I am a social Misfit...so you say!
I come from a liberal Bengali bourgeois family with relations in almost all communities of the world. My dad's aunt is married to a Gujarati, while his cousins are married to UP Bhojpuris and Malayalis, my cousins have been married into cultures as varied as Tullus to Delhite Punjabi to British, German, and Australian
while I myself am married to a Kashmiri Pandit and have a Sardarni as my sister-in-law! The list goes on...It was thus natural for me to approach different cultures and their customs with respect and inquisitiveness. For me, each relationship opened up doors to new learning, helping me enrich my soul!
Forgive me if that is my outlook towards life; this all-compassing nature has made a social misfit!
"Why so?", you may ask.
My reply is simple. Because our society is one where each of us eye the other with suspicion. Even more if the other person is different culturally. I have had to hear such name calling as a "Bloody Bong!" as if there was something wrong with my ethnicity. And that too in my own country. Office politics would swirl around the ethnicity of the target, and God forbid if you were in the minority! The hounds of office ville would pound you with such relentless viciousness that you'd either end up submitting your "inferiority" to the bullying bandits and suck up to them or quit in disgust, in which case, your CV gets shortchanged! She can't stick around! SOCIAL MISFIT! Sigh! If only people would ignore these differences and concentrate on their work instead! The amount of effort that goes into pulling someone down and trampling all over them would bear so much fruit if directed towards the original work duties instead!
So, I am a social misfit!
But then, this isn't the only reason for my scarlet letter! I have the audacity of treating everyone the same - be it my house help, or the CEO of a firm, or an office boy, my relatives and family or the sweeper or a beggar! I was taught to believe in dignity of labor. BUZZZZZZZZZZZ...how dare I say that? Compare a CEO with a sweeper? I'd say why not? Each is doing the best they can to etch an honest living! Hard work is all am seeing here. So when I tell my house help that she should not sit on the floor but on the sofa with me or have her meals on my expensive Corelle dinnerware and crystal glasses instead of a designated, cheap steel plate and glass, eyebrows are raised, some social diva's faint and some find ways to avoid coming to dinner in case the same dinnerware is used to serve them!And I become a social misfit!
I talk about things that are taboo...sex, rape, incest, homosexuality, premarital sex, abortions, incest, porn, prostitution! OMG! She's a devil woman! How could I talk about such taboos? Well, I'd say why not? Am no holier than thou, I have seen the world and although I have an entire life left to learn, I believe that pushing issues under the carpet doesn't eliminate them. Everyone is entitled to their opinions. I am too. I support homosexuality as a right of an individual. I support abortion if it saves the life of the mother or when there is a reason to it! I am against female foeticide and the craving for a son as I believe selective breeding or preferring one gender over the other is pure, unadulterated hypocrisy! Rape is an ugly reality that needs to be fought, hand, nail and tooth. Honor killings enrage me...whose honor are we talking about? Where's the honor in talking lives just because someone had the good sense to look beyond the societal brick walls and be human for a change? That kind of love that doesn't fall prey to such mindless norms of caste, creed and religion is something to be celebrated, not murdered! I am a social misfit!
A lot of those who'd have the stomach to read this socially outrageous piece would condemn me to hell; but if hell is the only place on earth where I'd get to meet such social misfits as myself, then, that's where I'd happily be! Let the thoughts of us social misfits stoke the embers of hell, let the sparks fly, let the fire rage on!
I am not great! Neither do I proclaim or aspire to be great. My aspiration is simple - to be human! I do not say that I need to be followed...no! There are great leaders for that! All I ask is for the social bourgeois to open their eyes and look around! What have we done to the world? I do not want to start a fight, I'd rather live my life in peace, just let me be. I am a product of a well-rounded upbringing and if my thoughts and beliefs make me a social misfit, then I pray with folded hands that my children and the children after them continue to be social outfits. Maybe one day, our thoughts and beliefs would catch on and the world will know peace and tolerance, much more than it does now!
I am a social misfit and I wear my brand with pride.
adios amigos!
