I like the dude Carvaka!

My life the past one year has been a testimonial to hedonism. Imagine life with a partner who shares the same mindset, we live by no rules- self laid, society-laid or family-laid. Actually my maid, gets more say than all the 3 afore mentioned factors. She dictates that I need to be up in the morning (anytime before noon is morning, right?) to open the front door for her. Barring criminally chargeable offences, Hari and I have absolutely no qualms in doing anything whatsoever.

After a year of total disregard for mom's demands that I maintain a clean house, eat healthy food, lose weight, get a job, my MIL's demands that I wear the thirumangalyam, turn theist, my innumerable aunts and uncles' demands that I shed eccentricity, arrogance and not snap when they say stuff like 'you should actually stay behind and take up the Varalakshmi Viradham' and miss a holiday in London, (and when it doesn't even have perima's kozhakkattais, why would I take it up? To sweat in a dingy kitchen cum pooja alamari brooding over lost sleep, while Hari plays Monkey Flight in the iPod, sifts through various dappaankutthu numbers or read Richard Dawkins). What makes them think that I am going to take it up even if I don't go to London. Takes more than even perima's kozhakkatais for that.

I am happy mom's fine with my atheism, despite her being theist. But I don't quite agree with her when she tells me that if it pleases kith and kin, friends, maid, pakkathu veettu naaikutti and keeps them happy, why not just play along. Hedonistic Self is the only one I please.

While Hari feels the need to debate fiercely and zealously when people challenge him into an intellectual duel, counter religious myths, the God particle and all that jazz with Science and Rationale, I don't bother arguing, it's just not worth it when the other person believes what he wants to believe. Unlike Christian missionaries, I don't see fun in conversions. Unlike tales of Hindu spiritual wealth plundered by western influence, an increasingly favourite subject for the middle class, 50-60 year olds who did not rebel in their heyday and can't stand their progeny rebelling. I resist all beliefs and if he/she can't live with that, it ain't my problem. As a result, I snap. And I snap and I snap. Does the Bharathwaja Gothram- Sama Vedham clan have a gene that turns you into an abominable anti social specimen in your twenties. The symptoms are becoming too evident, to be ignored. And I am actually enjoying every inch of it.

Thankfully, I am spared churning out writing pseudo intellectual crap, I just sit up at ungodly hours, on a medication induced high, between bouts of diarrhoea ( I swear that henceforth I will not take anything that looks like a tablet or comes with a prescription, to hell with doctors who don't understand my allergies), telling the world that I feel no need to justify my hedonism and lack of beliefs with dumb morons and intellectual debaters alike. I don't read books on Rationalism just to recall them and state them as evidence, proof, precedents when I encounter someone who thinks I am sooooo 'wrong'. It's not a courtroom and I don't need a judgment. And it's not a flaw in me that you should feel responsible to set it right. The only flaws currently in my system, are high temperature, nausea and diarrhoea. I will be more than happy if someone can set that right.

And sorry folks, if you feed me stories on curses that bind snakes, I can't help laughing out aloud. Such involuntary reactions are really out of my control!

Finally about the title, not that I honour gurus, leaders and other 'thinkers', but I really like the dude Carvaka. Belonged to the 6th Century BC and hedonism was his middle name. Do read the wiki page about him and you will know why I call him the dude.