# On Hating I was nine years old when I first learned to hate. Not the theatrical hate you see in films or read about in books—not the kind that roars or demands attention. It was a quiet hate, the kind that settles into your chest like sediment in still water, becoming so much a part of you that you forget it was ever an intrusion. My neighbor, Mrs. Chatterjee, had a daughter named Rina. She was older than me by three years, which at that age felt like an entire civilization lay between us. She had long hair that she wore in a braid tied with expensive ribbons, and she spoke in English at home, even to the servants. Her father owned a factory. Mine owned a small printing press. One afternoon, Rina came to our gate during monsoon season. The rain had just stopped, and the street was a river of muddy water reflecting the grey sky. I was outside, making boats from folded newspaper, watching them sail toward the storm drain with the solemnity of a child conducting a funeral. "What are you doing?" she asked, standing at the edge of the water in her polished shoes. "Making boats," I said, without looking up. She laughed. Not a kind laugh. The kind of laugh that is really a statement—a declaration that what you are doing is, by definition, beneath her. "Don't you have toys?" she asked. I had toys. Not many, and not the kind that came in boxes with English words printed on them. But I had toys. What I didn't have, I realized in that moment, was an answer that would satisfy her. Any answer I gave would prove her point. So I didn't answer. I folded another boat and set it sailing. She stood there for perhaps two minutes more—I remember this with the clarity that shame provides—and then she left. That should have been the end of it. A small moment. A child's dismissal. It happens a thousand times in every childhood, and most of it dissolves into the fog of forgotten days. But this didn't dissolve. Instead, it crystallized. From that day forward, I noticed everything about Rina that could be resented. The way her mother sometimes picked her up from school in a car while other mothers came on foot or bicycle. The way she mentioned casually in class that she'd been to Delhi, to Bombay, to places that seemed impossibly distant and glamorous. The way boys started to look at her when she was thirteen, and the way she accepted their attention as her due, like a queen acknowledging subjects. I became an archaeologist of her flaws, carefully collecting each one. The way she stumbled over a Hindi poem in class. The rumor that her English tuition teacher—imported from Calcutta—had scolded her for careless mistakes. A boy she liked who chose someone else. These fragments I polished and kept, the way other children keep marbles or stamps. My hate was efficient. It required no grand justification, no injury beyond that single moment of laughter. In fact, the smallness of it became its strength. It lived in the space beneath reason, beneath the reach of logic or argument. If someone had asked me why I hated her, I might have struggled to articulate it. The hate had no words. It had only presence. Years passed. We moved to different schools. I heard, eventually, that she'd married young—a boy from a good family, as they say. He worked in his father's business. They had children. Her life unfolded in the way such lives do, and I suppose it was, by any measure, successful. But I carried her with me. Not her, exactly—I hadn't thought of her in years—but the architecture of the hate. The way it had been built. The way it had nested inside me without feeding on much of anything, like a parasite that requires almost nothing to survive. It wasn't until much later, when I was grown, that I began to understand what had actually happened that day by the gate. It wasn't that Rina had wounded me. It was that, for the first time, I had felt the particular sting of being seen and found wanting. And instead of letting that sting fade, as most children do, I had chosen something else. I had chosen to invert the verdict. If she found me wanting, then I would find her wanting too. If her laughter diminished me, then my contempt would diminish her. It was a fair trade, or so I thought. Except it wasn't. The hate had only diminished me—slowly, quietly, the way a patient poison works. It had taken up residence in a part of my mind that might have been used for other things. Other thoughts. Other possibilities. I wonder sometimes what I might have become if, on that monsoon afternoon, I had simply walked away without the hate. If I had let the moment be small, as it was. If I had understood, even then, that a child's mockery says nothing about your worth, and everything about her own smallness of spirit. But I didn't understand. And so I hated. The strange thing about hate, I've learned, is that it doesn't require the object of it to cooperate. Rina never knew how I felt. She was busy living her life, growing and changing, becoming someone entirely different from the girl who laughed at my newspaper boats. But I was busy too—busy maintaining the architecture of my contempt, dusting it off, polishing it, keeping it alive. And it lived. Oh, how it lived.

One. I believe that hating people aged from 5 to 95 years old is a part of our existence: there will always be that person who bothers you for some reason, who makes you think horrible things, who makes you gnaw even just because of the way he breathes. Obviously, if you have that person in front of you every day, the weight to carry is heavy but at the same time, you will hardly ever miss to spit on him all the bad things you think. If that person is on the internet, and you follow him to gnaw and then insult him...you really have a lot of time to waste! I'm really jealous of you as I always run after time, and I can never do everything I would like in one day!

Two. What can I say about them? Just jealous! Go quiet, shoot your way! Envy is a very bad thing both for those who experience it and for those who suffer it! But hold on! You are really a good speaker, you write well, you take amazing photos, you are also beautiful and your smile is very cute...now you understand that someone around you who has problems with envy you give them some trouble! Seriously, better not get thrown down by these crazy people around the web!

Three. There are always beautiful reflections of your mind that can be shared. The line between criticism, perhaps even harsh, and defamation is sometimes very thin. Envy and malice are parts of human nature and perhaps the infamous haters are the newest example of this. Let's mortgage a quote already indicated by others... "Do not take care of them but look and pass." they do not deserve you that much!

Four. Breath and wasted time are interlinked...because it is easier not to think about how much sweat, fatigue and a few tears are hidden, sometimes, behind the light-hearted tone of your posts. And those who resent your successes read with even greater annoyance the posts that give voice to your innermost thoughts on the meaning and the difficulty of life... But how dare you be
 insecure/anxious/dissatisfied for this virtue? Privileged...huh ? You have your chance to change the world, and it is your inner self who, living by your side, will learn that looking at the world without envy and resentment, is the way to gain health and happiness...forget the rest of the world that has no desire to be changed for the better and the people who will hate you with renewed vigour...always! 

Five. The most absurd thing is that haters hate regardless—it's a way of life, a lifestyle they've chosen and committed to. What's strange is that it's not reserved only for the successful and famous. Take the dog page I follow, for instance. We discuss dogs there, but you wouldn't believe how people tear into each other, making the most personal, disgusting, and sexist comments about dogs of all things! I suspect the internet itself is the culprit, because no one would ever behave this way face to face.

Six. I don't know—maybe I'm destined to marry this 'haters' business! There's a sizeable faction that's spent years trying to destroy me everywhere, for reasons I can't fathom. They bombard me constantly with criticism about what I do, how I do it, and in my case specifically, about the talks and writings I publish or the photographs I take. My strategy has always been to give them all the rope and space they want, since they clearly have time to burn chasing after me. I've struck a silent pact with these people now, and I actually enjoy baiting them to see how they'll respond. Most times they lose their grip, fumble around, vanish for a few weeks, then slink back to the shadows. So I start in again until they disappear once more. Then I wait. It's an endless cycle, really.

Seven. My father used to say: "Don't fret about them—just look and move on." Ignoring someone is far more powerful than anything else, and with people who are merely hunting for their little moment in the spotlight, it's your strongest weapon. Those who have truly admired and followed you have understood who you are and what you stand for. Don't lose heart. Don't give your haters the satisfaction. Keep going.

Eight. We're in complete agreement on this, though I have witnessed intelligent people rage against strangers, rallying their followers, even resorting to bullying someone over a thoughtless remark. In my view, the winning tactic is absolute indifference. I know it's terribly difficult to practice, but it's the only answer: hatred thrives on attention. It feeds on reaction and response, while indifference starves it to death.

Nine. OMG...they must have made you really mad if you wrote this down...what's the matter? In any case, I have been following you for years, and I find that you have a real talent for what you do: speaker, writer, influencer, in short, you have built your professional and personal sphere with intelligence and stubbornness, you have found your way; unfortunately, or fortunately you have become a public figure, and you will always find someone ready to throw stones at you, but in the end, you do not give them importance as you did by publishing an ad hoc post, what does it matter to you, anyway? Your writings are born by chance, and all the corollary of activities that you have created hand by hand, represent your work, only this counts; I also meet negative characters in my work, so much; so, I avoid them and move on, since the main objective is to continue to work well, a sort of duty towards myself, of respect for me as a person and for the fatigue that costs me to build a respectable career... I don't give them more weight than they deserve, I don't know what specifically you are referring to but really...go on, indeed go beyond! Kisses!!

Ten. The haters are the first stirrings of the internet and when the forums are raging more than anything else, they are called "Trolls." I guess the name changes sometimes but the anti-social or behavioural disorder remains the same. The solution is always the same, ignore them, don't respond to provocations and leave them in their soup... If a thing/person doesn't like it (We can never please everyone.) why not just ignore it and move on to the rest of our life? They won't do it, they can't do it. To say things to your face, it takes courage. Unfortunately, social networks have also given the green light to the myriad of people who instead have only this passive aggression...and now I expect haters!

Eleven. Only if by haters we mean offensive people and not simply people who express an opinion different from ours, things will sound good. The criticisms, at times, could be constructive and a moment of confrontation: useful for the growth of both parties. However, it is also true that we must separate the figure of the haters from those who perhaps disagree. I, therefore, believe that the problem is not relegated to a specific category of "troll", but in general to the use that people make of their keyboards. And to demonstrate this, just think of the status on social networks: there are bipolar elements that pass from conciliatory states to screaming messages of hate towards those who do not marry their thoughts. I believe that in addition to proving the fake image that they have expertly made online, they also become the caricature of everything they have always contested.

Twelve. Just because you can express yourself doesn't mean you have to express yourself. What you are about to write must meet two requirements: Is it necessary? Is it kind? If you don't respect at least one of them, you can do this revolutionary and progressive thing that is to hold your tongue and keep your opinion to yourself. If I put my thoughts online, it doesn't mean you're free to land every punch. There's this basic misunderstanding: the writer and the reader are not opponents in a boxing ring, because while you can swing hard, we're not here to trade blows. No, we're not online to collect hits. And no, it doesn't seem nice, ethical, nor appropriate to hurl insulting comments, one after another.

Thirteen. Do we really want to be the carriers of more hatred, criticism, and verbal violence? Do we really want to feed the very substrate of body shaming, narrow-mindedness, and prejudice from which we're so painfully trying to free ourselves? Or do we want to lift each other up for once? In general, the message that a hater sends is this: 'you are living your life all wrong'. But no one is entitled to judge anyone else's life, and we are mercifully and joyfully all free to do exactly as we please. As for that whole karma business—it's not like hatred bounces off you harmlessly; rather, hate consumes you, drains away your love and positive energy. It's a vicious circle that feeds resentment, victimhood, and passivity—hardly the fuel for living a full life.

Fourteen. Carrying hatred inside consumes time and energy that could be spent far more wisely elsewhere. Even if I don't think as you do, even if I dislike what you do, I would never come at you to attack, to burden you with guilt, to humiliate you. Because I wouldn't want it done to me, and because I want to live in a world where people uplift each other, where we build each other up instead of tearing each other down. Because I believe that to devote yourself to destroying someone's reputation just for the pleasure of watching them fail, of seeing them mocked and struggling—that isn't merely wrong or childish or pointless. It's the very bedrock of all the racism that festers in our society. And I've never bothered with it, frankly, because I simply don't have the time to waste on it.

Fifteen. Some people speak about your work. They are your critics. Others speak about you because they cannot, or will not, rise to the level of your work. They are your haters. A critic questions sincerely; a hater defames by design. Haters cannot abide you, whether you do right or wrong. They'll twist even your virtues into vice when it suits them, and that brings them satisfaction. They judge you endlessly, never troubled by facts. The man of even modest sense will not speak publicly from mere assumption—he demands proof. Yet the world is not so clean. Once you are the subject, it becomes their sacred duty to broadcast your failings at every opportunity. Not all haters are the poorly educated. Some wear fine degrees while they circle you with suspicion. Why? Perhaps they hunger for what you possess. There are things larger than diplomas, things they'll never grasp. You'll pity them then, watching them snarl with that bitter, burning resentment. Simply erase them from your mind. Let that judging mob howl in the streets. Those who condemn outside the courtroom are like street dogs barking at a home—some are born to bark, some to roar. Your voice carries the truth. That is all that matters.