Soliloquy

The Brahman died long before he sacrificed his ideals for the mob, long before he confirmed sacrilege as rite and piety as penance. He died before he had forgotten his shastras, before he had uttered the blasphemies that would make his forebears squirm. The Brahman doubted no one, questioned nothing, and believed everything sent upon him to be the express wishes of his ancestors themselves, and partook in the pious journey towards himself without inquiry.

Any query directed towards the mind was warded off with a ferociously-guarded intensity that he did not show to anyone but his mother, whom he regarded highly. His father, who too carried forward the habits of his ancestors without understanding what they meant, seemed happy enough to see his descendant continue the dogmas he had so religiously defended. The Brahman understood little about philosophy, but he knew that to question authority meant to cast aspersions on one’s elders, and this he could not bring himself to do.

To keep everyone happy appeared to be his most fervent desire, even if he barely knew the Veda he had descended from or the Purana that sanctioned the violence he would soon subject his wife to – or keep her secluded in torment in their newfound domesticity. He would go above and beyond to see everyone but himself happy. The Brahman had no regrets in losing himself in the process of making others feel better.

He had long become indoctrinated by the idea of subsuming oneself to the whole, for killing the self for the sake of the world, for not daring to think or believe in himself when the responsibility of the entire university rested on his shoulders. When the priests incanted suffering after suffering away from him and his family for the promise of a few choice gold coins, the Brahman neither shrugged nor shivered at the face of such impertinence.

For he had grown accustomed – even brainwashed – to the idea that the self was to be disparaged, hated and derided, for the sake of others, and for the sake of a society which would feed, clothe and bear him in times of duress. While the tongues of the sacrificial fire flickered, and then rose to wash the guilt of his past away – with the promise that the priests would be called upon were more sins to be accumulated in the future – the Brahman scarcely realised that he, too, had been killed by it.

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