Selective Amnesia

Dilip, Shivam - my apologies

My apologies – to Shivam Vij, Dilip D’Souza and any others whom I have slighted in the past. I am sorry to have fought stupid battles with you on the blog and off. I am sorry I called you names. I am sorry that I had fun at your causes and your issues. Recently, I realised something. Something that made me see that being what you all are – bleeding hearts – requires a great deal of hard work, and a special something I lack.

A personal example. I was talking to an NGO type girl a few months back. She was so violently against the expressway on Old Mahabalipuram Road – her logic being

• There will be a traffic jam on Madhya Kailash junction.


• The people who use that road are working for American and other multinational projects, are therefore being paid obscene amounts of money and this will somehow cause an invisible drain on the economy.

Of course, telling her that the extra money would filter down into the economy, that the traffic bottle-neck wouldn’t probably happen because those who work for the IT companies on OMR will end up buying a house in the residential apartments and localities that will come up on the road (and they have, even as I speak, and they will) convinced her.

Then it struck me, these people – the NGO girl, my good friend Shivam, Dilip, P. Sainath – they are rare gems of humanity. I realised that it’s hard work being a bleeding heart. It’s hard work always looking at the negative. It’s hard work to think that everything will go wrong. And praying it does, just to gratify your ego. It takes a rare kind of person to always look at the gloomier side of things. It’s hard work being one of the very few people who look at a glass half full of water and complaining about the missing half. It’s not easy to constantly wallow in pity, cry when the situation demands you take heart things are better.