After languishing in my last holidays I am all set to go out to the big bad world. I was sitting in my uncle's house this morning before my flight to Hyderabad. A chap came to the house to perform "Dharpanam". I was sitting before the computer ignoring the wrong pronunciation and the hasty ritual to satisfy our buggy moral code. And suddenly, this chap barges in to my room and discovers that he could impress me with his wisdom.
This particular guy, relatively young in mid thirties, happened to be an M.A in Sociology (at least he claimed so) and was apparently doing his PhD. He clung on to my vicinity like poison ivy and started a diatribe on Indian Culture.
The strong points of his outrageous argument ranged from how girls should get married at 20 and not a year after that. He claimed that MNCs and other organisations have brought about the degeneration of Vaishnavism. I was politely nodding my head thinking about how many Heshey chocolates he would have devoured from unknown nephews in the Amrika. He was telling me that software was a bane to India because it ruined the Brahminical society and perhaps conveniently overlooking the fact that it was those software sons and daughters, working 15 hours a day in faraway lands, who were making his purse fatter by the day for the wrongly performed Darpanam. I was politely nodding so as not offend his sentiments when he started talking on how awesome Sati was.
At this point, I shook my head in disbelief. It wasn't his pretentious, unbelievably pompous statements, but the very fact that all such crap comes out of a person who seems to have a doctorate in Sociology.
Why is that the patriarchal society considers itself educated because it lets its females to go out of houses and complete an education? Why is the notion that after 21 years , I have to feel lucky that I am not married and on my way to change diapers. It is this same society that boosts the over inflated egos of IIT-ians of the male variety? How is that I am any lesser than a frigging guy mugging Salivahanan and calling himself an engineer in Nagarcoil. It is the same creed of half-baked religious bigots who consider massacring women and children over issues of temple as a service to lord. God, if he exists at this point would sit and guffaw over these people's arguments.
These are people who have cocooned themselves safely in the wraps of ancient wisdom. They are the class of Indians who claim to be educated and yet yap about Sati and purity of blood. They have neither learnt the scriptures nor know the meaning of any of them. These self impudent posers take it upon them to protect their purity of blood. Last time someone wanted pure blood millions of people were dead. A truly educated person would have the humility to accept all men are born equals and lucky to be themselves, thanks, to the disposition of the genes. They should admire God or whichever superior entity for not twiddling with their DNA making them a dolphin or a penguin fluttering in the oil spill.
Why can't they for once acknowledge that everyone has a right of pursuing his/her owns happiness, albeit the created equal business. I was sick and simmering with rage as the guy ploughed through his arguments that were as impudent as the man himself who claimed to be so wise enough to find girls of 21 who might not retort back at him.'
When my grandfather, 78 years old, acknowledges everyday that he is open to newer ideas and listens to TED talks on behavioral economics with glee, why can't these pretentious people stop hailing men who made it through IITs and then, advising me to get married?
Indian Culture has always survived and shall, without people who take it upon themselves to protect it. I sincerely hope there are thousands of Indian women in the world who could go ahead and discover their potential just to prove all these people wrong. I sincerely hope these women raise their sons to respect women for what they are, else it shall all be Billions of Blue Blistering Barnacles.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Outrage
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6 comments:
Wow! Count me in :)
What did you retort to that idiot?
Have you ever pondered over why so many geniuses go mad, fall into clinical depression, even commit suicide?
Unfortunately we live in a world which mostly inhabited and run by fools. They are the majority. You, a Google Engineer at 21, enviable as position is, are going to find fewer and fewer of people you can tolerate as you achieve intellectual maturity.
What passes in the name of Indian culture and tradition is truely hilarious. A few years ago, when I visisted the then recently opened Swami Saran temple in a Chicago suburb, a multi million dollar marvel of architecture, an overly spiritual volunteer objected to me standing right next to a young woman. Ridiculous - was'nt it? I was just standing next to her both of us meditating with folded hands. She did not seem threatened by me.
Anyway, when the holy man clad in a Janeu, Pitambar and a long Tilak objcted to my standing next to the pretty woman in the temple, we both smiled and she said half laughingly "Its OK he is my husband." To which the ferocious protector of the supposed Indian culture replied "So what? It is a temple. You have to go to the other side where the women folks are supposed to be".
Needless to say we both left the temple at that point, never to visit it again, even on the days of free sumptuous food sponsored by fat rich Dunkin Donought owners.
But what I find real pathetic about this incident is that when I started mentioning to other Indians, most of them well educated professional types, they would mostly sympathise with the foolish volunteer, so I even stopped mentioning this.
Uttara,
You should have just got up and slapped that fellow. That should have brought him back to his senses.
Lolz, I wonder what would have happened if Neil would take the above advice :P
@ Sindu - Didn't retort. No use arguing with them.
@Vats- Absolutely! The so called upholders of the Indian traditions would tut-tut at anything
@Thoughtful Philosopher- Slapped? Kidding me? :) All I could do was to fume and blog!
People who have not achieved anything yet to feel a sense of adequacy, and gave up on the future hopes too, look for something to be proud of from their ancestors, say parents. That way, one need not do anything except to be born to a certain couple. Guess what the parents have to achieve? They just have to be born as children to this gentleman's grandparents. This sound logic is all that is there to the caste system.
In my observation, believers, regardless of religion, have developed the ability to live with actions inconsistent with thoughts or speech, and yet find peace with life.
Elan.
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