The recruitment actually begins real early. In early-late childhood. An age where nothing is under your control, not even your natural bodily functions like urinating and the rest. Other people, mostly your parents, do your work for you. Even the notion of using the word “parents” in the plural…parenting in the sense that we understand it is perhaps the greatest accomplishment in the evolution of all earthly species, pulled off so successfully, so enduringly only by humans….it is this notion of parenting that is at the root of all civilisations and it is this parenting that is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. A fundamental part of this parenting is what propels your parents to take that most lethal decision of all: sending you to school. The kind of mainstream school we’re all familiar with.

From then on, unless your parents match up to even a fraction of their grandparents, your descent into the black bottomless abyss is not only unstoppable but comes with a lifetime guarantee of irreversibility. The trajectory of this descent is roughly this: first, you will be made to learn…rather, you will be made to write and to draw dark strokes and pictures that celebrate the Hampi-like vandalism of the memory and culture of your own ancestors. Initially, no marks will be awarded but you will be penalized for either refusing to draw these pictures or for questioning the need for such drawing pictures or for not celebrating the aforementioned vandalism adequately enough. The punishments even if mild, will prove exceptionally cruel given that you’re still a child: public shaming, isolation, and psychological manipulation have devastating, lifelong effects. Eventually, you like most children will fall in line. Second, as you grow up and your strength, mental acumen and other faculties increase and expand, the dosage of the injection of this cultural vandalism will increase proportionally. Third, by the time you complete your twelfth grade, the sunlight shining into the abyss would resemble the light of a permanently grey cloud. But there will still be time for you. Except that you now confront the choice-at-the-crossroad: science or…errrr….”humanities.” If you pick the former, you still might have a sliver of a redemptive chance in the remote future…if you choose the latter, two things will occur at the same time: the overhanging cloud will instantly become invisible and you will see the welcoming resplendence of darkness from the unfathomable depths of the abyss. A tenebrous feast prepared by award-winning chefs ranging from Romila Thapar, Ramachandra Guha, Yogendra Yadav all the way down to Kanhaiya Kumar will be awaiting you. The fourth and final stage starts at the precise moment you taste even a morsel of that feast. At that point, you will become a permanent Incurable. A defining and clearly identifiable marker of your incurability will be the fact that you become both the consumer and the consumed: you will simultaneously become the food and the feces. By this time, you will be in the general age bracket of 21 – 30.