Culture???

Yet another ‘culture’ fight between me and mom. These regular fights make me ponder over what importance we attach to all our cultural practices and whether they hold any relevance today.
Right from when I wake up to when I go to bed, culture rules my day. Ok, so let me start from when I get up.
“Get up, be up and about, NOW!!” screams dad. “You will ruin your health by sleeping after the sun rises.”
WHAT!! Well, give me proof. Or let me see it fairly. The sun ‘went to sleep’ at 6 P.M. the previous evening. And me?? At 11 in the night. So when the sun can claim a 12-hour sleep, can’t I even ask for 8 hours? Try arguing this way, and all you get is a nice shelling to start your day.
After repeated yelling to take a bath, I come out and start getting ready to go to school and pester mom to serve me food.
“Absolutely nothing called prayers comes about your day,” sighs mom. (And I sigh even more)
Well, this is a daily ritual and the day doesn’t seem to dawn without this. Again, I try telling them about school prayer, and about how it is enough to have devotion at heart and that it is not necessary to SIT, fold hands and pray. Hmph, bad luck! Not accepted and I get branded as an impudent girl.
Thankfully no direct interference in school, though indirect influences still exist. (Mom’s ‘Take care your bindi doesn’t get erased, make a new one if it does’ makes me shiver and frantically get a new bindi if it gets erased.)
Back home. Its 6 P.M. and I realize (rather late!!) that my nails are long, that it is high time I comb my hair and that I have to submit my stitching assignment tomorrow. Alas! The deadly (for me) hour has come; none of these activities are permissible.
Why I can’t do any of these things after 6 P.M. I can never understand. Maybe such a rule would have been relevant before Edison invented the electric bulb but now – when lights can make sure a whole cricket match takes place in the night – how are these valid? I can surely trace my lost needle or take care my nails or hair don’t fly away with the light on. So why the need for these rules?
Well, looks like how much ever the world changes, these rules will always be a part of our lives. No matter how much I try, I never succeed in convincing people out of these rules. Hmm.. when will we become sensible?

Vani Viswanathan
18/11/2004