KILLING WITH LOVE

Rameshchandra Mukhopadhyaya


I am not a polyglot or a linguist .I have not read any survey of the
languages of the world. But I guess that there is not a single
language in the world which does not have the notion of an enemy.
Exogamous marriage may have tried to overcome the enmity between two
families or between two rival races. My sister becomes your wife . So
the enmity between you and me is resolved. Such ideas teem in the
heads of the social anthropologists. Who is an enemy? One who wants to
deprive me of my rights. Some people say that the enemy is not to
blame, his mind set is to blame. Can you destroy the ill will of the
enemy without destroying your enemy. If that were true there could be
no enemy in the world except winter and rough weather .Civilisation
has divined many a device to outwit enemies and rivals.Well there
could be rivals and enemies on different planes. I have myself devised
a method to put one’s enemy on the backfoot. Let me share the secret
with my honourable members of the Sefrah.If you want to eclipse your
enemy go straight and meet him and tell him that you are shocked to
see his brightness eclipsed . Ask him whether he is ill or not. Tell
him that he should take care of himself. The phrase Take care
fits in the lips of an enemy; he forebodes your ill ness. If you were
as concerned with your enemy’s health your enemy might think twice
whether he has really lost his brightness. Appoint ten people to say
hi to your enemy . Let them be as concerned with his health as you
are .I tell you your enemy will be abed with fever in eight hours.
Then I know a lady who speaks honey. Hers is the human heart
overflowing with the milk of human kindness.Just tell her that Mr so
and so is looking sick. At once she will be concerned with the health
of that Mr so and so. Give her the mobile number of your enemy.She
will at once ring her. Honey will trickle down her tongue.However much
your enemy protests that he is hale and healthy lifting a weight of 40
pounds at ease, flowing honey will convince him that he must
immediately either take Complan or Chyavanprash. I assure you if
someone is ill this method can kill him with love. And if some one is
hale and hearty this method can make him suspicious of his strength.
Hurrah this is the method of killing with love. You can stuff honey
into some ones ears and kill him . Hamlet’s father was killed like
that. None, not even Sherlock Holmes can detect the murderers in such
cases of killing.And even if you are detected, you cannot be
prosecuted. In fact the world suffers more from politeness and show of
love.Everywhere there is the serpent in the grass


Comment:1
yes.a serpent in grass.reminds me of my forefather,he used this phrase a
lot.how r u doing?regards. indrajit
P.S tht was a captivating piece.incisive.


comment:2

An attempt at humour ? I will call it a mock-Nietzscheian piece with similar
'provocative bitterness' .


A rather less provocative piece from the Gay Science :


"
Health of the Soul. The favorite medico-moral formula (whose originator was
Ariston of Chios), "Virtue is the health of the soul" would, for all
practical purposes, have to be altered to this: "Thy virtue is the health of
thy soul." For there is no such thing as health in itself, and all attempts
to define a thing in that way have lamentably failed It is necessary to know
the aim, the horizon, the powers, the impulses, the errors, and especially
the ideals and fantasies of the soul, in order to determine what health
implies even for the body. There are consequently innumerable kinds of
physical health; and the more one again permits the unique and unparalleled
to raise its head, the more one unlearns the dogma of the "Equality of men,"
so much the more also must the conception of a normal health, together with
a normal diet and a normal course of disease, be abrogated by our
physicians. And then only would it be time to turn our thoughts to the
health and disease of the soul, and make the special virtue of everyone
consist in its health; but, to be sure, what appeared as health in one
person might appear as the contrary of health in another. In the end the
great question might still remain open: Whether we could do without sickness
for the development of our virtue, and whether our thirst for knowledge and
self-knowledge would not especially need the sickly soul as well as the
sound one; in short, whether the mere will to health is not a prejudice, a
cowardice, and perhaps an instance of the subtlest barbarism and
unprogressiveness?

Milton Mukhopadhyaya