I’ve been thinking about broad-mindedness. I believe its a good thing. A glorious thing in fact.

I’ve often been accused of being judgmental, narrow-minded …yada yada yada. I’ve been told its wrong to hate rapists. That someone else blowing money shouldn’t disgust me because that really, really isn’t any of my business. I also shouldn’t consider Chetan Bhagat a bad writer. One must be objective. If I decide not to question my parents over certain things they thrust down my throat, that’s just nomadic.  How dare I believe what they tell me? They haven’t a clue what life is about !!

After a couple of such instances, I began to wonder if I’m really so flawed. Well, I must be. I am narrow-minded. That’s just horrible.  So  then of course, imbibing the glorious broad-mindedness, I thought, was the way to be. It’s the real thing these days you know, let everything be. Accept new ideas, new ways! That is just so cool, isn’t it ? And it’s a virtue! C’mon. If I can work towards broad-mindedness, I’m evolving to become a better person. Perfect.

And then I decided to become gloriously broad-minded, the ultimate destination being, well, say the French Feminists (I genuinely admire them)

So then I’m okay with rapists. They’re human! They had terrible childhoods. In that case, you know, it’s a similar situation when it comes to abusive husbands. They haven’t had the perfect childhood either! Neither have alcoholics who beat their children, child sex abusers or even corrupt politicians for that matter. Chetan Bhagat is a good writer. If I can’t develop a taste to enjoy his books, my loss! Oh well, then One Night @ the Call Center is fucking awesome! No, really.

So a few weeks down I looked back, excited about the fact that I’m going to feel good about myself. I’ve worked at becoming a better person, a better mind. I found myself open to things.  Smoking, drugs, people spitting out paan on the road (now really, how is that any of my concern? Why in the hell did I bother about it? Oh, those narrow-minded days!) and even swinging. And Communism. I was also unprejudiced about Maa Exchange. I felt lighter, unburdened.

So then I went and told my broad-minded friends about my progress. I expected them to be delighted, and to welcome me warmly into the Open-Minded Peoples’ Group. But to my despair, they had other opinions to offer. It seems I went too far. Being okay with mindless sex was okay. Smoking too was tolerable. But abusive husbands? OMG. What sort of a woman was I? And spitting paan? That’s just disgusting. How could I be okay with that! And beggary and wife-beating are social-freakin’-stigmas!!! I was crazy, they said. I didn’t know ‘where to draw the line’.

WTF, I thought. Now theres a line? No one ever mentioned a line before! And if there was a line, I would assume rapists come on the other side of the line! This is terrible. And confusing. I feel nauseous.

After a lot of contemplations &  deliberations, I continue to feel nauseous.

So, where does one draw the line?  How do you define broad-mindedness? And its so sad that I sometimes feel the need to also draw a line between being “cool” and being open.

If its mindless to be judgmental about things, its equally mindless to not weigh the pros and cons of an ideology. “Liberal”, “Modern”, “Cosmopolitan”, “Progressive” - they’re all loaded terms. And a lot of us do our best to trivialise them.  We live by philosophies that are based on tiny bits of these ideas; the purpose behind this is not emancipation or progress, but to build a mask to hide all the vanity.

Now I just resign to being seriously flawed in the eyes of others. To be honest I’ve stopped caring about those eyes. So my nausea reduces. I hate rapists. I have issues against people wasting money when it can be used for countless productive things. (Maybe, if I rephrase my problem and say I have problems with, uhm, elitist habits - I can fool them into getting the point. Talk about irony! But then I don’t care about those eyes now. So screw it. )

There is stupidity. There is superstition. There is respect. There is reason. Oh my, lots of lines to draw.

I realise life is all about rhetorical questions. The answer lies in the question. If only I could see them. Maybe, I am dumb, like my friends in the Open-Minded Peoples’ Group said. But at least I’m not nauseous anymore.  I can go and read Oscar Wilde now.