It's blackmail, your lowness!

My mother tries it once in a while, for something silly, like trying to get me to dress rather well for a sombre occasion. I'd choose to wear simple clothes, perhaps too pedestrian but not untidy, and she would like me to be "neat". My mom will try, "Why don't you use any of those really nice shirts you have?" before "Well, I'd definitely like to see you dressed neatly in a big gathering", before the inevitable, "I wish I had brought you up to understand this culture some more"!

It's the tone of blackmail, of somehow hoping that I wouldn't want her to feel bad, that irks me, much more than her refusal to accept defeat with grace. Luckily, I don't give in to blackmail ever, and my Mom behaves better. See, even elders need training.

A friend of mine is going through a terrible situation in a relationship, where the other person is blackmailing him by refusing to eat. The blackmail is aimed at getting him back in a relationship that is over, for whatever reason. I hope he won't give in, more than knowing him to be strong enough to not give in. If the other person dies, it will be an awful event, but as far as I am concerned, no more ugly than getting into a relationship by being blackmailed to do so. That would be lifelong slavery. Much worse compared to the freedom of death - bye bye blackmailer. You want to starve yourself to death? Go right ahead! I'm not about to go down for your stupidity!

The thing about blackmail is that it is low, demeaning, and outright disrespectful. It should be treated with disdain, wherever it is employed. From the traffic cop who threatens you with a huge ticket if you don't pay the bribe, to the loan shark who threatens to yell so your neighbours will hear, blackmailers should be given nothing. There is no healthy level to this menace when it starts so low.

Many a time, we don't quite realize we're being blackmailed. Even beggars use it very well by touching you - knowing fully well that you hate being touched by those filthy fingers, and you will pay to have them go away! When transvestites walk into your shop and put on a vulgar dance, they bloody well know you want them out of sight hence you will pay! Flatly refuse and what are they going to do? Stay put at your shop the whole day? Absolutely not.

Sometimes we imagine we can afford the monetary loss in silly blackmail plots going right for the blackmailers. But what we are setting up is a system of blackmailers who will without a doubt grow in scale and range of operations. In a spectacular incident, it was awful to see India come to its knees because of a bunch of hijackers who threatened to blow up an Indian Airlines plane full of passengers in Khandahar. Without a question of a doubt, I would have ordered the Indian Air Force to bomb the stranded plane and its environs to smithereens and faced the fallout later. I would have publicly exterminated every one of the criminals the hijackers wanted released. And we would have won, instead of saving a few lives and hanging the entire nation's head in shame.

The immature question to ask would be - "Would you have ordered that bombing if one of your relatives was on board?" My answer - "I'd definitely not back off my plan to victory just because one of my relatives' lives stood in the way". No, it isn't ego. It is an answer, plain and simple. Pushed to the extreme, we can't be changing who we are. Blackmail with the threat of death and destruction should be answered with death and destruction. It is a low scrap we are being pulled into, and if we want to keep our high standards, we should be strong enough to step out of our sterilized lives once in a while and use everything within our power to fend off the low challenger.

Blackmail doesn't give us any respectable options, so what honour can there be in giving in to it?