Traditions or Illusions ?

How do you imagine dropping a new born child from a 10 storey building with only 4 men holding the corners of a bed sheet to save him? Unfortunately this happens in certain parts of India, my country. People believe this brings in Luck. Any living child is blessed by God. Sarcastically, all children bring in luck only to end up rag picking. We are a country projecting ourselves as a developing nation with a new attitude. We had a scientist president and have a Harvard graduate, as the prime minister. Yet, we continue to shit on ourselves. From birth till death.

We have unimaginable rituals across the country. We bury our kids alive and blame God, when he comes out dead. We simply ignore the fact that, we pushed him straight into hell. We lay our new borns on burning coal and wonder why only ash came out. We take our kids to temple, when he is affected by high fever or a chicken-pox. When he suffers to diarrhea, we try driving out the Satan within him.

Then when we reach adolescence, we do the most funniest things. We pierce our body with knives and all other shrapnels known to mankind, hoping God would shower his blessings upon us. I wonder why most part the year country is dry. We break coconuts with our heads and remain foolish not to open a martial arts centre. We bring in priests into the house, who has the power to take hidden statues from inside his mouth, to drive away the devils. We ignore the fact that we had just brought in the most dangerous devil inside.

Life in India is difficult if you are a girl. It does not get worse if you are from a village. Once you reach adolescence, you are not to see, hear, speak or feel a man. You must not touch anyone of them. It is considered a sin to do that. Men are not supposed to have female friends. We endorse the concept of one man, one wife and yet still rank 2 in AIDS population. We are terribly funny, aren't we?

We marry off our daughters before they know even who they are. We do not give any chance for them to choose their spouse. And if they find some one, we kill both of them. And we also have a name for it, "Honour Killings". We are the only country who marry dying men to new born babies and we are the stupid community who cry when she becomes a widow at the age of 20.

Child Birth. Our community understands little about sex and our women are not supposed to know what sex is. To most of them its just a fun activity. A pleasure house for 10 minutes. Our women hardly understand reproduction. We hardly let them learn. And they end up tying cradles on trees, magic bands on hands and end up getting a child, whose father may be their husband.

This is not all. We have a lot of silly traditions being followed across the country without knowing what they are and what they were intended to achieve when they were practised. Eating flesh on Friday is a sin. Entering a new house of a no moon day is to enter into hell. To marry in the month of July is to marry devil himself. To pay cash on Friday is to drive away all wealth coming to you(some believe it is Tuesday). To plan an activity on 13th is a suicide. To cut your hair at night is to bring devil inside the house. Wearing yellow when you take a decision is good. Stepping into your new house with your right leg is a must. And a hell lot.

I personally hate the rituals of marriage, the concept of metti and thali. Why should women alone forced to show that they are married? With all these insane thing around us, to the World, we proudly say, we have the best culture and traditions. We call ourselves the children of God. But, I believe, we are a rare breed of cross products between fools and Idiots. Stupids born out of marriages between insanes and nuts. We are failed mutants, who have stayed out of minds for over 2000 years. I am sorry. I can't help scolding us.