30 days writing challenge - day 2 - About Betrayal

I am trying to write more regularly. I am trying to write not just for work, but for myself too. For my own sanity, for my own memories, my thoughts and more. It's a purely self-indulgent exercise for myself. Thankfully I have some of you who manage to read my writings and share feedback with me.

So recently, meaning just today, I posted a whatsapp status, inviting people to share that one emotion or that one story that they want me to write about. I wanted some cues for my writing challenge and I will ryu to write about 30 different things and then share the post at least with the person who suggested the topic to me. I have done that in past too. I have curated topics from people and been unable to write about them. This time, I hope to rectify that.

Whether my thoughts are broken, vague, disorganized or disoriented, I am going to write nonetheless.So yesterday, I wrote about the feelings and the memories that the a relatively new song evokes in me. Today I am going to write about one of the themes that one of my friends asked me to write about. He wanted me to write about betrayal. And here's the first song that came to my mind.

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This song portrays at the most basic level, everything that we seem to trust, someone's smile, their eyes. They say that eyes are the windows to the soul of a person. However, it is surprising that  the same eyes have been known in the Indian social system to do black magic or woodoo. The same eyes that are called to be the tool of the revelation of the true nature of a person, are also known to hypnotize a person, eventually in the longer run betraying them.

There are other songs related to the betrayal of friends, family, brothers, sisters, lovers and more. However, for a change this time, an old melody didn’t hit my brain. Neither in terms of the music, or the lyrics. What did hit me though is another possible truth.

What exactly is betrayal? Is it really cheating someone of what they deserved, or hurting them for no reason? What exactly constitutes of betrayal? Let’s look at it example by example.

So, a brother cheating another for the share of property. A not giving B what was B’s by law and by right. Is that betrayal? Well, no, it’s just cheating on a very transactional level. A lover sleeping around with others behind their partner’s back? Or being in love with others? However, that could simply be one’s strong polyamorous leanings, at best promiscuous behaviour and at worst, adultery. That said, I still fail to define betrayal through any of these incidents. All these are nothing but incidents where someone wanted what wasn't theirs.

In my opinion betrayal is the inability to speak of this desire. The inability to tell the other person that you want something that's his, so bad that you won't hesitate in hurting / harming them. The inability to feel restraint and compassion enough to not steal or cheat or manipulate.

I have no intention of going into an academic inquiry of what a certain moral value is; in this what betrayal is. I am simply saying that betrayal is not any of the acts that we seem to identify it with. 

Betrayal is in truth, robbing one of the most fundamental level of bonding with another human being – trust. When you break someone’s trust in any way, you betray them. Whether you betray them to themselves, or to yourself or to themselves, basically what you’ve done is you’ve broken their trust.

Betrayal is robbing a human of their ability to trust in future. It’s by extension robbing a human of their ability to love unconditionally. It is in a way, perpetrating the simplest and yet the most destructive crime against the humanity. Betrayal is the perpetration of distrust, suspicion and by extension distancing a human from another.

Baki to, Naina to thag hi lenge.Aur hum bevakoof khud ko thaga bhi lenge. Khushi khushi :D

© Anupama 2018