Surgery Required

11.04.2024

So, it turns out I’m going to have to have surgery on my leg. The doctor was a Subcontinental woman. Did she break the news to me in a nice way? No. I had about two minutes with her. And during that time, all she did was tell me off and make it out to be my fault. When it wasn’t my fault in any way at all. That’s what they are like. I can say it because I am Subcontinental too. You don’t get any sympathy. You get blame. I’m used to it. Even in the Indian movies, all the girlfriends of the heroes do is to criticise them and tell them off.

But at least two things didn’t happen: I didn’t die and they didn’t have to cut the leg off. I knew everything was okay. It is just the pain. And I will just have to put up with that. Why? Because life is pain. The only thing that can happen now is complications with the surgery and side effects, but there is a good chance that nothing bad will happen and it should all be okay.

Do you know how I developed this problem in my leg? I loved a non-Indian woman. And she didn’t love me back. Then my grandparents died and I got sick. And then I put on a lot of weight. Which ruined my leg. So that’s where the problem in the leg developed. I am still suffering from the past. And those people that tell you to forget about the past? What other problem have me and the Indian men in this country, and the Dalits or the Untouchables in India had except for the fact that no one will love us? The people that don’t love us are telling us how to solve our problems. And to forget the past and the present where they don’t love us. When our problem is that they are not giving us love. What a fucking joke.

Do you know what guilt is? When my grandmother was dying from cancer, I was living with her. She couldn’t sleep in the nights without a man in the house. One time, I came back home and I was talking to her before I went up to study in my bedroom. I talked to her for about half an hour. Because I felt sorry for her and thought she was lonely. She told my mother afterwards that when I was talking to her, she was going through the most torturous pain. But she wouldn’t tell me. She just kept on nodding at what I was saying. She didn’t want to hurt my feelings. I think about that over and over again. That is what guilt is. I couldn’t even see that she was in pain.

My Instagram feed is full of dating advice. It is always the same: don’t be a nice guy. Be a complete douche bag to the woman that you care about, be aloof from her, treat her like she doesn’t even matter. What a lovely world of love this Western society has created for its women. And some of these people have the gall to call me a misogynist when that is their culture and their ‘love’. Even the women themselves are saying they want the man to be like that. What a culture. If you love women, you are a sexist pig. And if you treat them like you hate them or don’t care about them at all, then you are accepted and you aren’t sexist.

I finally told someone in that context that there is someone there that I don’t like. I don’t like to talk about people behind their backs. I wouldn’t want someone doing it to me. It was a special situation of honesty. I don’t just not like them. That is me being euphemistic. And it is very unusual for me not to like someone in this industry, so that is saying a lot.

I asked my friend from another country if she would cook something for me for that context for lunch. So she said yes and she invited me to do dinner together and she would make me something then too.

I was thinking about Shiva and his stillness – the short note I wrote yesterday. He lies down below Kali when she is in her rage and in her destructive dance. He lies below the Ganga (Ganges) when she flows down from heaven. Do you know that Shiva is represented by the phallus? The lingam. That is his body. That is what is withstanding the flood of woman. How he is able to withstand the flood of woman’s power and to become united with it, to channel it and control it, to merge with it into creation, is by being the phallus below woman, completely still. It is a sexual thing. The woman is dancing on Shiva who is the phallus, or flooding down on him: that is the essence of the act of union.

I have never told anyone something peculiar about the name my mother gave me. Some of you who have been reading know how I got my name. Sunil Dutt saved the life of Mother India in the film of the same name. He rescued her from fire. While he was recovering in the hospital, she came to take care of him and then they fell in love. He played her son in the movie. The son married the mother. That’s why I call myself Oedipus and my life has been that of Oedipus. However, there is a little peculiarity in this love story. Because in the film, the mother kills the son because he rebels against tradition and culture and morality by trying to abduct the woman he loves from her wedding ceremony. My mother didn’t just name me for the one that marries Mother India. She named me for the one that rebels against Mother India too. There is a paradox in the name that she gave me. The paradox is that she named me after the rebel, he who rebels against everything and everyone. I am the middle child. I have been named after rebellion. I live for rebellion. The rebellion of love. You can’t escape from your name and the fate that has been planned and dreamt of for you. Try to escape your fate. See what happens to you. We rebel in the name of love for love. We are the warriors of love. Inquilaab zindabaad! Inquilaab sada zindabaad! Long live the Revolution! May the Revolution live forever!

How much longer can you love someone who is not in your life for more than five minutes in a week? That doesn’t talk to you? Who has rejected you twice? Who you have only talked to for about one hour in total in about six months? But are these the wrong questions? Isn’t the question, can you stop loving someone who you love? Despite everything?