Oh, they kill with kindness!

 

 

 

That bloke Hamlet mistakenly clarified in the eponymous play of the Bard that, “…I must be cruel, only to be kind. Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.” The chap was basically trying to dissuade Gertrude, his mother, from having it off with Claudius, as that would be a betrayal of her previous husband, Hamlet’s father. He was certainly cruel, threatening her that her neck might break if she did not come to heel, but the intention was kind, to keep her from going astray. I extract this gem, by now a bodacious idiom, from within a lot of other drivel that the mad prince utters, to heighten the paradox therein, as it suits my purpose today. My purpose being to denounce the whole caboodle of mankind who assail my senses on a daily basis by battering me with WhatsApp kindness, by manipulating the idiom a bit to say that they “be so kind that they are cruel.”

WhatsApp, individual chats, and even more so the groups, are like the quintessential wintertime razai (comforter), which you are reluctant to get into but too squeamish to get out of, and so you endure it in the hope that something meaningful may emerge among all the annoying kindness disbursed inexorably, day in and day out. Your phone keeps whirring with messages that pop up, washed liberally in the milk of human kindness.

If you are one of those kindly inconsiderate individuals who send greetings, beneficent feel-good or generously preachy messages on WhatsApp, please scoot pronto, as what I intend to write may upset your sensibilities a great deal. Others are welcome to empathize and sympathize.

I have expressed my exasperation about meaningless greetings in these blogs, and although there was no advisory for the perpetrators to scram, they have failed miserably to show any correctional or reformatory effect.

So be it; here I go again, reserving my polemics today only for the beatific kind.

http://anindecisiveindian.blogspot.com/2020/10/rip-away-random-reckless-rip-routine.html

 

Kindness galore! Sample some of kindnesses:

 

Insipid festival greetings on festivals one had never heard of, and which, since we already have a zillion, we could very well do without the addition of such hooey as Akshaya Tritiya, Govardhan Pooja, Maundy Thursday, and Mariä Himmelfahrt. These mostly come with an image, or even a poem, which may be movingly soap-operatic to the senders but, for me, have the effect of noisome and injurious human emissions.

 

Some of these come with a social message, like this one: “This Navratri, may Goddess let us pray that no Durga is aborted, no Saraswati is stopped from going to school, no Laxmi has to beg for money from her husband, no Parvati is sacrificed for dowry, no Sita has to suffer in silence, and no Kali is given a tube of fairness cream. Happy Navaratri, friend. May the universe shower its blessings on you and your family!” Now, why this armchair social reformer has to wrap his idle wish in a cloak of kindness for me is beyond my scope of comprehension.

 

Even worse are these kind souls who cast their net wide on the web, extract some inanity with moral lessons, starting with solicitousness but ending with cajoling or even threatening me to forward them to others, or else. Hey, phone potatoes, why do you not try your preaching in person to people and let us see how many would roll up? Are you playing a Petrucio on me, who plans to tame Kate’s shrewish nature and make her obedient in The Taming of the Shrew, and says, “...And if she chance to nod I’ll rail and brawl, And with the clamor keep her still awake. This is a way to kill a wife with kindness...”. Do you think you can tame me into acknowledging your moronish kindness and reform myself?

There are days when there is no festival, even in India. Not to be deterred, some of these kindness freaks have devised a way to be kind without a break. They wake up every day, starting at 3:15 a.m., and dispatch ‘Good Morning’ to everyone on their list or in their groups, every day. And some, who excel even these specimens, wish you Happy Day of the Week, like Happy Monday through to Happy Sunday. A good retort like ‘Happy 8 a.m. to you’, or ‘Happy whatever be the time you receive it’, mitigates nothing. Imagine, some of them actually wish you Good Friday on the Good Friday! May the curse of the Devil fall upon these bounteous types, who utter this profanity unknowingly but deserve a cudgel all the same.

I have many who send me an inspirational quote, a maudlin story, or a feel-good parable because they say that either they have a special love for me or they proclaim that they care about me. Unlike the lamebrain Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, who thinks that Beatrice is a swell girl and that if she is moronish enough to love him, then he must return it—“…It seems her affections have their full bent. Love me? Why, it must be requited! I hear how I am censured…”—not me. I deal with these missives with total indifference, although my impulse is to tell them that they may love me or care for me, but there is only so much of their bullshit I can tolerate.

Wine has more merits, even virtues, than demerits. The Bard propounds many. In The Merry Wives of Windsor, as Anne is readying to serve wine after a disagreement with Slender, who is unable to keep his new vow for long, her father, Master Page, famously says, “...come, gentlemen, I hope we shall drink down all unkindness.”

Berated by this thoughtless benevolence every day, I too need something to palliate my agony, so bring the wine, friends; let me do the opposite and drink down all the kindness. Wine? It can do a lot. Even Brutus, a murderer, a fugitive, calls for wine as a means to forget his troubles in Julius Caesar, saying, “…Give me a bowl of wine.—In this I bury all unkindness…”

I am a follower of my chāchā Ghālib, who taught me:

Dīvār bār-e-minnat-e-mazdūr se hai ḳham

ai ḳhānumāñ-ḳharāb na ehsāñ uThā.iye

(bār-e-minnat-e-mazdūr: weight of the kindness of the laborers, ḳhānumāñ-ḳharāb: one whose home is ruined, ehsāñ: obligation. The weight of obligation is so burdensome that even the walls of your house have become bent under this load of kindness (of the workmen who built the house). O, One whose home has been ruined, do not carry the burden of anyone’s kind favour, take a lesson from the walls of your wrecked house that even such strong objects bow under the weight of obligation, in keeping a stony burden lifted up.)

And therefore, while I disown all this kindness here today, I will continue to monitor these perpetrators of decorative clemency:

Banākar faqīroñ kā ham bhes Ghālib
tamāshā-e-ahl-e-karam dekhte haiñ
(faqīroñ: dervishes, vagrants—those who lead a mystic life; bhes: disguise; tamāshā-e-ahl-e-karam: spectacle of the people of kindness. I put on the guise of a mendicant vagrant and witness the spectacle of the conduct of the so-called generous people—not because I need their generosity, but to test whether it is genuine, for truly generous people perform their acts quietly, without fanfare.)

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