marketed to be a democratic app where the users would take the law into their own hands and cross limits with punishment after a majority voted in its favour. 

It was only a matter of time before the leaders of the country decided that the elections were a waste of money and that the WUSS app would be the perfect cost-effective alternative to every decision-making process in the country. Which now is your stupid MEOW” 

“… But dad isn’t that what the majority wanted and you only said it was all voted” 

“Son, what you don’t understand is that earlier there was a process, if someone was accused of a crime then he had a say towards it, it took time to be proven guilty but the underlying principle was that everyone was heard”

“… With all due Respect my dear DAD! What did you accomplish by that? The crime rate was high, corruption was rampant, women were not safe, they were allowed to roam at any time of the day, they were allowed to do whatever they could”

“Son, the crime rate is still high just that, you don’t understand that you are going overboard with it, by justifying violence, women still aren’t safe – because now they are trapped by narrow-minded bigots, to add fuel to the already burning fury - the social media was controlled by the predecessors of your Rishidutt, everyone was force-fed with hatred … all day long. You, me we all are wearing masks not to protect ourselves from viruses but to survive this catastrophe of global warming. Tell me why is it necessary to participate in rallies just for oxygen tanks, why do you have to break monuments constructed in the 700 AD just for a bottle of pure water, why do you have to take the scared thread from Rishidutt in exchange for control over the town area. You are the one who is unknowingly a part and parcel of corruption. We were only corrupt to hide our mistakes, your mind is corrupt with thoughts that have been forcefully fed to you. 

 “… Dad, if you knew all this then why didn’t you stop, I am doing what is right!” 

“No, it is not! Hurting someone daily, insulting them humiliating them online or offline isn’t right, hoarding resources for oneself isn’t right, bringing unnecessary sanctions by introducing deterrent laws isn’t right, not allowing being spoken isn’t right, renaming for the sake of it isn’t right, choosing what the majority demands isn’t right, a mass exodus of people who couldn’t prove their origin isn’t right… 

How can I explain what went wrong and when it went wrong…

I think it started when everyone ignored the forces of nature which brought the Corona Virus of 2019. Mother nature was begging for us to better sustain the environment around us. Even then fossil fuels were used, even then trees were massacred, and even then the money reserved for space exploration and research was spent on funding wars and building weapons of mass destruction just to satisfy competing ego battles.

Then again, somewhere, with an endeavour to provide for a comforting future, we parents chose to slog then to earn the extra bread, and probably then we saw you getting wandered like many others did.

 …We tried very hard to earn that bread and that you wouldn’t drift, we really did cross the mile but you were far from gone. Sorrowfully, we didn’t have a choice when you were taken away for the mandatory training camp, in the guise brainwash. Had I known this was going to be a result of our attempts to complete this family, where you strive for power at the hands of greedy eccentric leaders and choose the path of destruction to eventually become a bloodthirsty Zombie of this tyranny… then …”

“… then what Dad… complete the sentence”

“Then we would have never had you."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

EPILOGUE (present-day):      I think that’s why we chose to not have you. By not giving you that choice, aren’t I the hypocrite in this story?