Who to blame for your life?
Iqbal Mustafa

By today's standards Murphy's law has become quite redundant: if anything, Murphy appears to an optimist. Today, things that are not likely to go wrong, do go wrong. And that includes our lives. How many of us can honestly sit back and bask in a retrospective consolation that life has been kind to us, and if we had another chance we would choose the same again? There are a few Peers and Generals around who would, no doubt, answer in the affirmative but otherwise the rest of the citizenry is quite sick of its lot, no matter how comfy their side of the fence may be. Even the textile magnates are sulking - those children of a greater God.

Now what do you do, when things go wrong? Do you blame yourself, like Oscar Wilde suggests, "There is luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has a right to blame us." He must be joking. Confession is a bigger sin than the crime itself in our society. The understated subtlety of the Victorian society, despite its cold, heartless exterior had a heart of gold. It was the age of 'good sportsman spirit' and a natural affinity with the under dog. The only sport we know is 'leg pulling' and an under dog is literally that, worst than ordinary pie dogs.

This is a very conformist setup and we are a wild bunch of moral cannibals who prey upon the on 'follies' of others. Our only claim to 'morality' is based in relation to the 'immorality' of others. Blaming yourself for anything is a virtual suicide here. For God's sake, save yourself a lot of misery and never do such a foolish thing.

Fortunately, we have a wide scope of remising blame. To begin with, may God bless his soul, Sigmund Freud, has provided us with a Carte blanche for most of our personal madness. Begin with the Mother first. She is invariably the prime culprit for our delinquency. You don't need a couch and a shrink with a French cut to affirm that anymore. The prescription has been made public and anyone can claim parental negligence, if not abuse, for their derangement. The mother can't do anything right, after Freud. If she gave you love it was too much and turned out to be poison for you. If she gave too little, that explains your insatiable need for 'serious relations', in serial or parallel sequences. If she loved your father, she made you jealous; if she didn't she made you mad. If she was taller than you, it gave you inferiority complex. If she was shorter, you were ashamed of her. She did everything wrong, even didn't breath properly. So go on, lay it on her, all your craziness, and we are bound to have sympathy for you.

Next comes the father! He is even more diabolical, if a little remote. The devastation that your mother began was finally consummated by his onerous, brooding presence. If he was remote, it broke your precious little heart. If he was caring and loving he was a 'sissy.' If he made tons of money it was at the cost of caring for you; if he didn't then he was selfish in that his trite moral sense prevailed over his duty towards his family. If he imposed a marriage on you, he was the architect of your 'hell'; if he didn't, he failed as a parent to save you from the one you jumped into yourself. He can't win anyway, so rest assured. Lay on the blame in real thick layers on him. He can't do a damn thing. Freud is with you.

Next in line is the most satisfying of all scapegoats, your spouse. Parents had little choice in the combination their sperms, but your spouse did not have any such biological compulsion. Your spouse made a conscious selection and then let you down. Spouses have this nasty trait of letting you down in the end, either through brazen chicanery or just simple inability to perform according to your expectations. They, like most ordinary people, promise according to their hopes but perform according to their fears. But then they are not ordinary people, are they. Why should you be soft on them? If you can't drag them to the morgue, the jail or at least the court, then don't spare them verbally either. World understands! The whole world suffers with odious spouses. You are in sympathetic company.

Meanwhile, there are other minor irritants of life who need not be spared either. Your teachers, for example, some relatives, some particularly vindictive cousins and so forth. Teachers can brand you for life with strange afflictions. Find yourself a particularly malevolent teacher and assign a large portion of your educational deficiencies on him or her. Although, now-a-days it is rather difficult to do this. Most teachers are too impersonal and business like to have either the time, opportunity or the inclination to effect your personality.

As you grow older, your children grow up too and become a bane of life. Those sweet little toddlers you had dreamed of turning into intelligent, well groomed young men and women with ambition to excel, turn out to be dropouts, junkies or just not good enough for you. Never blame yourselves for their failures. Your parents may have been deranged; there is no possibility that you are too! Children can be extremely testing. Part of the reason for your failure may be them. So have a good look again. Don't spare them, however much you love them.

After this, there are other hostile forces. Society, for one, is a real female animal with an unmentionable name. It is cruel, intolerant, nosy, vindictive and generally quite decrepit. You can't give it up or a cock a nose at it, because you need it more than it needs you; but that is besides the point. Don't forget to assign a proper portion of the blame on the 'wretched society." Most people with agree with you, which can make you wonder in the end, who is the society anyway? Don't bother about this one.

The Government is to blame too for many depravations in your life. The whole system of governance, the politicians, the bureaucracy and the officialdom is rotten to the core, and there is damn all you and me can do about it - or at least 120 million people can do about it. So what the hell, blame it too, and do it with an open heart and a loose tongue. Do it loudly and it will make you feel good. Do it often enough and you may qualify for an early martyrdom, if that sort of thing is your cup of tea.

If you want to go on the global plane then there is the International-Jewish lobby, the Hindu conspiracy, the Western panic at the rise of Islamic Renaissance and those sort of supra-national elements that ensure that your life remains seedy; the litter is not cleaned from your doorstep, the sewerage is not drained from the streets, the pollution of traffic hangs in the air, the rickshaws keep bringing miniature visions of hell to your daily life, and so forth.

If you want to really focus on the technical details, then go for the World Bank, the International Monetary fund and other consortiums which are conspiring to swindle us out of our precious 'sovereignty'. The best solution is to make ourselves militarily strong. Let's buy some more tanks, submarines and fighter jets to keep the 'enemies' at bay. If we run out of money we will borrow some more from the wretched WB and IMF. For 'sovereignty' nothing is too dear - not financial viability, integrity, prosperity or other such peripheral issues that are luxuries for us developing nations. Now you have a wide range of objects to unburden yourself. Just be sensible about spreading the blame around. I hope this will reduce your angst to some extent; or else blame me too for not being explicit enough.