u/Optimal-Record-1009

Everyone complaining that Samay Raina is too safe now.

What did we expect?

Did we stand with Samay Raina when the right wingers came for him?

Did we stand outside the police station in droves demanding that our law not be misused to put a comic in jail?

Did we file counter petitions against motivated writs in Supreme court asking how is it that this is the Supreme Courts problem when our country has so much more to think about?

Did we stand and protect the India habitat centre when political goons came to vandalise it?

Did we ask the politicians and the judges who jumped on the bandwagon, what the fuck have you done that you're on such a high horse?

Freedom of speech isn't free. We had to fight for it. And we didn't.

Our comedians in India are the easiest punch down for every Supreme court judge, for every Politician, for every loser who wants to earn virtue signalling points without having to do anything themselves. Because they have no one in their corner. Even their fans decide to mind their own business when the vultures come for them.

Samay, and others have the mandate, go earn money. But stay away from dangerous topics. There are people like Kunal Kamra, who will keep fighting the good fight, but as long as we keep letting the powers that be control us, this is what will keep happening.

Once upon a time there was a lion named Siva. He was not like other lions.

Other lions hunted when they were hungry, ate what they caught, and slept in the sun. Siva found that disgraceful. He hunted every day, far more than he could eat, and buried the rest in the earth. For later.

His tribe watched. Sometimes they went hungry and asked if he might share. He looked at them with something close to pity.

“I wake before you. I hunt harder than you. What you call luck, I call discipline. Find your own food.”

They stopped asking.

Siva was, by any measure, the most successful lion. He had killed more than any lion before him. His burial grounds stretched across three territories.

The herds began to thin.

Other predators, leopards, hyenas, wild dogs came to him one season with empty stomachs.

“You have taken everything,” they said. “We are starving.”

“You are lazy,” he said. “I am not responsible for your choices.”

That night, the leopards spoke among themselves.

They had two options: find another way, or do what he did.

There was no other way.

So they began to hunt beyond their hunger.

Then the hyenas. Then the wild dogs.

Not because they wanted to. They remembered, dimly, a different rhythm, but because Siva had changed the terms. Restraint was now just a slower way to lose.

Siva noticed the others had grown faster, sharper, more desperate. He hunted harder to stay ahead. The others hunted harder to keep up.

Nobody was eating any better. They were all just running.

The herds collapsed first. Then the smaller prey. Then the birds stopped coming.

The plains were quieter. Not peaceful, but quiet like an ending.

Then one year, there was a drought. The slim pickings became slimmer. Now when Siva went out to hunt, there was nothing to hunt.

Not that day. Not the next. Days became weeks.

He grew thin. But then he remembered.

All those years. All that food. Waiting beneath the earth.

He dragged himself to the first burial ground.

Dug. Bones. No flesh.

He moved to another. Then another.

Clawing through the places where he had once hidden his abundance.

Nothing but bones.

Around the plains, the others were doing the same, digging up their own bones.

Some of them looked across the cracked plains at one another and felt something close to understanding. An acceptance of their fate.

Siva remembered his tribe. He went looking for them.

They were long gone. No traces of them. He had not been asked to come. He would not have gone.

Siva died alone, which was the only way he remembered how how to do anything.

He had been, until the very end, tremendously successful.