When was the last time you arched your brows, took a deep breath and spilt some expletives from your mouth at the very sight of bigotry against you? Seems like yesterday when someone you knew tried to peek into your closet and got tempted to pull a skeleton out? It happens to all of us, to you and to me, to him and to her and to the many on the face of this earth.
Imagine walking into
a restaurant and finding your foe at the next table. The first few minutes of
this revelation makes both of you uncomfortable and the next thing you know is
that people around the foe are giving you offensive stares victimising you perhaps
for mistakes which you haven’t made. You are desperate to know what the foe has
whispered into their ears. In turn, you do the same, you turn towards your
friend and whisper something to him/her making your friend turn towards the
infected table and cast a ‘if looks could kill,the table and its occupants
would have been turned to cinders’ look.
It goes on. One
waiting for the other to leave and god forbid if the two of you bump into each
other again in the rest room then I can assure you that either of you is gazing
at the mirror to gauge the other’s expression (in my case I always look at the
clothes) to decipher the inner meaning of the ‘whisper’ that floated from ear
to ear at your début earlier at the restaurant.
As long as one can
talk, one will always contribute to the ever flowing fountain of rumours in the
universe about anybody or anything. Rumours become hot topics for discussion
when all else fails to break silence. Now you know why your parents asked you
to read newspapers every day? They never ran out of topics.
Let us consider the
‘whisper’ that was born at your sighting at the restaurant by your foe. It
could have ranged from ‘you know what he/she is the one who’s sleeping with
him/her’ to ‘ he/she is the one who gets a promotion every year despite warming
the chair’. I have only thought of two examples here. The permutations and
combinations can give birth to many rumours irrespective of the necessity of
its conception.
Some rumours may be
true about you and some completely false. But what irks you is a fact that the
creator (read foe) has many skeletons dangling in his/her closet too but
his/her interest lies in yours alone. The bigotry kills. For once you feel that
you don’t deserve it but in reality neither you nor I can do a thing about it.
As long as you are
breathing and even after that there are going to be many who will know the true
you and then the many willing to create nasty rumours about you, putting their
own murky pasts at stake. What can you do about it?
Simple
Accept your weakness
and your mistakes. Accept a fact that everybody on earth has contributed to
their skeleton collection but hey, they are your skeletons and no one has the
right to peek into your closet.
You alone hold the
discretion to discuss your skeletons and if anybody who may not fall into your
category of confidantes questions you about it, you have all the rights to
refuse an explanation.
Accept the biggest
fact of life that the world is a small place and you will bump into miscreants
and offenders without any warning. Make sure you act normal as it will
definitely make your foe extremely uncomfortable to stay around you. If you are
not guilty of spreading a rumour about him/her and if he/she is guilty about
spreading one about you then trust me the foe will panic and make a mess out of
the ball that you silently sent hurling to the other side of the court.
Remember, the world
has many people but the ones who care about are those who will stand by you and
accept you the way you are. Just smile and walk on.
