Being Bad

‘Appa, have you ever been bad?’ Smrithi, my ten year old daughter, asked during dinner.

Before I could reply, my wife butted in. ‘What have you been up to this time?’ she asked Smrithi.

‘Nothing…’ the young one mumbled but she withered under her mother’s unrelenting glare, ‘The Social Studies teacher is so boring. And not just that, she tells these stupid jokes we are supposed to find funny.’ She looked up at us. My wife had her impassive hangman’s look. I too tried to look serious. ‘Today, I was so bored. And when the teacher tortured us with another joke, I tried Appa’s laugh,’ she looked at me and I feigned ignorance, ‘you know, the way you laugh whenever Uncle Philip tries to tell a joke.’ My wife shifted her hangman’s eyes towards me. Smrithi continued, ‘Well, teacher walked out in a huff. Appa, wasn’t I bad?’

Once again, my wife did not let me answer. She scolded our daughter for behaving badly. I put in a nod once in a while.

Later, my daughter refused to let me off the hook, ‘Appa, have you ever been really bad?’

My wife sat with her arms crossed in front. I turned to face my daughter’s innocence. If she was a little older, I would have suspected her of laying a trap for me. It was not difficult to cook up some insignificant bad stuff and I think I performed my fatherly act quite well. I thought of putting in a moral at the end but decided against over-acting. My wife and daughter looked pleased with my performance.

I still remember similar incidents in my childhood and the tales my parents told me. I believed them then. Maybe, their stories were true. Truth does not really matter, does it? Can I tell anyone everything – il buono, il brutto, il cattivo of my life? I don’t think so. Not to my daughter, when she is young; definitely not to my wife, young or old. But, I would love to share - at least, some parts. I don’t know why. Will it make that hidden life more real? Or, is it to shift that from the bad bin to the one labeled ok, if not good?

But then, that’s part of love, isn’t it? I mean, hiding, or just not revealing, a huge part of one’s life. After all, it is best to know a love well.

One has to be ready, though. The bad stuff has the habit of revealing itself, like a dead body escaping weights and shackles to resurface in a pond. There is nothing much one can do then.

What if I had told my daughter, and my wife, something true? If lucky, they might think I made it up. Will they think that it is not really that bad? Maybe, like a lot of family stuff, it will be hushed up till the silence eats away at the memory, leaving little. What if I had told them this…?

After school, I went to a college far from home. I guess that last part was the operative part for me – far from home. There, I got to know the power of religion, caste, color, language, class and beliefs. I was not naïve. But the fervent, radical and senseless grouping of youngsters, the youngest around seventeen and the oldest barely twenty two, was overwhelming. The main clubs were based on simple stuff like region or language. It was awful to see the crème de la crème of society enforce a tacit apartheid. The chanting at the campus temple seemed loud and combative, and the display of saffron or sandalwood paste just ostentatious. In that small campus village, the Christians’ orthodox Sunday school and the Muslims’ mandatory prayer meetings appeared resentful and vindictive. The left-leaning intelligentsia lived in their cuckoo-land, copycats, so obviously false but still fashionable. There was even a large snooty clique that followed Ayn Rand. In one way or the other, each group believed in their superiority and in subjugating others.   

For a month, I tried to fit in. I found the situation sickening. I stopped going to class. I felt homesick but I stopped writing letters to my parents, to punish myself or them. Well, I was just full of contradictions. And sick of the groups around me. That is when I joined a club.

It had no name and no motto. It had no specific reason to exist. There was no blood-oath or stupid costume or symbol or tattoo. One night, couple of seniors woke me up around midnight and asked me politely if I would like to attend a meeting. There were no speeches or explanations. That first night, I remained on the sidelines. I watched and learned. After a few meetings, I got involved more actively. In my second year, I knew how to spot and enlist.

The meetings were secret and rarely decided well-in-advance. The venues were varied - classrooms, labs and even open fields on the periphery of the campus. We knew each other but we were invisible to the outside. I never heard of a desertion from within. And I never heard an accusation voiced from without. There were whispers and rumors but those remained just that.

We used to gather around midnight, forming a wide circle. Two or three took charge of the night’s proceedings. The abducted were brought in, bound and blindfolded – juniors, batch-mates, seniors, acquaintances, even friends from some rabid group. They were made to stand in the middle and freed of restraint. If there was any lighting, that was focused on their faces blinding them and keeping us in the dark. They rarely tried to escape, or refused to comply. Our threats must have sounded convincing. Who wants to squat naked over an ant-hill with one end of a pen up the rectum and the other end disturbing the ants? The rumors must have helped too.

It was essentially a session of ragging. Once, we had a Hindu, a Muslim and a Christian. They stood in a triangle, facing each other and within arm’s reach. They had to explain to each other their religion and how they were different. And at the same time, slap each other, once to the right, then to the left. They were unsure at first but then it became a slanging match between the three. It was fascinating. The slaps grew harder and louder while they tried to sound sure and right about their religion. In another session, we had a left-wing guy and an Ayn Rand enthusiast. They were told to strip naked. They faced each other, with the right hand raised in a mock neo-Nazi salute, and the left hand holding and rubbing the other’s penis. The left-wing guy had to explain the life and works of Marx or Lenin or Mao or Stalin or whoever, and the other explained the virtues of capitalism, selfishness and super-heroes. They sweated, stuttered, their faces suffused with guilt and even pleasure, unable to prevent their erection and subsequent ejaculation. Every session had that mixture of rigid, unquestioning belief about superiority along with guilt or savage bestiality. 

We were not trying to achieve anything. We knew that those youngsters would turn out to be average middle-class or upper-class adults with similar suburban lives. And that they would continue to voice their commonplace opinions and stick to their groups, including some, excluding most.

I do not know why we meet. But we carry on.