Are we like Fungus on Bread!!!

Today has been an eventful day,to say the least.Not getting into details,lets just say that what ever news I got today was bad.Then when I tried to make a toast the bread had fungus.Which got me thinking.I never leave the bread loaf outside,but I did and its due to this freak accident that life started growing on it. No devine intervention,just a freak accident!!

Since our childhood we are taught about good and evil,birth and death and all allied incidences are god's doings.When I was sad my grand mother would say  " God is testing me so I should bravely face the situation at hand and in the end my desire will be fulfilled".Where I come from God is the center of all happening and all events good or bad,are his doing so that a lesson can be learnt.I still believe in that philosophy!
Today when I looked at the slice of bread & couldn't help but think "what if we are the fungus on this planet".
What if it was just a freak accident due to which we evolved on this planet.What if there is nothing after death and there is no God.We live and we die, nothing before or after but all in between. Like the bread the earth caught us and then we just started evolving and multiplying almost like parasite eating the very hand that feeds us.

How many battles, murders/genocides and hatred could we avoid. Why does religion bring out the best and worst in us? Is believing in god so important that we forget our humanity or was god supposed to remind us of our humanity?
So running with the concept & not believing in divinity should really change a lot of things around. Sadly even that seem impossible since we will definitely  find another reason to feud over. The truth is no matter how much we trust in God a small part also believes that we could be just a "fungus on bread".

By Snigdha

A Woman in a Man's World

I always say I am a Woman in "A Man's World".

A discussion the other day about how women were doing better than their male counterparts in every field such as Education, Science, Business and Politics got me thinking, if it’s a good thing that there is more representation & is the XX chromosome finally getting its rightful place in this world?!! 

Scientifically there should have never been any question between the equality of Men and Women since evolution has given us the rightful position on this planet however the "Social world" is not that simple, it is in fact quite complicated and layered. Throughout History there have been examples where women have played the role of "The Insignificant half" in the family structure, only responsible of home and producing children, any intellectual contribution was frowned upon as being disrespectful and often deserving corporal punishment. True, we would like to think that we have come far from such practices in the modern urbanized world where women are viewed as "Sharks" if they do anything to get ahead in the professional world and sometimes as "Bitches" if they are straight, rude & curt, mostly "Un-dateable" and definitely " not marriage material', Cougars if they go for younger men and gold-digger if they go for older!

What makes a woman change her natural instinct and transform into a cold "bitch".

It occurred to me while walking down the road one day in an unfamiliar neighborhood with my hubby. While he walked fast, dashing through people as if he did not care (everyone was walking like that) I took time, almost confused as if thrown out of balance. Hubby got irritated when I could not keep up, it was only when I explained that not only did I have to walk through this sea of people but had to be aware of my surrounding, if any one was trying to be "too smart", did he stop making faces. I am confidant while most of the men won’t understand, all girls will identify with this. How many times have we caught some sicko staring at a place making us almost uncomfortable in our own skin? How safe do we feel in a crowd? Are we ever confidant that we won’t be touched in a crowded bus?  The list is not exhaustive but explains the general point that when in a crowd women juggle many variables that men can’t even conceive. It’s just as tough in educational and work places. I have been told that a girls taking up place in engineering colleges is a waste since they get married and sit home later, the saddest part of it was, I understood where that man was coming from. 

Girls have to fight & justify for everything that naturally comes to a boy. Parents let boys go out for parties faster than they let their daughters. Boys generally don’t have to clean up after themselves and girls many times have to clean up after their brothers!! This "man" centric philosophy is propelled by women too and every time a girl tries to stand up for her rights she has to fight not only the men but also the women in her life. Here I am not referring to fights with children out of concern of their safety but to the fights in which girls are accused of being flamboyant & vulgar just because they want to go out into the world to do something unconventional. They are made to feel guilty because they want to be independent & their wings are cut by either not letting them study further or getting them married. Fights make people tough and women who are able make it undoubtedly are tough. but it’s at the cost of having to hide their feminism in order to be taken seriously so that they are respected professionally. Life today is a race for everyone & women that train to win this race, do so at the cost of their feminism. We try so hard to progress and to get our rightful place in this world that we have no time to realize that this is after all a " Man’s world". All the rules, all of its philosophy is male-centric. Otherwise why would a woman participate in murdering another for dowry or help push her in fire in the name of Sati or torture another for a male heir. Agreed these are extreme situations but let’s consider this, if  a male candidate and female candidate are considered equally in the race of a senior management position, who has to work harder to prove their eligibility, persecuted for putting career ahead of family or genuinely feels guilty for not spending time with the kids. Women prove they are better than their male counterparts by beating them at their own game, without realizing we could do so much better on our own. 

This world is infested by so much wrong, war, diseases, global warming and  women have been bystanders to this destruction for better part of history but today, we are contributors. Who gives the man the right to kill another when he can’t even give birth, the right to destroy when he has no capacity to create?!! 

I wonder, if the world would have been different if it was ruled by Women, if its philosophy was inspired by feminism, not the feminism we know today but inspired by the true nature of women like fostering, careing, nurturing and peace.

My respected readers would counter me by the atrocious crimes women have committed over centuries and without denying responsibility for their actions, as a woman I just urge you to toil with the idea that  

"All this is a part of a Man's world could it have been any different in a Women's World"

By Adhira (Snigdha Barge-Narake)