The greatest disease in the West today is not tuberculosis or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for.” —Mother Teresa

Further like Nelson Mandela said ” As long as poverty, injustice, and gross inequality persist in our world, none of us can truly rest.” – in London’s Trafalgar Square in 2005.

Being hungry, being deprived, being isolated, being excluded is not easy.

Another experience I had almost 60 years ago when I was in school, Hyderabad Public School, one of the most exclusive of the time, was when a Hindu friend invited me home for lunch on Sunday. To my surprise the two of us ate by ourselves, unlike what happens in our Indian culture where you eat with the family. And after we finished his mother told the servant lady to wash my plate outside the house under the garden tap and not in the kitchen sink with the other plates. She spoke in Telugu assuming that I didn’t speak it. I did and I do. When I narrated this story to my mother she was not surprised. She said, “They’re Brahmins and you’re an outcast for them.” I was 10 years old at the time. We learn lessons early.

Another time I was at a Diwali party in Delhi. All civil service officers, some military officers, and wealthy businessmen and their wives. A. IPS friend took me there. I knew nobody. As we entered the room, the conversation stopped like someone had turned off a switch. Everyone looked at me. My friend said, “This is my friend Yawar.” They said, “Namashkar Yadav Saab,ayiye, ayiye.” Neither my friend nor I corrected them. The conversation started again. And it was about the “Muslim Problem”. It was an interesting evening, to say the least.

Strangely I never developed this anti Hindu feeling. Maybe because I have an equal if not more experiences of my Hindu friends who remain faithful. I would trust them with my life and I know they feel the same about me.

But others have changed. Why? That’s what’s so painful. Especially because they’re all like me, educated, well traveled, cosmopolitan. Or at least that’s what I think.

What makes someone who has only encountered good from someone else consistently over decades, who has shared memories through thick and thin, happiness and grief, who shared in joy and tragedy, whose children grew up in your house, and lap, suddenly turn hostile? You have done nothing to them. You know that. They know that. But suddenly they hate you.

That this is thanks to what Aurangazeb did 400 years ago, is a thought so incredibly stupid, that I refuse to believe it. If that’s not what it is or something like it, then what is it?