What color do you bleed?
Bleed blue! erupted the war cry every time the Indian cricket team entered the playing field. We Indians rooted for them irrespective of their form on that particular day. We bit our nails and watched with bated breath at every catch missed and broke into a celebration at every ball that was hit over the stands. Our hearts thumped against our chest faster than the players running in between the wickets and stopped as abruptly when they were stumped down defeated. We could feel the pulse of the spectators seated on the stands with their tricolor smeared faces chanting and cheering for the Men in blue.
We had some of the best players(and still do)and so did the other teams. We respected the stalwarts in the opposite team, the ones who performed better than our own, but cheered for our boys nonetheless. We never said “Let the best man win”. Loyalty trumped talent and emotions trumped objectivity.
Then came the IPL matches. There were no national boundaries anymore and no bleeding blue. Though we still cheered on the basis of our collective identities as Mumbai Indians or Kolkata Knight Riders or Chennai Super Kings and many such, the teams comprised an amalgamation of talents surpassing national identities and the same crowd now cheered for the players they earlier dissed. Loyalties changed overnight and people soon had a new favorite.
The crowd rooted for their new found identity and whoever won the day in their favor.
Consider the whole nepotism debate. Did big names in the movie industry favor their own friends and families? Did blood trump talent? I have given this some thought. This debate in India started with Bollywood, but is true across all vocations.
As a little kid during your annual sports day, your parents cheer for you in the stands, not the kid that they think deserves to win. It doesn’t matter how badly you play, they will still be on your side. That is the unconditional love that comes from parenting. Now, if you are a gangster of a parent, you may even sabotage the opponents performance. Anything to see your kid win. It won’t make your kid much of a sportsman but he will get the accolades nonetheless. (for whatever little duration.)
Do you know how it was during the days of the Roman Empire? There, in the Colosseum the gladiators fought each other and the people in the stands cheered. It was a sport for their masters and the public whereas the loser often paid with his life. It was their idea of fun and glory to watch people fight and die in the battle arena.
Their master cheered for them in the ring. It didn’t mean he had any fondness for them or dreaded losing them. He just used them as a means to an end. For them the fight mattered more than the fighter. Their hearts didn’t bleed for any of their slaves, they bet on them instead. If they survived to fight another day, they would be in the ring again and again until they did not. And when they did not, their masters would cut their losses and move on to the next slave.
As society evolved, in all probability backwards, we started identifying in other ways. Men vs Women vs Whatever suits your fancy today, Black vs White vs Brown and many such You vs Me. Identities always existed, but we glorified the divisions. We followed the golden rule- ‘Everything shitty done in my tribe is good and everything good in yours is shitty’. This new format helped people cross national barriers while surreptitiously creating even more. People today bleed on the basis of the color of their skin, gender or whatever they believe is their new found divisive identity.
On the other hand, you respect every person around you as a fellow human. You respect talent irrespective of where it comes from or whom it comes through. You don’t respect people on the basis of where or whom they identify with. You don’t need anyone to identify with pronouns because that shit never mattered to you. You don’t need a religious tag or a caste certificate or any other imposed identities. That comes with objectivity. You clap for a nepo kid and a non nepo one. Their parents are probably still cheering for their own. You care diddly squat anyway. You like them on the basis of what they have to offer.
The problem with objectivity is that it is most often not reciprocated. When a non nepo kid enters a nepo world, they are at best a gladiator in a ring fighting for their master and their own lives. While you retain objectivity and cheer for the best talents to flourish, your opponents are still bleeding a certain color. They don’t see you as another talent to be encouraged. They see you as a competitor, someone to be heckled. Eventually, you realize that in all these decades, in the whole spectrum of the rainbow, white never mattered. You never mattered.
So, now you cut your losses, consolidate your gains and step out of the ring. Finally!
