Shinda & Company

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,

The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,

I know of no reason

Why the Gunpowder Treason

Should ever be forgot.

If anyone has watched V for Vendetta, this line would serve to jog your memory and hopefully bring to surface those dormant thoughts of atrocities and their subsequent revolutionary acts.  Yes we all have seen the many faces of human emotion when these accounts are brought forth to us.  In those moments tears have been shed, aggression surfaced, thoughts of hatred rekindled amongst many other sentiments. However the end of this visage always seems to come externally which then leads to the eventual look-to-the sky for the answer.

“How did this happen? Who is to blame?”

“Well certainly they are those that are more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable. But again, truth be told, if you are looking for the guilty, you only need to look in a mirror.”

Even as we look to the mirror, there is an onset of doubt, fear and uncertainty.  We all sit in front of our computers, we all collectively stare at the screen and wonder, ‘What good is one man or woman in the face of tyranny?’  To this, I take an excerpt from the vigilante known as V, as he explains to the tyrants how one man can become more than just that.  It is reminiscent of Ras al Ghoul disserting his philosophy onto a young Bruce Wayne in that Chinese Jail.  So to that question of ‘what one man can do’, we look to V for the response, given to Agent Crede upon wrapping his hands around his flail neck and snapping it like a twig.

“Beneath this mask, there is more than flesh,

Beneath this mask, there is an idea.

And ideas are bulletproof.”

We all have forgotten what is beneath the mask.  We all have been hiding under the physical saroop of a Sikh.  We can wear the big dastaars, put karey on our arms, and heck even take amrit.  But who are we kidding these days; we have all been going through the daily motion of what is known to be Sikhi.  Myself included, we have embraced the internet as a place to hide our faces and spew hatred to anyone and anyone we deem worthy. We have, mind you, all by ourselves handcuffed our Sikhi ideals. When will we figure out that:

“There is a face beneath this mask, but it’s not me, I am no more that face than I am the muscles beneath it or the bones beneath them.”

The physical game is the one that we have given the most emphasis, but simultaneously it is also the game that is pointless.  There is a reason why we are constantly under attack.

“A great civilization is not conquered from without, until it has destroyed itself from within.”

- Will Durant

We as a collective nation have lost our way.  When any predator is preying on its next kill, it singles out the one that is the most weak, the quickest kill so they can move on to bigger game.  Without any foundation to lie back on, we have been living in glass houses.  Slowly the naam/bani has left our side, it has been replaced by a steady diet of lust, anger, greed, hatred, gossip and laziness.  We look for something to fill the void, because ‘lest we look deep into the mindset of a wounded nation’.  We can look at each other and say how we are better than one another through self justification.  But ask yourself, is the lesser of two evils still a choice?

Before we can think about helping anyone else, we should help ourselves first.  How can we save someone else from drowning when our boat is in the same water and plump with holes?  We have to be on a dry surface before we help the drowning.  The need for naam/bani and internal reflection is imperative now, more than it has ever been. Let us remove our own boat from the ocean.

So in commemoration of this fifth of November, let us look underneath the mask, let us find those ideals that had once given us the strength.  Let us quell negative entities and exorcise those demons that have plagued our houses for years.  Let us remember that like V, our bodies will one day give us leave.  However, also like V, let us not forget that people can be killed but an ideal will live forever.

V for .......................???

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