Stop Loving So Much. It Is Ruining Your Life.

Dekho, everyone sells you the exact same rubbish. Love is life. Life is love. Love the world. Love yourself. Love your neighbours. Love your kids. Love your dog, even if it shits everywhere, ruins your sofa, and occasionally gives rabies to your neighbour’s kids.

No biggie. You can still go all doggo puppo awwllee chuchu pipi pupu. Because dog is just god spelt backwards. BOOM! PROOF THAT I AM TURNING 40 NEXT MONTH.

From your therapist and your favourite philosopher to your beloved national dictators, people have been aggressively selling love for centuries. Love your country. Love your skin colour. Love your culture. Love your religion.

They even tell you to love your enemy. Like wtf. Really? Yeh kya baat hui. Unless you are only loving them for your larger revenge arc and plan to break up with them over text after inviting them to Essel World, loving your dushman makes absolutely zero sense.

Love has been hyped up to the point where it is pitched as the ultimate fix for every single problem on Earth. Matlab aur kuch jaise chahiye hi nahi.

You have heard the songs. The famous phrases. The quirky one-liners. Love is all you need. Love will keep us alive. Love conquers all. Love is blind. Love night. Love day.

Bhakk.

Love is great. No doubt. And I am not even saying love isn’t needed. It is absolutely beautiful, imperative, and a necessity. The world wouldn’t cease to be the terrifying dumpster fire we know it as today without the existence of love.

It would be even worse.

Without love, life would be pretty hard, to be honest. You wouldn’t be able to appreciate the sunsets or truly enjoy music. You wouldn’t understand poetry or be able to stand people.

You wouldn’t be able to tolerate a baby’s vomit, an old man’s incontinence, your parents’ constant chudaape, the neighbour’s daily khattpatt, or your friend throwing up on your face while drunk crying about their break up.

You wouldn’t even be able to tolerate that piece of arbi stuck in your partner’s teeth that you notice the second before things start getting hot.

So, surviving this world without love is impossible. Agreed.

But. Buuuut. The biggest buuutttttt everrrr. A butt even bigger than mine. Sirf pyaar se duniya nahi chalti. Love alone will not save you. Love alone will not fix this world.

While this world needs love to survive and it would be a horrible place without it, this world also needs something else to survive. Hate. Petty hate, to be precise.

In the immortal words of the world’s leading kung fu karate expert, Raju from Hera Pheri: “Jahan pyaar hai wahan ladayi, maar-peet toh hoti hi hai.”

I think Mr. India Akshay Kumar aka Rajiv Bhatia inadvertently delivered the insight behind this Substack post. Where there is love, there is hate. And the thing is, you cannot ignore it, defeat it, or kill it. You need to embrace it and learn how to hate properly.

Love and hate go hand in hand. It’s the yin to the yang. The King to the Kong. The aalu to the samosa. The mayo to the momo. The foot to the ball (sports wali). The sutta to the daaru. The paseena to the Mumbai. The bhenchod to the Dilli.

Hate is just as important as love. But all our lives we have only been taught how to love, never how to hate. After reading this today, I am hoping you will spread the good word on hate to make this world a slightly more tolerable place.

See, the biggest problem is that people hate things very seriously. Like with absolute dedication. Full dil laga ke. Mehnat se. Tasalli se nafrat karte hain.

People hate other people. Other countries. Other skin colours. Other religions. Other castes. Their neighbours. Their children. Their parents. Their neighbour’s children’s parents.

You could almost say they love to hate. Ugh. Sick. Kya line bol di. People love to hate. It reminds me of that profound poetry from Delhi Belly: “I hate you, like I love you.” Deep. So very deep.

But hate isn’t meant to be such a heavy, destructive burden. Hate is supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to be light. It is supposed to act as an exhaust valve, harnessing the darkness inside you and putting it to a harmless, highly productive use.

But hate is such a taboo, so deeply associated with negativity, that nobody wants to talk about it. And here is a simple fact: nobody wants to accept that hate exists inside them. Maano ya na maano. Thodi nafrat to sab mein hai.

That entire “hate is a strong word” brigade needs to quietly kato through the patli gali. It is exactly those kinds of bhadwas who made hate a strong word in the first place.

I say we make hate a weak word. Yes. That should be the new mantra.

My primary argument is that hate should be petty. Petty hate is the way forward. Hate the things people usually don’t bother hating. Hate things so utterly pointless that absolutely no one on Earth gives a shit. A hate so incredibly petty that the other person looks at you and thinks, “Bhai, yeh kya koi hate karne wali cheez hai? Tu pagal hai kya? Nafrat bhi nahi karni aati saale ko. Gadha kahin ka.”

That level of petty hate is what will save the world. Let me give you some examples.

I hate doodh wali chai. Absolutely despise it. From the very bottom of my heart. I sincerely doubt there is anything that comes close to my raw, unadulterated hatred for doodh wali chai. Maybe MBAs, but that’s for another time.

But what does that mean? Do I go around burning down chai tapris? Do I harass tea drinkers on the streets? Do I actively discriminate against those chai-obsessed morons whose entire personality revolves around a cup of tea? Do I refuse to date or make friends with people who love their chai? No.

But I still hate it. That warm, brown, slimy little liquid can suck my ass. Do I have a valid reason? No. Chai ne mera kuch bigada hai? Meri biwi ko chheda hai? Mere ma baap ko tang kara hai? Mere kutte ki poonch pe pataakhe lagaayein hain Holi pe? No.

Then why so much of hate? Just because. Meri marzi. Mah lyf mah rulz. Tumko kya.

And I have a bunch of such useless things I hate. Not the people behind them. But just hate the said phenomenons by themselves. Let me give you some examples:

The roadside veg momos which are basically just patta gobhi momos. Ugh. Eww. Yuck.

3/4th trousers. Bhai, a pair of shorts should end at the knee. If it is going below the knee, just wear trousers, na. Yeh shin length kya bakchodi hai?

Tubelight-fade jeans from the 2000s.

Discussing the weather as small talk.

Chicken Maggi.

Punjabi Bagh aesthetics.

Bombay-based influencers.

Influencers in general.

Moving lots of samaan on the Rajdhani Express.

Pandas. Oh, fuck yes. Useless animals taking up resources just by chewing bamboo and refusing to mate.

Chipkalis.

Men. Actually, this one might not be petty at all. This is serious, well-deserved hate.

And this is just a top-of-the-mind recall list. Imagine if you and I sit someday to talk about the things we hate. Poori kitaab likh daalenge nafrat pe. Ji haan.

But you get the gist, right? This is non-harmful. Non-toxic. Non-damaging. Non-destructive. Non-serious hate.

This hate is fun.

I admit I still have some serious hate left in me. And that is strictly reserved for some truly evil things.

Hate for our political leaders. Hate for the pedophiles of the world. Hate for violent religious extremists. Hate for vile animal abusers. Hate for mosquitoes. (They truly serve no purpose in our ecosystem and the world won’t change a bit and will only become better if they stop existing from tomorrow and mosquitoes are the single biggest murderers of humankind since all of our history and they are useless fucking bastards and they can go fuck themselves to extinction and I have no idea why they love me and my blood so much fucking assholes).

So yes, there is a little bit of real hate too. But I prefer to spend my time with petty hate, because it is so much more rewarding. I can talk about it at parties. I can write Substack posts about it. I can share it with friends and family. I can amuse people.

And it doesn’t take anything away from me. It doesn’t breed violence. It doesn’t hurt anyone. Sure, it might annoy a few people. I’m certain the chai drinkers reading this are currently mildly irritated, wondering ki bhai chai ne kya bigada hai tumhara.

But what is life without a bit of mild annoyance, eh?

I still remember that I used to always ask candidates I was interviewing this one particular question: “Tell me 3 things you hate.” And they would all be like “Oh no no, hate is a strong word” and shit like that. But I would push them to explore and tell me even shitty things like kaddu karela baingan and tell me something they really and truly hated.

And that would be probably the most insightful of their answers. Beyond the regular bullshit of “Where do I see myself in 5 years? Oh I see myself hating this job as much as you do” or whatever.

I genuinely believe we need hate lessons in school. It should be covered in Moral Science. We have taught “love one another” enough. It is time to start teaching people how to hate properly.

Right now, people hate the wrong things. Kisi ne kapde chhote pehne. Kisi ne koi janwar khaya. Kisi ka gender female hai. Kisi ka desh Pakistan hai. Kisi ne haan nahi bola.

Hate is dangerous right now because it has real, fatal consequences.

Let us make hate fun again. Let us make hate chill. Let us make hate petty.

Because petty hate ain’t hurt nobody. Am I right, or am I right?