A Bag of Thoughts

As a student, I will never forget the hasty and often unnerving experience of the beginning of a new academic year. Reports aside, a long list of books remains the subject to my parents’ dread and multiple sighs. However, we’ve always failed to realize how we aid in, wrongly at that, a mammoth wastage of scarce natural resources in publication of new books every year. It starts with cutting of trees and transportation of wood to factories. Next in line is the processing of wood with huge quantity of water for production of paper and finally, publication with use of ink. Energy remains essential throughout this procedure.               To get an idea of the quantum of resources, looking at and comparing numbers is important.   About one tree is used to make about 8,333 sheets.  An average textbook has a bout two-hundred pages. Average number of textbooks used by a student is six. Number of trees used for books of a...

Before we say, do or think any further : women are different than men; yes, but in the sense that they own different body structures; beyond this point all the ‘differences’ there are- they are all our doing. I am still unable to understand why our society is prejudiced about this. What made women any less capable in people’s eyes? How did they even come about this absurd idea?  Why would they do this? Women are, like men, a part of the world, the universe, and if men are great, then so are women. If men deserve visiting temples and earning huge amounts of money, why not women? What is wrong with having a slighter muscle capacity? Women can still be as strong as men, if not stronger.    What made them so utterly different in our eyes today? Women can do things just as well, if not better, as men- if given the right chances and opportunities. Why have we made women and men so different? Women, like men, respire, eat, sleep and excrete. If that is what truly ma...

After all the observing, thinking and judging I have come to the conclusion that I will start writing a series of related posts about the very unwanted, vindictive phenomenon of prejudice. It is a word we all have read of, heard of, maybe experienced, but somehow, it has, indeed touched us all. We all have prejudices. Prejudices are there, silent, immovable. That is what makes it so dangerous and thus, it more important to be talked about and to be understood about. I will be writing about different prejudices I have noticed and CANNOT BEAR TO BE A BYSTANDER OF. Prejudice is necessary to be spoken about not only because you and me feel strongly about it. Prejudice can hurt someone so deeply it can utterly spoil their life; this is the stark truth. Prejudice is why so many innocent girl children are killed post-birth, so many animals are victims of unsuccessful experiments, so many ‘differently’ sexually- oriented people are living in fear and so many fat people are bullied. So mu...