But when her own son married and introduced the same practice in his own life, his mother was not appreciative any longer.Joru ka gulam is how she derisively described him to my mother at least three times a year.This is the India I grew up in, what it has always been, paradoxical, hypocritical, duplicitous and completely unaware of the contradictions. What was sauce for the goose was never sauce for the gander. Yet, growing up in an inclusive and pluralistic India, we never saw it as more than mild hypocrisy and something to be both ignored and laughed at.But it is no laughing matter anymore even if a stand-up comedian tries to drew attention to the ‘two Indias’ we live in. For it is no longer about just making a difference between a daughter or daughter-in-law, or skirts as opposed to sarees, but about crushing farmers under your wheels on the one hand and starving them on the other and seeing nothing wrong in either. Or as Diksha Nitin Raut tweeted, ‘we come from an India where freedom fighters are labelled as beggars and those who beg for mercy are called ‘Veer’.I was horrified to discover a friend who eagerly awaits biryani and sewai from her Muslim friend every year but in drawing room conversations would routinely and casually say “These Muslims have not been beaten enough!”And I find I now live in an India, where choosing right over might is bias and lies over truth makes me an exemplar.Yes, I come from an India where the cow breathes out oxygen yet human beings die by the hundreds for the lack of it; and I come from an India, where a cartoon becomes a leader and a leader is dismissed as a caricature.
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