Perhaps the only way to understand my country is as a monster possessed of a violent schizophrenia. Peace and Love satyagrahis who turn around and slaughter trainloads of their own neighbours. Intellectual, arty spiritualists who turn around ready to auction their souls and convictions for that extra rupee. Perhaps the moods of its people are like the vagaries of its weather; to be taken at face value and endured, rather than sifted and analysed. Torrid sun or violent monsoon, there is always a propensity for the larger-than-life, for gargantuan appetites and in-your-fucking-face emotions. Hospitality and savage brutality, insaniyat and apathy, reason and faith clash and collide and consume each other (and humans unlucky enough to live where such Grand Ideas reside) like balls of hellfire.

If a storm breaks, you just take shelter and wait for the clouds to part, braving the lashing rain and clutching your coat closer to the body (if you're lucky enough to have one). Perhaps there is no such thing as real shelter. Perhaps cruelty is permanent and inevitable, like bad weather, punctuated by brief interludes of warmth and the compassion of strangers.

As I look past pellet guns and human shields; past dying farmers and Gauri Lankesh murdered in cold blood; past Dadri and past border forces firing pepper spray and stun grenades on desperate men, women, and orphaned, dispossessed children fleeing slaughter at home, I look at a now-meaningless Tricolour and hope for such an interlude. Ah, if only Hope weren't as flimsy and ephemeral !