“Anarchy. Disarray. This is the world today”, a drunk Sins told the woman he had met at the bar an hour back. The woman stared at him in slight amusement. The conversation had taken an interesting turn a couple of minutes back, morphing into the behaviour of the society that they were a part of, and she found herself looking forward to having a lively conversation with this now familiar stranger, about whom there was something she liked, maybe his well-mannered tone, or his gestural style of speaking earnestly about a topic.
Sins was in love, but then, he had no idea what love was. For him lust and love kept changing hands from time to time. He was of the opinion that he could love anything or anyone if he tried hard enough to do so, provided of course that he wanted to, preferably for something he wanted in return, emotional or sexual. He had told this to the woman, and the woman had smiled, as if she understood what he was trying to imply. He had seen her standing all alone, a drink and a cigarette occupying both her slender hands, and for Sins, that was a sight which deserved to be cast in paint by a grandmaster. He had promptly sauntered over to make talk.
“Misogyny and Violence. That is the world today”, she replied back to Sins sipping her beer quietly and making serene eye contact as she said so. She had deep, intelligent eyes, maybe a harbinger of the circumstances she had gone through in her quest to learn new things and excel in her chosen work. “I second that”, Sins nodded, noting mentally another conversation he had had with a good friend last week, who had abused a woman colleague at work simply because she was better than him. In that instance, he had been fired, and the company had been lauded by the industry for doing so. Sins had agreed with the decision and asked his friend to change his ways. “Sins, I hate it man. I can’t bear the fact that I was outdone by a woman!”, he had yelled at Sins. “Why?”, Sins had asked calmly. “It just feels…bad. I mean, Sins, come on, do you think she got that by pure merit?”. Sins had glared at his friend, whom he had known for the past seven years, and asked him to leave politely, wishing he could beat him to pulp, and hang him upside down. He resisted the temptation, any way, violence wasn’t going to solve anything, though he deserved it.
“I second that”, Sins told her again, noticing how beautiful her hair glistened in the bright sparky lights of the bar. He agreed that violence was a problem, precisely because, it was so..easy, and law was archaic and slow at best in delivering judgement. Sins had no problem with the system, he thought the laws were well framed, which gave a fair voice to everybody to submit their grievances. He just didn’t like the fact that it was so easy to misuse it, especially by the devious types, who felt justified in doing so, because their upbringing didn’t spur their consciousness that it was wrong. For them, law was something to be scorned at, just a hindrance to their objectives of keeping the poor and downtrodden right where they belonged, the streets. The souls who were not a part of the economic mainstream, doomed to toil away forever, and worship their political masters for perks and part-time benefits, usually when it was election time.
It was so easy for people like Sins to ponder over such questions, because he was privileged to have things like Parents who made steady money regularly, providing him food, shelter and education. Irrespective of how bad or good the services were, the fact was, that they were there, while it wasn’t for many. He felt so lucky.
“You didn’t tell me your name”, the woman told Sins.
“My name is Sins. It’s a pleasure to meet you”
“I’m Roxy. Nice to meet you Sins. You’re different from all my friends”
Sins felt glad. “I think the same goes for me too”
The atmosphere in the bar was getting noisier by the minute, probably because people were steadily getting drunker by the minute, with their arms all over each other, sometimes rolling or laughing around at stupid jokes and making out with their opposite sex, and in one case their same sex. The bar was a liberal hangout, populated by a cross-section of people of all ages from eighteen to fifty. Love, it was all about feeling wanted and loved, showered with attention and being popular, respected and admired, harvesting an assortment of people around to motivate you and induce a sense of belonging and community to a cause, any cause, from issues like solving world hunger to amassing a great fortune to getting drunk everyday. Problems needed to be solved, period. Sins’ current problem was productivity. He felt he could easily learn more and achieve more, as a result, however he found that he lacked the state of constant desire and excitement to accomplish more. He felt like a part of the popular mainstream culture, especially on the internet which constantly pushed out things like being against material resources, and how there was no point of doing anything, when everyone was going to die anyway. So, chill, get high, have sex, have food and just..die.
Sins wanted to fight against that culture, which created and accepted mediocrity in thinking, and worse, promoted it so brazenly to young impressionable minds under the garb of philosophy and maturity. Politicians did the same. Selling themselves about on mass media wantonly pandering to populist sentiment, but themselves involved in creating an atmosphere of hostility to corner a branch of the electorate, manipulated by their minds into thinking emotionally by being given a sense of working for a greater good when there was none, only an illusion, a facade of deception intent to lure the voter into a false sense of doing good and contributing to the welfare of the population. Emotions usually trumped objectivity and facts, and that fact saddened Sins deeply.
“So what do you do to make a living?”, Sins asked the woman.
“I work in marketing. I’m responsible for creating consumer education campaigns”
“I hope the product or service your company provides is good”
“I work for a politician. He’s the best”
“I hope he’s not a misogynist”
Marijuana Maharaj 