A Tiff with a Friend

Just now I had a tiff on a phone call with my friend from college days who is settled in the US, and I ended up asking him not to call me again.

I listened to him patiently, as I always do, about his past, which he talks about — almost the same incidents every single time he calls me.

I told him once to not dwell so much on his past, and explained all the reasons why he should not do so.

But, he has gone back to his old ways.

So, nevertheless, I listened to him patiently.

In the end, when the talk came up about the recent Ashes match between Australia and England, I remarked that I cannot understand why we hang on so much to identity and want “our” country to win every single match that we play, and how our holding on to any identity, be the identity that of nation, religion, caste, gender, ethnicity, language, region, etc., is the cause of most of the problems in the world.

He seemed to agree a bit but then went to say something about Audrey Truschke, who you may have heard about, who has become unpopular in India because she has written things hurting Hindu “sentiments”, like her book on Aurangazeb almost glorifying him, etc., who is a professor in I think Rutgers University.

When I tried to make him see from all angles why despite Truschke, etc., it makes sense to drop all identity identification in oneself and how whatever good we want to do in this world, we can do better by not holding on to identity of any sort, and that God is in charge, etc., and that God will find someone or the other to fight whatever battles there are to be fought and how now that he is over 60 to drop these sociopolitical battles from his mind and rise to the higher realm of philosophical thinking, he was just not getting it and kept saying all inane things as to how higher ground or philosophy never saved the Jews from Holocaust, etc., and one last try I did by talking about Collective Karma as to maybe the Jews deserved it because of their collective karma and how we Hindus deserved the Islamic and British invasions due to our collective karma, and how that does not let the Muslims and British off the hook, how someone whose karma it is to get murdered is made to meet the guy who will murder him, and how thereafter the murderer will face his own karma, etc., he just was not getting it.

So, I told him that he was too much caught up in his sociopolitical identities and battles and how he will never understand the philosophical viewpoint that I was trying to make him see, and so ended the conversation by asking him not to call me again.

So, now I have realized it is best I retire from all conversations and dialogues with everyone, and just keep quiet because it is mentally draining to enter into discussions with people, whom I am not able to make them understand my viewpoint…maybe I am the “crack”.