Only a minute has passed since she hung up the phone after saying good night, and I am still standing with my phone holding it close to my ear. A deep thought has cobwebbed me. For a second, I felt very strong urge to kill a particular percent of Indians.. 90%.
Her "Hi" was very low when I called her,and so was her voice. The usual cheer of her sound was entirely missing, which always used to be there irrespective of the tiredness of the day.
Clearly there was something wrong. My first thought was 'may be she had a rough day'. 'But she is a strong girl, she knows how to handle rough dayz smoothly' was my second thought. Leaving the train of thoughts in the subway, I jumped straight to the platform of directly asking her whats wrong. So I did. At first she just put my first thought into words, then after one or two lines here and there from me, she told me the answer to the 'whats wrong' question. Although some details were missing, but at least she shared, enough for me. I don't know what had happened, she didn't told me clearly, but she was very upset, very very upset, coz people didn't turn out the way she believed they would. They are the people who she always loved very much ,she still do, and according to her, she'll always do,no matter what,coz they.. are her parents. She always felt lucky that she got such nice and open minded mom-dad. And today she was upset of their orthodox thinking. Its her personal matter so I didn't push her to tell me what happened exactly, but I still wish I could know the event that not only left her low, but also had left her with the realization what people, specially *middle class Indians* are -- from outside they do a lot of showoffs in the society trying to make everyone around them feel that they are modern and open minded-literate-intellectuals while from inside they possesses the same old mentality full of utterly orthodoxical shit.
She was upset that her parents turned out that way, she was sad coz she didn't know how to make them understand, how to bridge the gap. Her faith in Indians and their mentalities has completely disappeared. She thought that 90% of Indians are like that. Her feelings are hard to captivate in words. I am not a writer to regenerate the same feeling that I had when I heard her saying all that, her anger towards the 90%, her rage, her sadness, and most beautiful of all... her determination to fight with all that and desperation to continue to pay attention to her career. She really is something. I have never seen such a positiveness, clarity of thoughts and beauty of the soul anywhere but inside myself. It was like I was talking to myself, words, thoughts,anger,everything was same, everything except the sadness. I always have tried to stay away from sadness, I hate it,coz it always make my loved ones sad, unhappy, not smiling which i don't want them to be. I've pulled many out of it, have tried to put smile on every face, try to give them new prospective of life, shown them how to kick ass hard of everything that tries to make them feel negative,leave them low and erase their smiles. And almost every time I've succeeded Every time but this. I failed to cheer her up, during my entire (almost 15-16 min.)conversation with her I was numb, dumbfounded as I didn't had no words that could make her feel better, I failed to divert her attention towards those 10% who are actually are exactly like she want people to be, I failed to tell her that I am one of them , I failed to tell her that I have exactly the kinda thinking that she think only non-Indians have, I failed to put things into words.
I still don't know how to make her believe in those 10%, worst, I don't know how to put wings back to the angel who thinks that there are no angels in town anymore.
She questioned me back that how to know who among the 10 persons around her is one of those 10%, and I failed to answer that. Why should she give those 10% a damn when the other 90% are not in mind to support her to sail her life in whichever direction she wants? I failed to solve that conundrum either. In spite of being in those 10%, I failed to overcome the effect that those 90% had left over her. I failed to shed this sadness from her and from me, and for the first time in history, I failed to smile.
