Nostalgia

Since my childhood, I always hated rains. It used to (and I guess it still does!) rain a lot in my hometown Agartala, and it meant being at home, possibly study those boring subjects in a bad education system (as a matter of fact, the Indian education system is effective often, but not very scientific and well-structured - but discussing education system needs a separate blog post sometime!), and life in a small city like Agartala would often come to a standstill being handicapped by temporary floods in several areas, and along with that would come accompanying a profuse flurry of dirt in and around nearby swamps.

There goes the myriad reasons of my dislike for rains. Even when I was in New Jersey the summer before last one (2006), I never liked the rains there; it would rain so abruptly and anytime! That way, I like Arizona a lot! It is technically a desert, and raining in Arizona is an event! And my love of mountains and rocks and surreal Nature is best satiated by Arizona's landscape - lest the summer here is real bad. But all in all I like Arizona: the icing on the cake being, no rains!

It has been raining quite a lot though, surprisingly, in Tempe since past one week! Apart from coming a big relief to the scorching heat, it is being history here - raining twice in less than a week's time! Though I am not loving it, yet somehow this weather makes me go back 10-15 years to the days of my childhood - to Agartala- nostalgia which makes me like these rains somehow because of the several colorful memories I have associated with them! The walks I used to take with Mom, the rain-soaked flowers in the garden in front of our house, the small ally in front of the house - with several puddles of rain-water etc etc. Everything seems so green even now; though numerically life has come a long-long way! Time flies - it really does!

Rains are now a storehouse of very, very sweet memories for me - it is like entering that "rabbit hole" and going back to the days of innocence, a segment of life which was (and still is) painted all green with the raindrops. Even some of the bittersweet memories seem so rosy - the charisma of nostalgia about childhood ...

When will we really grow?

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are entirely mine and are not representative of any group or organization I might or might not be consciously a part of.

A few weeks back, I was watching this movie "A Time to Kill" which tells the story of how an African American man seeks justice in the South where the Whites dominate the society in every aspect. It is how a father who recklessly shoots the rapists of his daughter justifies the reason behind such an act. And how despite all the odds in the "white" society, it shows how we still have people around us who can think beyond the peripheries of color and creed, rationalize a human being through his activities, instead of the color of his skin or religion.

The movie made me really step aside behind a little bit and think of the biases we always cherish in ourselves:

"I won't ever date an African-American guy",
"The manager is a Black person?!",
"Oh yeah, he is a Muslim, he should undergo strict security check at the airport,"
"Oh, he is a Muslim - isn't he finding it difficult to find jobs here?"
"Oh he comes from India, don't people in India sleep on streets?"
"Oh India, right. I heard it's very dirty out there,"
"He is an Asian guy. No point asking him out for any Friday night plan: he only understands staring at the computer screen,"
"Oh Hispanic, those brown skinned people - must have fled illegally to the US."

And the list could go on. However, it is really unfortunate. And the irony being - everyone of us does so in some form at some point of time - biases that we ourselves have generated, gathered from our friends and acquaintances or simply heard somewhere. But how of many these make sense? I agree we almost always can define traits (often negative) for a set of people - since it is so easy to make conclusions then; but how many times does it universally hold? How many times do we actually give a thought in judging the person through his acts, behavior and outlook than by the color of his skin, his nationality or his religion? Seldom.

Why is it that since more than two hundred years since US got independent, there were no African-American presidents? Or that when did we last consider a Muslim guy doing something constructive for the society? It is sad, but true that there are certainly African-American people who could have been US presidents or Muslim guys who probably want to fight against the so-called religious terrorism, instead of endorsing them.

But sadly, we have always overlooked them. We have preferred living in a world driven by our biases - simply because it makes us use our brain lesser and may be simplifies the horrendous mundane and selfish lives we have been leading all this while.

We talk of the "rise" of humanity; but I don't see it coming, unfortunately. When will we break free those shackles? When will we really grow out into individuals who really deserve to be the dominators of the world?