To all those who Stereotype Engineers

This is for always those who have stereotyped engineers at some point in their life. Even I was a part of this club at some point in my life.

Engineers lack creativity, they have a layer of monotony covering them, they are surrounded by machines, they are following the herd mentality, they don't like their own work, they just do it to earn a bit more. There are definitely some people who fall in this bracket but classifying them all in a box saying that they don't think out of the box is outrightly wrong. What makes you believe that engineers don't love their jobs? What makes you believe that every engineer is unpassionate about their job?

Some find creativity is an art some in music some in designing doesn't mean the technology is not creative. Engineers are the ones who can transform your imaginations into reality making the world a little easier for all of us.

At some point in my life, even I found the Streotypying engineers stand up comedians funny. But now I don't. When you study Science and you go into the depth of it, you realise how beautiful and fascinating it is. How victorious it feels to get answers to all the questions you had piled up in your mind since childhood.

People who get into Engineering aren't dull. People who aspire to be an engineer can't be stereotyped. Having a passion for engineering can also be the end result of more than an amateur interest in knowing the science behind things, having a keen interest develop new prototypes from the existing ones.

I condemn people who shrug off engineering as a creative career option. Those who shrug off engineering as going with the herd choice.Those who shrug off engineering as a safe future option.Those who shrug off aspiring engineers and label them as conventional.Those who shrug off budding engineers as moneymakers.

Because your existence is because of engineers.The civil engineer who was behind the building of your house and office. The mechanical engineers who come up with new machines and design your Air conditioners, elevators, lifts and the list goes on. The only thing that remains common is how vital their role is and how easy they make a life for us. So, scraping them off and tagging them and making memes out of them is wrong, thousand times over!

End of Patriarchy

With the end of a generation, will patriarchy end?

With our grandparents no longer with us, will these ancestral norms of society cease to exist? Or will there still be people who will be modern in their outlook but deep inside will be the carriers of the patriarchy they inherited from their forefathers? Will a son and a daughter be treated as equals again?

Will a son and a daughter get the same fair level of education?

Will the end goal of a girl's life change to supporting her family just like her brother?

Will she be allowed to study after she turns 18?

Will she get equal wages like her male counterpart?

Will she be stopped from being looked at as a burden?

Will she be considered a boon or will she still be considered a bane?

Will she be free of the chains that hold her back?

Or will the newer generations also curb her wishes?

Will the mother whose wishes were curbed, who was married off at the age of 18, dropped out of college also make here daughter drop out when she turns 18?

Will she be married too?

Will the mother whose sister was killed while still a foetus also kill an unborn girl child?

Will the father who was a witness of her sister's death who was thrown in the river on the day that she died also kill her daughter in the same way? 

Will the father who saw her sister cry on being made to do all the household work, also make her daughter do the same?

Will parents stop telling their daughters about how they will be married off someday?

Will parents start telling their daughters how they would become strong pillars of society and bring a change?

With the end of a generation, will our outlook towards things change?

Will the mother who was ill-treated by her family stand up when her daughter is ill-treated

The answer to this only lies within the end of the generation.

What the newer generation has to offer and how rational they become when it comes to changing the way society perceives things.Because ultimately it is they, you and me who make a society. With a generation's death, we would have an unmoulded clay to shape and redefine patriarchy to equality.

A letter to Facebook

Dear Facebook,

Thanks for making me so insecure. Thanks for making me believe that the number of likes estimates my self-worth. Thanks for making me so impatient that even a 1 min wait reply seemed like a fortnight. Thanks for making me another of your victims. Thanks for creating a rift between my real world and your virtual world. Thanks for making me indulge in imbecile FB wars on some random post. Thanks for taking me out from the fictional world of Harry Potter and Percy Jackson and slamming my face down into this quagmire of virtuality and oblivion. The world full of memes, likes, reactions, comments, friend requests and suggestions has left me obliterated.

Glued to my phone screens most of the days I always felt that how could XYZ manage to have so many likes on the cover photo or how does she have so many followers. Just like English is a parameter to judge someone’s intelligence the number of followers you have judge your calibre in India. Just because I don’t have 1000 FB friends and I don’t talk to hundreds of people each day doesn’t mean I am an introvert. It’s just that I prefer making friends in real life to any random guy or girl 200 km away from me. It’s just that I am more concerned about preserving old friendships than building new ones. If I don’t have a blue tick o my account and I am not recognized under your terms and conditions doesn’t make me less lovable to the people “who really care for me”. You are responsible for estranging kids from their parents. You are the reason why the youth has become so self-conscious about their looks. We no longer discuss new TV shows or books during our lunch breaks anymore. A senior’s post with 500+ likes is what fantasizes us more these days. You have stolen our peace of mind. Even the silent nights are passed scrolling through a Holi picture of a guy living in some far-flung corner of the city or anxiously waiting for that one person to come online. Life has become monotonous. Now I hardly remember even my brother’s birthday. Gone are the days when I used to listen to my grandpa’s stories. Today I have basically shut myself inside in this cocoon.Secluded.Isolated.Desperately craving attention. Facebook you proved to be a drug worse than opium. You succeeded in transmuting the book-lover in me to a “Facebook addict”.

- Once a bookworm

Superheroes

Dear ALL,

Thanks for making our generation believe that you need a cape to be a superhero. Thanks for making us believe that without killing a dozen villains and smashing a car or two you aren’t even qualified to be a superhero. Thanks for making us fallacious that you need to be extraordinary and outshine the other 7.6 billion humans to be one.Thanks for making a feeble woman debilitate by making her feel picayune. Thanks for making the belief dawn on us that you need a costume to prove your worthiness as a superhero and a muscular body seems to top the criteria list to be one. Thanks for making us believe in the illusion that after giving your all for the people and doing acts of heroism fame awaits for you where your heroic deeds will be acknowledged by millions.

But does a cape really make that evident a difference in your role as a superhero? I see superheroes everywhere. I see them in different shapes and sizes-some young and some old. I see them in their old rags. I see them wearing formal suits and attending business meetings. I see them wearing burkhas and protesting for their rights. I see them wearing a simple sari and moulding the souls of future denizens. I see them wearing a military suit and fighting in the Siachen glacier making their country safe. I see them cooking for their families, doing all the housework and making their kids a good human. I do see a lot of them every day. I see a superhero in every individual who does their job with utmost devotion. I see a superhero in a loyal husband who loves only his wife throughout his life. I see a superhero in a woman who dedicates her entire life to the needs of her family. I see a superhero in a young boy sharing his candies with his maid’s son. I see a superhero in a young girl teaching her maid’s daughter A….B…..C….D.I see a superhero in a Hindu feeding the Muslims during a famine. I see a superhero in Sikh feeding langar to his Muslim brethren on the occasion of Gurunanak Jayanti. I see a superhero in a cricketer playing for his country with pride. I even see a superhero in a prostitute who literally sells her body to feed her family. I see a superhero in everyone who dares to break the stereotypical norms of society. YES, I INDEED SEE A SUPERHERO IN EVERY FIELD. A superhero in everyone. BECAUSE superheroes don’t need capes or costumes to prove their heroism. They need to have a pure soul as their first criteria rather than supernatural powers.

– Once a Marvel fan

A letter to Indian parents

 

Dear parents, 

If you are one of those thousands of parents who think that bestowing all the gifts and giving whatever their kids' wishes is love. You all are thoroughly mistaken. There’s a difference between showing your love and buying all the goodies for them this is for all. Her mom used to buy her a new dress whenever she went shopping. Her dad bought her a bar of chocolate or a cake whenever he went to the store.

Pencils.Pens.Notebooks.Paint.She always got the best ones. A new brand of pen or for that matter any cool stuff was launched: her dad brought it for her the very next day. Most of her wishes were fulfilled. (most because she was just a 12-year old girl .and even she wanted her parents to bring the moon to her balcony). You all must be wondering that despite having the majority of the things of the children in the world is deprived of why did she despise her parents, why was she rebellious to them. The answer was quite simple…………..her parents never spent time with her. On one hand, when all her friends celebrated their parents’ anniversary in restaurants, planned surprise gifts for them. She was hesitant to even wish them so making even a simple card was out of her league. Her parents bought everything, gave her all the materialistic happiness. But somewhere along the lane it is the love and cares that a child years for. LOVE.CARE.AFFECTION.These emotions were far beyond her means. Life was too mean to her and chose to keep with itself these expensive gifts. Her mom was too busy in her worldly affairs to spend even a minute with her. She was happy. Oh! Wait that was just a pretence of happiness. Behind her smiling cheeks camouflaging her real self was a weeping philosopher. She loved her parents, loved them a lot. But there is a distinct line of difference between loving them and being close to them. Her mother never sat with her and asked her “Tell me beta, do you have anything to share?” and neither did her role model-her dad. She distanced herself mentally and day-by-day she was going far away from them. Every day she craved a hug from her mother. Every day she craved praise for all the laurels she used to win but evidently, life was too hard on her. This was muddling up in our heart, getting piled up and finally changed into loathing intense loathing. AND FINALLY, THEY HAD SUCCEEDED. SUCCEDED IN TRANSFORMING A JOVIAL, YOUNG GIRL INTO A REBELLIOUS TEENAGER. SOMEONE WHO LOST FAITH IN LOVE, CARE AND FAMILY ALTOGETHER.

-Once an “ideal daughter"

P.S. Your valuable comments regarding the improvement of this article will be highly appreciated.