Taking a Step Back

A friend told me, that I jumped to conclusions much too soon with the Bible. She said that perhaps. I should have sat through the entire thing, and then gone on to form a proper opinion. As much as all of us dread criticism, I could see her point. We make a lot of errors just by jumping to conclusions. We lose out on opportunities, we lose potentially great friends; basically, we make mistakes-some gigantic, some not so major.What I did, was that I ignored the good, and saw only the negative.

My mom told me, that if the world considers something great, you have to give it a fair shot. You may not like it, you don't have to; but you have to see it for yourself. And then if you don't like it, it's okay. You have justification. You don't prejudge someone on the basis of what someone else says. You can't say that you hate the works of Picasso, without actually visiting one of his museums. The same way, you simply can't say you won't read 'Lord of the Rings' or 'Harry Potter' just because you don't want to. or you don't like books. These are books that have shaped generations. These are books that have fostered dreams in budding writers. I think everyone can be a book lover. They just have to find the right book. According to me, 'Harry Potter' would be a good start.

Coming back to my point, I do have a tendency to jump to way more than just one conclusion. And once that happens, well, there's no stopping me. Today was a bit of an eye-opener actually. Sometimes, taking a step back is all that is required. Because, taking a step back gives you a new perspective. It makes you think from someone else's point of view. How much ever we would like to think that we are the center of the universe, we really aren't. What IS at the center of the universe, we may never know. For the time being, I'm just going retract my opinion and once I'm completely done with the Bible, I'll officially have my opinion. Till then, I'll find something else to write about

Religion is a Misogynist

As I've been doing Milton in Literature, I decided to read the Bible as that would give me a better perspective on Paradise Lost. I haven't read beyond Genesis yet, but I have come to one conclusion-if religion were to be personified, it would be a misogynist. No, really.
Women are portrayed as impure, as temptresses, the weaker, the lesser beings. How is that fair? Women who were good with healing and midwifery were accused of witchcraft. Men felt threatened by a woman in a position of power.
 India's most famous early legal code, The Laws of Manu (Manusmriti), says that a woman is a liar and a sinner. That it is in their nature to seduce men and that a husband can leave his wife if she has only given him daughters; and and and! She should never be allowed to assert herself independently. She always has to be in the custody of a man-be it her father, brother or husband. How evil can you be to compose something like that? That, if a woman overhears Vedic chants by accident, hot molten glass has to be poured in her ears? How can one be capable of such cruelty against your own race?
I haven't read the Quran, but after doing some research, I found that it does say that husbands have a right to hit their wives, if the men fear highhandedness; man is superior to woman-he has to manage her affairs. A direct quote from the Quran is-The Prophet said, "I looked at Paradise and found poor people forming the majority of its inhabitants; and I looked at Hell and saw that the majority of its inhabitants were women.". The Prophet said, "Isn’t the witness of a woman equal to half of that of a man?" The women said, "Yes." He said, "This is because of the deficiency of a woman’s mind." . Women apparently, deserved only half of what the man deserved. 
Now, coming to Christianity, which was actually what prompted me to write this post. In Genesis, right at the beginning- God created Eve because he wanted a helper for Adam. He creates her from Adam's rib. Eve is the one who tempts Adam into eating the forbidden fruit and is cursed with painful childbirth and the domination of her husband. Lot tells the villagers to rape his daughters instead of the angels of God; his wife is turned into a pillar of salt for disobeying God and he sleeps with his daughters when drunk and impregnates them. And this is just the top of the dungheap. 
One thing that all religions have in common is that, polygamy is perfectly okay if you're a man. The woman was created for only one purpose. To serve. The man could do anything, ANYTHING; and he would still be considered superior and it would probably be blamed on the poor woman. How can books that supposedly preach the word of God say all this? my blood boils even thinking of it. I'm not saying that the people who follow these religions are misogynistic pigs. The ones who actually wrote it... Well that's a whole other story. What if women hadn't finally gotten up and said,"Enough"? Would we still be subservient and willing to endure abuse at the hands of our families? The saddest thing is, that some people still believe in all this. They think that as it is the word of God, it must be true. What a world we live in, don't we?

You CAN Always Get What You Want.

How many times have all of us heard the phrase-"You can't have everything"? Innumerable, I'm sure. But the truth is, the ones who do get everything they want are the ones who ask for it. If you don't ask, no one's going to hand it to you on a silver platter. 

You'd think that it would be pretty easy if all you had to do was ask. But therein lies the problem. Most of us don't know how, or rather, are afraid to ask. An employee doesn't know how to ask his boss for a raise. A student is afraid to ask his teacher a question, at the risk of sounding stupid to the class. Why are we so frightened of asking? Because we are afraid the answer will be no. Or the answer will be humiliating. Or both even. We'd rather simmer with resentment at not getting our due, than actually working up the courage to take a step forward and grabbing what we want. It's what differentiates the haves and the have-nots. The "haves" aren't afraid of refusal. They see it as a challenge. They work around it. Find a way. Whereas, the "have-nots" simply take the easy way out by not doing anything, by not saying anything.

How can one word have that much power? That people don't even want to take a risk? At the end of the day, it's just a word. We say it all the time. We say it to admonish little children when they ask for dessert before dinner. We click on it when browsing the internet to shut down a pop-up. We say it to overzealous salesmen at malls. If we use it all the time, why are we so afraid of being at the receiving end? How can we presume that the answer will be no? We're underestimating the person we have to ask. We're underestimating our own needs, underestimating ourselves. Sure, the answer can be no. But that doesn't mean it'll always be no. You have to believe you deserve it. Because if you don't, you'll never get it. Don't be afraid to ask. It's harmless. What can they say? No? It could also be yes. Is that a risk you're willing to take?

Writer's Block

I'm experiencing a severe case of writer's block. There's a lot that I want to say, but when I sit down to write it out, my mind goes blank. While I call it writer's block, my mom calls it sheer laziness. A bit of both, perhaps?

So, what does one write about when they literally have nothing to say? Well, if Milton, Bacon, Shakespeare and the other greats,of both the old and the present, had thought the same thing and stopped writing whatever they were in the middle of, we wouldn't have the epics, the poetry, the voluminous novels. We wouldn't feel what we normally feel when reading a particularly interesting novel. In a way, we feel the author owes us the privilege of getting his or her best. We are reading their books, after all. How would we know how they think, how they dream?

The truth is, years later, if we look at what we've written, we won't know what it was that we wrote when inspired, or when under compulsion. We won't be able to tell the difference. So, coming back to my point, what use is it to stop writing saying you have writer's block? It's just a state of mind anyway, isn't it?

What Sets Us Apart

We're currently doing 'Paradise Lost' in our Literature class and we were given a short introduction to Adam and Eve. All of us have some idea about them. According to the Bible, Adam and Eve were the first man and woman created by God, who were banished from the Garden of Eden for eating the forbidden fruit. What I found out today, was that they ate from the Tree of Knowledge. God didn't want mankind to have knowledge. As a result of this one mistake, mankind lost immortality and lost Paradise.

The only thing that really had an impact on me among all this, was that God didn't want us to acquire knowledge. I'm not religious, but I get it. God didn't want us to question. Because where there are questions, there's dissatisfaction. And all of us know that there's never an end to dissatisfaction. And there was probably no room for discontent in the Garden of Eden. We were given one instruction, and we couldn't follow that. We gave in to temptation. Although I do resent the misogynistic way they portrayed Eve as the one who ate the fruit. What? A man can't be tempted? Women need to stop being considered the lesser sex. But that's an argument for another time. 

So, we, as a species, have this thirst for knowledge that can't be quenched. Animals don't wonder why they eat a certain thing, nor do they feel any compulsion to change their diet. They don't question their role in the food chain. It comes naturally. I wonder if we are really better off. With this crazy thirst for knowledge, we've introduced the world to global warming. So, basically we have issued a death sentence not only for ourselves, but for the poor animals who've done nothing to deserve it. But it is this thirst that sets us apart. Makes us who we are. I repeat, I'm not religious; but these stories- these myths, have, at the root of them, a fact, a truth. And it'll do us some good to acknowledge that. It's never too late to learn our morals and values again. Maybe there's hope for us yet.

Being Your Own Kind Of Beautiful

Look into the mirror. What do you see? Considering women are the ones who are considered the vain creatures, you'd think we'd be fawning all over ourselves. Our hair, our eyes, our perfectly applied mascara, our clothes. Instead, all we see are the flaws. We see the extra amount of flab around the waist, we see the creases in our dress, the zit on our forehead. We spot our flaws, before anyone else sees them. As my mother said, we forget that Narcissus was a man.

We see flaws that no one else seems to see. For example, I see my broad forehead, the not-so-great skin, the weight I could lose. We don't accept ourselves as we are. We think that there's always room for improvement. And while that holds true to a certain extent, we shouldn't let it control us. We can't let it influence our self image. We can't let it ruin our confidence. We don't get that, when we can see a flaw in ourself, the girl next to us also sees a flaw in herself. We're not perfect. We weren't meant to be. And we shouldn't kill ourselves trying to be a certain way when we know it's not who we are. All of us are beautiful, we just need to believe that. We need to learn to believe in ourselves. 

Be your own kind of beautiful. Don't listen to what the world has to say about the definition of beauty. What do they know? The epitome of beauty seems to change every now and then. So, believe. Smile. That's not much to ask for, is it? 

Seeking Redemption

There are a lot of social experiments being done these days. To see how people react to a situation that's seemingly not their problem. A random girl being harassed as she returns from college and when she asks for help, no one steps forward, believing that it isn't their problem.

On a lonely street, there's a van with tinted windows, from which emerge heart wrenching screams, and yet most of the people who pass by, continue to walk on.

A man lies bleeding on the road, about 1 km from a hospital, begging for help. Yet, no one wants to take him, nor call an ambulance. 

The ones who silently watch this happen are even worse than the perpetrators. Because they know that something unjust and traumatic is occurring before their eyes, and they don't think that it is their responsibility to offer help, to call the police, or call an ambulance. Is this what we have come to? We don't have the courage, or rather the humanity, to step forward and help someone in dire need? Be it, a child lost, wandering and crying in a mall or a young girl just wanting to go home in peace. By not helping, we are destroying ourselves, knowing that we might have been able to do something. Knowing that it could happen to someone we know, that it could happen to us. It's the easy way out, looking away. By pretending that it isn't happening, we block it out, shut it out, lock the memory and throw away the key. But living under pretence has helped nobody. Because, at the end of the day, we are the ones who have to live with ourselves. No one should have to live with guilt weighing down on their conscience. Take a step forward, speak up, help. Not just to save somebody else, but even yourself. All of us seek some sort of redemption. And instead of searching for it elsewhere, we have to find it in ourselves. It's never too late to make that change.