Mediocre Perspectives

I don’t exactly remember why I stopped believing in the concept of god. But I do remember that it was after my tenth standard when I was 15 and half years old. I live in a religious family as most families in this world are irrespective of where you live. My mother reminds me that as a kid, I refused to eat even a mouthful until they were accompanied by fancied stories from the Hindu mythology. Until I became an atheist, I could vividly recall that I never went to school without a short prayer and the ‘tilak’ on my forehead. But in spite of all this, I came out of the concept and I certainly believe that it is one of the important decisions which changed my perception. Stepping out of the realm invoked reason and inculcated the spirit of questioning. Questioning unlocked many portals which remained invisible. Rationalism stems from many foundations but Atheism is the strongest of all. It is the root of all questions which demand ‘evidence’ and proof. The seed of reason which ...

As every year, two weeks after the new year when dad arrived home he brought us a couple of diaries. When my sister was deep in thought on choosing one my mother spoke “You don’t use them anyway. Why are you so engrossed in picking one?” I still remember the first diary which I ever used. It had a mahogany cover with the year 2005 imprinted in lemon. I hardly wrote it for a week and discontinued the writing practice. I don’t exactly recall the ink painted contents but I do know that I barely narrated chronologically the events of the day without any flavour.  After that, I used to get myself a diary every year but was never really committed to filling all those pages. Photo Courtesy: Magic Madzik Diaries are used by many people for many purposes. My mother uses it for writing down the family budget every night. My father retains one with semi-soiled papers which has all his important contacts and a new one to keep track of his official work. But I have always believed...

Five years ago when I appeared for an interview, the moment I took my seat in the four-legged vintage chair, the first question was shot, “So, you are Gowtham A R. What does A and R stand for?” It is well known that surnames represent the family from which we come from. Globally, surnames reflect the region from originating. Yamaguchi is a surname in which ‘yama’ stands for ‘mountain’ and ‘guchi’ for entrance. This signals to the enquirer that you live near the mountains and so he frames an opinion about your ancestry and social behaviour. In some cases, surnames might represent the occupation you are associated with, like ‘Tinker’. In a country like India, beyond these two reasons, the names are also used as an indirect reference to the caste you belong to. Beyond the issue of what a surname means, there were questions which disturbed my mind: How many civilizations take the name of a woman as their surname? Or all societies so embedded in patriarchy that we never gave w...