Who am I?

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I am not religious, but I don't mind calling myself spiritual. Religion, I believe, has, over the millennia, been used as a prop to perpetrate a lot of human suffering. Faith is what matters. I don't believe in the definition of God as a creator. According to me, my God resides within me. Some call it conscience, some call it the sub-conscious, some call it the soul. I don't mind calling it God. So by definition I am not an atheist or an agnostic, but by essence, I may as well be. My God does not reside in a temple, church, mosque or gurudwara. It is right here, within me.

Friday, June 3, 2011

The Hong Kong Files: On Racism

It definitely took us by surprise but we did experience our fair share of racism. Why I call it fair, you would soon know. But for now I will enlighten you on where, how, when. We had to live through it mostly while using the metro, or the MTR as they called it there. On the platform, when there would be multiple queues of people waiting to board an oncoming train, the queue in which we were present would be conspicuously empty. If my friend and I were standing at the beginning of a queue, even though the other queues would be teeming with people, we would be the only ones in our queue. And it happened more than once. 

Also, if we were fortunate enough to get seats on the metro when it happened to be relatively empty, the seats close to us were the last ones to be occupied. Many times people would prefer to stand than sit next to us. It was very obvious and not some flight of our fancy. You would say that I am exaggerating. The Chinese people have to reason to act like that. But then if racism were governed by logic and reason, it would not be so pervasive, so omni-present. And they do have enough reason to act like that after all, what with the Indians there staring like crazy, and jumping lines, pushing and shoving intentionally; well what one reaps is what one sows. It’s not like we Indians are very courteous to the Chinese populace in India. Or for that matter to any person who is not a citizen of India. Or from our other neighbouring country. Or a south Indian in north India. Or a north Indian in south India. Look around and it’s present everywhere. It’s an inherent part of humanity. And that’s the sad part.  

5 comments:

  1. pranay i like it..but dont u think u can elaborate more on th racism topic! i wud love to read more on the same topc :)

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  2. Really? Ive gone to Hong Kong too. Nothing as such had happened then.

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  3. @ chaku - okay i will enlighten you more on this topic :) on the phone!! ;)

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  4. @ pritika - well i guess we were two of us, and had loads of time to notice and gather and discuss stuff.. and it wasn't just either one, but both of us noticed the obvious.. or may be the people there have evolved ;)

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  5. i suppose so. or i may have been oblivious to it, taking into consideration the fact that disneyland was the only thing i was thinking about :P.
    so this happened only when you were using the MRT or otherwise also?

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