Monthly Archives: September 2014

An Unwanted Addition

Fiction

See, here’s the thing. I don’t like people. Never liked them, and never will like them. That probably explains why I live in a quiet place, almost fifteen kilometres away from civilisation. A place where people are hardly around, and Nature dominates the area, much to my satisfaction. A place where no one expects me to socialise, where the only conversations I need to have are with my parents, or maybe with myself at times, where I can peacefully reside in my solitary world of comfort and total bliss. I had what one would call an ideal life for a budding introvert like me.

And then, on what I thought was a fine winter’s day, ‘neighbours’ happened. It was a new concept to me of having another family of people living unnaturally and disturbingly close to my own home. I peeped out of the window, something that I don’t usually do, to catch a glimpse of the new ones. Just because I’m asocial doesn’t mean I can’t be curious about this new and undoubtedly unwanted addition of people to my life! Not that it would make a significant difference to me as a person, but my state of living would alter thanks to the ‘good neighbour status’ that my parents would expect me to create and maintain. I saw them unload from the car. Surely a troublesome lot I would say based on first impressions. Over-friendly mother (a perfect match for mine), drunk father, a son of about my age who had more metal on him than skin, a daughter who still sucked onto her thumb, and a senseless rodent pet trapped in a cage. How typical!

I yawned and stumbled downstairs lazily and walked right into my mother who was standing at the foot of the staircase waiting for me eagerly. Experience tells me that this never ends well. The wicked shine in her eyes revealed the evil plan she had in mind.

“Not happening mum. No way! Don’t even think about it” I muttered. She ignored me conveniently and pulled me into the kitchen to give me one of her talks. Here I realised the advantage of actually speaking out loud and throwing tantrums at times. Just because I never said much, I wasn’t taken seriously. On the other hand, my three younger siblings who yelled excitedly most of the time, were excused from such inhuman tasks. My mother’s command pierced my heart instantly, each word striking me hard. She wanted me to go meet the new ones living across. She wanted me to go and initiate a conversation which was no doubt intended on starting a new relation. Seriously? Out of all of the six people living here, she thought of me? And that too for socialising? Simply ridiculous!

An encounter with humans, let alone humans that I don’t even know, was certainly not something that I, as a cynical soul, would take pleasure in. My mother was basically shoving me into a deep pit of awkward moments. Actually, let me put it this way, she was shoving the new people across into a deep pit of awkward moments. Her pure intentions of making this new lot of strange people feel comfortable was being led to booming failure by the medium she chose to implement her intentions – me.

‘Why do they have to exist?’ I thought as I reluctantly went over to their place and knocked lightly on the door. The metallic son answered. I quickly recalled how to give a warm smile, and gave it my best shot. And somewhere in between all the piercings on his face, peeked an equally enthusiastic smile. The usual introduction took place, and I offered my mum’s help in case they needed it. Glad that I could get through that much, I looked at him, waiting for him to take the conversation further.

“What do you want?” he asked.

Shocked, I chose to overlook his outrageous head of arrogance and fumbled around, trying to find something else to say.

“Nice garden” I remarked, looking at the barren piece of thirst-driven land surrounding their pathetic excuse for a house, bearing not even a single weed.

He raised an eyebrow, frowned at me questioningly and breathed sharply. I stared straight into his mean eyes, dwelling deep into perhaps what was his soul or the void absence of it, and walked away pouting to myself. So much for being a good neighbour.

I reached home to find exactly what I was expecting. There was my mother, with her laptop firmly in her prying grasp, her nose almost touching the screen and her eyes darting about from line to line eagerly. She raised a finger when she realised my presence, which was a signal for me to remain hushed for a while.

“She’s such a…” and she trailed off, not saying more. I knew at once what she was doing. She had begun her thesis on our new neighbours. She had their entire family history googled and registered in her mind, and following that was a chain of judgemental thoughts.

“I want to have nothing more than a general polite relationship with them” she declared. I smiled, pleased with my mother’s decision, went back to my room, and continued with my perfect life.

Should women retain their maiden name after marriage?

Social

What’s in a name? If you’re someone who believes that the world runs with its own few typical rules, then you would agree that there is a lot in a name. But if you believe in the contrary, then of course your views would differ by a lot. After marriage, a woman has two choices. Either she goes the traditional way and changes her name, and hence her identity too, or she chooses to be a little progressive about the matter, and retains her maiden name along with her original identity.

Right from the time that she is born, a woman is always known linked to a man. It starts with her being known by her father’s name, then after marriage it would be her husband’s name, and if she does have a son, then she’s known as his mother. Looking at this highly faulty reality, why should a woman change her name when she gets married? Why create an unnecessary dependency on a new man? Why not just carry on with what she was born with? Ideally, she should be seen as a separate individual rather than by her relations. But we don’t live in an ideal world, that’s the harsh part. A person’s identity is the most precious possession that one has, it gives one a sense of self, and losing your identity in exchange for another seems pointless.

It’s a simple matter of gender equality. Why should the woman alone change her name after marriage? Why doesn’t the man have to change his name too? It is said that changing the name gives a certain sense of belongingness to the woman. So the woman is supposed to ‘belong’ to the man, but it’s not the other way around. It seems as if the man gains possession of her after marriage, the woman is seen as an object. This is nothing but sex discrimination. A surname is not just a name that one uses. A surname holds a person’s entire family history, their heritage, and their very roots. And retaining that is a way of respecting it. And changing it is like losing respect in a part of you, and actually losing a part of yourself as well. And marriage is supposed to add value to your life, and not make you feel like you’ve lost something.

In the current world, many women get married after they have created a professional identity of their own, after they have established and accomplished their career. And you would agree that self-branding plays a significant role in one’s career. Now think about this. A woman spends years working hard in her profession and achieves success too. And all the recognition that she receives is on her name. After marriage if she does not retain that name, she could lose quite a lot of what she achieved.­ Imagine the time and effort it would take her to reach where she was earlier. Do you think that all of that is worth losing her name?

People might say that as a woman enters a new family after marriage, it is her obligation to graciously accept a new name that signifies her as a part of that family. But do try to understand what kind of a situation this is. Here again, it is a clear discrimination of gender. The man also enters a new family, and yet he is not obliged to change his name, so why should the woman? Why is it that women seem to have to sacrifice and compromise on numerous things, while men don’t? It isn’t the men’s fault here either. It’s just a big defect that society has in the way it functions as a whole. And someone needs to take a step ahead to change these sorts of practices. Someone has to try and make a change. If all the women blindly give in to these rules that society has made up, then patriarchy will continue to rule, and achieving gender equality will be something that people can only dream about.

Atheism – A Religion?

Social

‘Show me the evidence, and I shall believe’. All atheists backup their lack of belief in God with the previous statement. And ‘religion’ by its very definition happens to be based on the belief in God without demanding any evidence. That pretty much creates a clear contrast between what atheism stands for, and what religion is all about. It is quite a deep topic of debate, of considering atheism to be a religion, and quite a few people do agree that atheism is a religion. But I believe in the contrary. Analysing all the significant differences between religion and atheism, I would say that atheism cannot under any circumstance, be considered to be a religion. Atheism is the overall absence and rejection of the belief that every religion rests upon – the belief in a certain existence of God or a supernatural power.

Looking at the ‘faith’ part of religion and atheism, one can clearly see that they are two completely different branches of faith. While religious people have faith in an existence and believe that this existence created the entire universe, atheists on the other hand, have faith in the belief that everything appeared out of nowhere. Every inexplicable incident in a religious person’s life would be related by her/him to the superior existence they believe in. Whereas atheists would rather look for a concrete reason behind each and every thing. Notice how the religious category will undoubtedly not only believe in the existence of God, but also relate their entire life’s happenings to God too. And atheists would rather take the path of logical reasoning and find genuine, verifiable facts. The key issue here is not the belief in itself, but rather the reason behind the belief, which is evidence.

Atheism is the absence of one particular belief, which is the belief in God. But religion is a complex web of traditions and beliefs. Every religion follows the revealed wisdom of a supernatural force. It has sacred texts, traditions, rituals and ceremonies, and prayers or an alternative form of communication with God. And atheism lacks each and every one of these things. Moreover, religions are bounded by a certain set of rules and regulations, whereas atheism consists of none. Atheism lacks structure too, which happens to be present in all religions, as they are an institutionalised system. Atheism doesn’t have a single major aspect of religion, and hence cannot be considered to be a religion.

Those who believe that atheism should be considered a religion would say that atheism is all about the belief in the potential of humanity, in the power of reason, in the comfort of love, and in the value of truth, and that religion also has all these beliefs, and hence atheism is a religion too. But here what makes a difference is that these beliefs alone are not enough for atheism to be called a religion as it still lacks the major belief in a supernatural existence. And let’s just say for the sake of arguing that these beliefs are sufficient, then in this case the difference arises in the connections made related to these beliefs. In the sense that, religious people would relate all these beliefs to God, but atheists would relate them to the tangible world around them.

Considering all of the above, would you think of atheism as a religion? Atheism is the position that affirms the non-existence of God. It places its belief in solid facts which are supported by strong evidence. The only thing that atheists are ‘religious’ about is their atheism!