Skip to main content

Rice bag




One of the new nicknames I’ve earned on social media is ‘Rice bag’.  The Sanghis use that name for any South Indian who questions the Sangh views and outlooks.  I think so.  But when it comes to Sanghis it is impossible to say what exactly they mean by anything.  The most fundamental characteristic of a Sanghi is utter lack of humour as well as imagination.

If you laugh when a Sanghi tells you that Ganesha’s trunk was the first case of plastic surgery in the history of medical science, the Sanghi will call you a Rice bag.  You can’t laugh when he thinks he is serious.  If you express an opinion that goes against the tenets and creeds of the Modified Sangh, the Sanghi will call you a Rice bag. 

You may wonder what rice or bag has got to do with all these?  Nothing. It is only the Sanghi way of telling you that they have no imagination to call you anything else other than by the place you belong to, or the food you eat, or the dress you wear.  I become a Rice bag in Sanghi lexicon, just because I belong to a region of the country where people eat rice more than wheat.  What has that got to do with my views on religion and politics?  Nothing.  But the Sanghi won’t understand that.

The Sanghi won’t won’t understand also that by their logic even the Sanghis in South India should be labelled Rice bags since they also eat more rice than wheat.  But don’t expect such logical thinking from Sanghis, of all people.

What I don’t understand at all is why Sanghis insist on making every Indian eat what the Sanghis eat, wear what Sanghis wear, think what Sanghis think, believe what Sanghis believe, and so son, ad nauseam, ad infinitum.  Why can’t India be a nation of diversity and plurality as it has always been until petty minds took charge in Delhi in 2014? 

Even if the Sanghis hold me against the barrel of a gun and tell me to accept their mythical heroes as the ultimate truths, I won’t accept that.  I respect my intellect, bhais.  Convince me logically and intelligently, if not scientifically, if you want me to take you seriously.  Otherwise you can call me whatever you like but I will reserve my right to laugh in your face.  Take away my laughter, if you can.  I challenge you.

Comments

  1. no
    christian missonaries provide rice bags(a gift to poor) to hindus to convert to christianity. thats why a rice bag

    not just to south indian but overall of india

    ReplyDelete
  2. also calling people as sanghi or bhakt shows your own standards

    anyway foolish human, why would it be God if there was logic to be there for an almighty? logic is for humans and not for Gods who created all

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Shooting an Elephant

George Orwell [1903-1950] We had an anthology of classical essays as part of our undergrad English course. Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell was one of the essays. The horror of political hegemony is the core theme of the essay. Orwell was a subdivisional police officer of the British Empire in Burma (today Myanmar) when he was forced to shoot an elephant. The elephant had gone musth (an Urdu term for the temporary insanity of male elephants when they are in need of a female) and Orwell was asked to control the commotion created by the giant creature. By the time Orwell reached with his gun, the elephant had become normal. Yet Orwell shot it. The first bullet stunned the animal, the second made him waver, and Orwell had to empty the entire magazine into the elephant’s body in order to put an end to its mammoth suffering. “He was dying,” writes Orwell, “very slowly and in great agony, but in some world remote from me where not even a bullet could damage him further…. It seeme...

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

Urban Naxal

Fiction “We have to guard against the urban Naxals who are the biggest threat to the nation’s unity today,” the Prime Minister was saying on the TV. He was addressing an audience that stood a hundred metres away for security reasons. It was the birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel which the Prime Minister had sanctified as National Unity Day. “In order to usurp the Sardar from the Congress,” Mathew said. The clarification was meant for Alice, his niece who had landed from London a couple of days back.    Mathew had retired a few months back as a lecturer in sociology from the University of Kerala. He was known for his radical leftist views. He would be what the PM calls an urban Naxal. Alice knew that. Her mother, Mathew’s sister, had told her all about her learned uncle’s “leftist perversions.” “Your uncle thinks that he is a Messiah of the masses,” Alice’s mother had warned her before she left for India on a short holiday. “Don’t let him infiltrate your brai...

Raging Waves and Fading Light

Illustration by Gemini AI Fiction Why does the sea rage endlessly? Varghese asked himself as he sat on the listless sands of the beach looking at the sinking sun beyond the raging waves. When rage becomes quotidian, no one notices it. What is unnoticed is futile. Like my life, Varghese muttered to himself with a smirk whose scorn was directed at himself. He had turned seventy that day. That’s why he was on the beach longer than usual. It wasn’t the rage of the waves or the melancholy of the setting sun that kept him on the beach. Self-assessment kept him there. Looking back at the seventy years of his life made him feel like an utter fool, a dismal failure. Integrity versus Despair, Erik Erikson would have told him. He studied Erikson’s theory on human psychological development as part of an orientation programme he had to attend as a teacher. Aged people reflect on their lives and face the conflict between feeling a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction (integrity) or a feeli...