amayakapur

[amayakapur]

Creative writing- 1

It was numbingly frigid outside. The chill in the air was so strong it shook the bones in Joseph’s body. When it became impossible to ignore he went back inside to get a coat. He expected to see nothing else other than the hotel lobby, the inside of the lift, the penthouse- and finally his coat. He never thought going back to find something to cover himself up with would lead to him discerning what he saw.

Joe jogged up to the lobby in a hurry to find himself something warm. On his way he was met with his twisted fate. Something that changed the way he looked at his destiny forever. Something that led to the usual crowd feeling dismay and sorrow, but gave Joe hope to turn his life around and to stop looking at himself as the victim in the series of events incurring one after the other.

What he saw, he knew, would forever change his life.

[amayakapur]

Short note on consumerism and climate change

Climate change is a phenomena responsible for magnanimous devastations experienced by people on a firsthand basis. The main culprit for such a largely-felt circumstance is human beings. More specifically, consumer culture and infrastructure which has brought about deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions on a globally exhaustive scale. These occurrences have led to the pollution of the atmosphere causing far-reaching damage. Thus the question remains, who is at fault? While producers mainly control what is supplied in an economy, it is the consumers that control the extent of its supply. It is the excessive demand of things such as crude oil and plastic which has led to an overallocation of resources to this demand and thus the negative externalities of climate change. Thus I would say, while producers control what is produced, it is consumers that are responsible for the over-exhaustion of resources and thus climate change.

[amayakapur]

A perpetuating imbalance

“India has progressed, there is no more need for feminist movements. All feminists have pseudo-feminist ideologies, they just want to bring men down.”

I remembered a video I saw a few months ago. A man was interviewing random men on the streets asking for their opinions on why women get raped. Each man’s argument could be cruxed into a disgusting belief with a haste certainty that it is in no way the man’s fault. From man to man, their perspective did not change. A horrifying conclusion was that a woman wearing clothes that got them excited was an all-justifiable reasoning. Some further concluded saying rape can never happen without consent like a clap can never take place without two hands. Their absolute certainty in them being right about something defying the very definition of a word sent chills down my back. The last question they were asked was if they respect women, to which each man said yes to eagerly. Their definition of respect came in conjunction with keeping all the women in their families locked in their houses and covered from head to toe. They love her and pray to her, but don’t believe her respect aligns with the same freedom and rights they give themselves. Keeping her safe from what they are scared of is exactly the values they preach themselves. The question then remains, if women continue to hide themselves, does that make society safer as a whole? Or does it just mask its true intentions while at the same time showing it ever readily?

Taking away a woman’s freedom and blaming all that happens to her is just about the essence of why feminist movement exceed all importance. An entire gender has been denied equal rights for millennia, but what is further devastating is its prolonging existence even in the twenty-first century. Anti-feminists say there is no need for feminist movements however, the correct phrasing is there should be no need. There should be no need for the ask of the same basic rights centuries later. There should be no need to still spend a large chunk of the government's budget on incentivizing families to send their girl offspring to school. There should be no need to deny a woman of her right to wear what she wants and go where she wants when she wants to, but the sad truth of today’s world means that the world and the ideologies it comes with we see around us today may take a lot more work before a woman can say she has lived a life free of any ungiven chances and untaken rights. A woman must keep herself safe, but in the end it is society that should allow her to worry only as much as a man does and have no fears that relate to her chromosome compositions.

[amayakapur]

A Different Landscape

Prague. The first place I went outside of my country after gaining a mature enough mindset to comprehend and differentiate between things. Before me stood a land so distinctly different from mine it felt as if I was in one of those fairytale books I had read so avidly. While a plethora of things seemed to stand out to me, I could feel the immaculate ampleness so palpably. The buildings looked untouched, the streets looked untravelled and the entire city felt as though it had been tidied up persistently. The cobblestone pathways, spired roofs, and cerulean waters all seemed to construct a palette for this city with each colour painted in all its brightness.This was especially noticeable as coming from a country possessing little to no space for unpolluted areas, I knew no different than what I had seen all my life.

A country so infamously known for its overpopulated grounds contains in it issues one may not immediately connect overpopulation to. This means heavily trafficked streets, plenitudes of unemployment, an underprovision of healthcare, education and infrastructure and a result of a large chunk of its people living in iniquitous conditions. In comparison, littered streets become irrelevant, though however, are a side effect to such circumstances of penury. It is the offspring of a soup incorporating ingredients such as lack of awareness stemming from India’s lack of education, lack of public facilities and a sheer disregard for cleanliness and the environment.

The introduction of section 279 which makes littering attract a penalty has failed to reduce such a crime due to its severe lack of implementation and an insufficient number of ₹500 written next to fine.

A sickening sight is that which comprises something displeasing to the mind’s aesthetic or its moral beliefs. Littering consistently seems to tick both boxes as not only does it dethrone the beauty of a city, but it also poses a grave but consistent threat to the environment. The inability of plastic to decompose and the ability it has of harming the soil, trees and wildlife so greatly has together coupled to become an accelerant to global warming. Thus again cries the biosphere for some demonstration of compassion and care, thus cries india's warrant for greater movement

[amayakapur]

India's persistent divide

Over 70 years back, our country faced a tragedy whose ordeals went beyond the bounds of the word devastating. A land so indigenously diverse fell victim to what made its own republic so unique. A separation based on one's religious identity constructed a divide so strong its effects have continued to persist for the better half of a century.

Growing up, I never took much heed in the hatred I saw around me. Like most around me, I became friends with whomever I wanted and interacted with people giving no importance to what their cultural backgrounds were. However, after reaching a certain age I found that paying more attention to the prejudices of the people around me was of the essence. Being from a generation who lived through the unforgiving times, I found their perspective was legions different from mine. The hatred, spite, disdain and predisposition seemed to be beyond my scope of understanding. Their unwillingness to progress with time was louder than a screaming evident. The faces of disgust, bizarre claims of what the future holds, and appalling generalisations of an entire community was shaking to me, however completely of reason to them. While with generations our country has seen an obtuse turn of degree in attitudes towards people different from our own, a stronger resistance has been executed by those with a different position. The leaders of an overly populated country with more than a billion people from multitudes of different backgrounds has not seen this mirrored in their representatives. A single minded and narrow viewpoint has exacerbated the proliferation of a sensitive travesty. India’s government has seemingly carried on this ideology. Not only has this resulted in the prolonging of a cataclysmic creed but also widespread discrimination on an anti-democratic scale.

Never would one have thought that in this day and age they would be in a position where they would be telling their loved ones to stay safe in their shelters from the burning buses and violent rampages going on right outside their homes. However, that is what I came home to one day when the illiberal facet of our government was shown once again through the Citizenship Amendment Act; while the anti-CAA protests were rough, they gave an accurate response with the same level of hatred towards our government as the government had shown to its people.

#blog post #writing #politics #important #news

[amayakapur]

The State of What Surrounds Me

Living in a country with confoundingly large gaps between the rich and the poor, I grew up witnessing some things I realized others in my age group had not been exposed to. The severity of India’s weakened economy was exposed to me in different ways during different parts of my life. Whether it was when we began memorizing factual statistics on poverty in India in school, or the way I saw how India’s classist system worked all around me, I gradually acknowledged what I had known my whole life.

A classist system revolved everywhere I looked.

I wake up and move around the house. There are helpers from different homes cleaning our house and cooking our food. Their families have propagated these unvirtuous cycles for generations, conforming to society's expectations of what job they deserve, or rather they are only just doing what they can for whatever penny they can make.

I step outside into my car. As I drive down the main street right outside my colony I see piles of trash where there should be footprints. I see torn rags and abandoned shoe soles on the ground my car should travel on. I see India’s lack of education amongst various symbols leading to such pitfalls.

I take a turn to the left. I see drunk poverty-stricken men with nowhere to go but to their homes made of leftover metal sheets under the heavily trafficked and cacophonous highways of Delhi. I see malnourished children doing cartwheels for small amounts of money in the midst of bustling streets with speeding drivers. I see mothers with injuries struggling to find food for their children. I see transgender people going from window to window begging for money because our society’s backwards thinking has failed them so greatly.

I stop at the gas station to pick up today’s newspaper. I see bold yet unsurprising headlines of how some benighted man has sexually harassed yet another woman. A quick internet search shows me how statistics claim women in areas with lower income are more subject to these appalling acts. It becomes clear that while there may be several other causes as to why India is the world’s 2nd most unsafe country for women, it also directly stems from the excessive poverty in India.

I acknowledge the world around me. I acknowledge I come from a place of paramount privilege in a land of destinies unclaimed and opportunities left missing. I stand here looking at this country governed by lifetimes of steps untaken, leaving it’s heirs and generations of their offspring exempted from a life that is rightfully theirs. I stand here knowing how far our country is yet to travel just to break out from it’s prejudices against its own people.