Written By @sudhanthira source: christinadhanaraj.wordpress.com Players.I’m probably a tad too late

Written By @sudhanthira source: christinadhanaraj.wordpress.com Players.I’m probably a tad too late in the game. Which explains much. My folks didn’t teach us this. They kinda taught us compassion, introspection, honesty, and wait, what’s that word again? Love. Yes, that one. Love. They taught us to love. You know how if someone wrongs you and you’re all up in arms and they would say something like, ‘let it go’? Or maybe ‘forgive and you shall be forgiven’? Or even better, ‘live and let live’? Yes, they wanted us to learn that. All of that. By heart. Internalize. Inculcate. Become.And we kinda did. We kinda became women who are open and honest and to-the-point and no-nonsense. We kinda became people who wouldn’t scheme and plot and go back door and read in between the lines. We kinda became adults who wouldn’t seduce and manipulate and giggle and bat their eyelids. We kinda became folks who wouldn’t say one thing and do another; who wouldn’t fake our politics to be accepted; who wouldn’t attention seek from every living thing; who wouldn’t be reckless with another’s heart; who wouldn’t not choose a spine over power. Yes, it sounds self-righteous. But it sure would, no? When so much work has gone into raising children to prioritize dignity over power, and honesty over manipulation, why wouldn’t mindless hate and treachery seem disgusting?We have all the reasons to be crafty though. Our ancestors were cheated not just off their lands and labor but of their most basic human rights. Our women have faced violence both in the hands of the other and of our own. We have known and seen ‘superiors’ yank a project right off our hands; we know aunties who have taken matchmakers aside to tell them we are not ‘from their place’; we know those side glances; we know those meta messages. We have had friends sabotage us out of job interviews, gossip as much as it takes to screw up our reputation, stab when we are weak, and kill us when we least expect it. This happened then, this happens now. But hey, if we really wanted to, we could choose the path of deception too no?Tell me why, please. Why sell your soul to get things that will, for sure, most certainly, perish? Why back bite when you could just, you know, get a spine and speak your effing mind? Or better, why not get another mind and work your ass off to get what you want? If competition is not your cup of tea, then why pretend like you want to drink it? Why pretend like merit is a real thing? If autonomous, assertive, hardworking Dalit women threaten you, then why not find an easier competition? You see, the truth is your savarna ass did not get here, and won’t get anywhere through merit. For years, your dominant-caste ass sat on stacks of economic, political and social privilege and learnt from its ancestors their ways of deceit and dupery. Chanakya and Saguni and Naradhar were what again? So no, don’t be proud of your ancestry; and no it’s not just atrocities that you need to seek purgation for.But I digress. What I really wanted to ask the world was this: How did manipulation and deception come to become the way most things get done? How did relationships become testing grounds for ploys and plots and schemes? How did we come to justify sabotage in the name of fighting fair? How and when did smart actually come to mean crafty? Trust and honesty and all that jazz, especially in the context of relationships, are all nothing but words invented to gratify language? And is it enough to speak a language that feels and sounds right but that which does not demand any kind of personal accountability?What of men, of partners, who hoodwink the world into believing that they are all about respect for women, feminists even, politicized too, but will not shy away from being complete assholes in their intimate spaces. What of mike-holding, sword-pen-writing, mascots of liberation having an underside so ugly, so messed up, that it almost seems unbelievable. What of the ‘politically-sound’, the ‘sensitive’, the ‘equal rights believers’ that play; that are recklessly jerk-ish with people’s fragility. What of the ‘openly guilty privilege bearers’ going back to living their comfortable lives defined by that very privilege.Ideally, with all this, perhaps, we, the ‘naïve’ little non-players, should be teaching our kids the ways of the players. “Watch out, don’t succumb, move your coin, now, go. Hear, hear, what’s that strategy looking like, network, talk to that one, find his weakness, twist it, turn it, now, go. Do you know what she means when she says she loves you, are you sure of her intentions, are you sure of his, maybe it’s a ploy, maybe it’s a trap, don’t, stay, but, now, go.”And yet, we don’t, do we? We don’t really go against the grain of our character to pay a price so high, so lofty, that nothing would seem to matter. We know already that it’s not naivety that stops us but character; that it’s not so much the lack of choice but precisely the existence of one; that this choice is basically that of being human and this definition of ‘human’ will not be laid down by the crafty oppressor.  -- source link

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