Rabbits, Run

• A person who wants India to be dismembered. ('Dangerous bugger!')
  
• Someone who doesn't take pride in Bollywood movies or the Indian cricket team. ('Pretentious twat!')
  
• Anyone who says he's against being saddled with the all-consuming tag, 'Indian'. ('Pretentious bastard!')

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So can there be an Indian individualist? Well, it certainly can't be your local Gandhian as Mohandas Karamchand already beat everyone to that reserved seat. (Same rule applies to non-Karl Marxists and humanity-embracing humanists.) But like tell-tale signs on the forgot-to-be-raised toilet seat that reveals the last sprinkler's identity, one can define the Indian individualist by the reactions he elicits. 'Hmmph. He's doing that for effect' goes the most standard response—as if creating 'an effect' by itself is a notch lower than sleeping with the boss.

Thus, the eyeball-rolling even by pornophilic liberals who think that deities painted in the buff 'unnecessarily' hurt sentiments. Thus, the inability to understand how any resident can sneer at the idea of being 'Indian' or at the hokey notion of a 'Bharat Mata'. (Ah, Mr Rex. Oedipus, isn't it? Do you wish to make a point here about the conflation of the Mother Goddess and the Nation-State?)

Which explains that creaky aesthetic that has governed tastes in socialist India: everything should serve the nation. Which is how we come about to the unquestioning virtues of Bollywood (joyous escapism for the masses, the utter hamness of a Manoj Kumar be damned); thus, the 'tractor art' wonder of cottage industry (kitsch as a national integration handicraft); etc. The individual creating something that disturbs the sanctity of the national temple enrages us witless.

The opposite of a patriot isn't a Nathuram Godse or a prospective Green Card-holder. They have a strong, exaggerated sense of the nation. It's actually the super-parochial who lies at the other end of the tricoloured spectrum. Funnily, an extremely large proportion of 21st century 'Indians' have no inkling of what 'India' is. Ask them what 15th August is all about and you'll figure out that these are individualists effortlessly holding out against the charms of the Nation.

So how about consciously becoming an anti-national and focusing on your little plot of land? As Tagore should have said (but didn't) about the sense of belonging to a nation: "It's when you're not looking for shooting stars that you end up spotting them." So what if it's a single-member club? Club rules still apply.