I was reading my best friend's blog....the one in which she mentioned her erstwhile summer regime. After I read it, I realised how different the environments in which we were brought up were. I was born  in Hyderabad, and lived here all my life. Only we shifted houses. The first house we were in, was owned by my grandparents. It was a ground floor house in an apartment. That meant we had a troop of urchins, every single house in the apartment had kids, who only needed to be called to play. Infact, we knew every single household in the colony we lived in...that added upto a huge CROWD.

We were a melee of screaming, laughing, jumping and singing children. We had members in our GROUP that spread over a wide age group. We loved every single day of our life there. We were too blind to the day of the week. We played on the roads, in the compounds, inside rooms, every place that offered space to accommodate even one part of our bodies. We played on mondays, we played on sundays. Our games started after breakfast, and ended with the dinner-call. Our only breaks were those when we were dragged into our houses by parents and forced lunch through our alimentary canals, we didn't want to miss more than one round of the game. we fought when poeple cheated in the games, got jealous when others won, left games halfway when we didn't win even once. As an epitome, I'd say we were normal.

But everything changed in 2000...WE were told thaht we wre going to go to a new place, a new home. We were devastated, disappointed...we were 9 years old. We couldn't bear the thought of being away in some unknown, unheard of land...far away from the friends we grew up with, the company we had ever since we knew what friendship and company meant. We didn't want to leave...I didn't want to leave. It wasn't emotion...not some sad sentiment, a mute jeremaid that had just started...We shifted house in 2001.

The first day of my stay in the new house i dreamt that a pack of wolves dragged me out of the house, bit into every inch of my body and chewed their piece away. I woke up startled, and woved never to forget that nightmare. We got admitted to new school. I loved my old school...LOVED it. Parting from them was something we never foresaw. I hate the fact that there aren't any harbingers to warn us of such tragedies.   I couldn't cry for some reason. Maybe I didn't want to. Maybe I din't have the courage to let my feelings out...or maybe I was devoid of feelings then. When we shifted our house, our neighbourhood was nothing but a vast spread of wild overgrowth. We had zero peer company. The platitude of our loneliness was staring right at us...We could do nothing but stare helplessly at it. The only company i kept then was my mind. I kept brooding over things like truth, morals, virtue, justice and stuff...I completely forgot I was 11 and 12 then. I formed principles that I woved never to betray. I started acting mature when people expected childish menaces from me. I forgot I was to behave like other children did....Maybe thats why many people I encountered called me wierd or crazy, or abnormal, or just different.

I know I'm the way I am because I never had company my age. I was never influenced by people my age, never pressurised... I never had the same notions as the ones my age had... I could never befriend my classmates in the first attempt.

You can take this as an open confession that I really was abnormal....I don't know positively or negatively, but I sure was...I am still...

There are around a hundred religions in this world. All of them preach brotherhood, peace, mutual love and respect, non violence, etc. When every religion meant the same, then why did they fight amongst themselves? Why was it so necessary to prove that their incarnates of their principles were superior to those that the others came up with? wasn't violence against their religion? Against the principles they were so frantically supporting?

I was told in school that the concept of GOD was created so one would always be conscious when he was doing something immoral. To keep man away from erronous paths. Who then, asked them to resort to breaking every rule that was meant to be right, to acheieve something they called superiority of their religion? Was it so necessary to place their Gods above their counterparts?

 I was also taught in school that the Hindu society was divided into four classes called "Varnas". The Brahmins, who were believed to be incarnates to the Almighty himself , or atleast a messenger of the God. the brahmin class was called the supreme class. Placed below the Brahmins were the Kshatriyas, the class of people who ruled over "subjects", fought battles and showed cavalry. Kings, emperors and soldiers were all of this class. The third class was that of Vaisyas, the mercantile class. The fourth and the most looked down upon class was the Shudras, who were mostly domestic helps, cobblers, potters, and the likes. The muslims were divided into shiyas and sunnis, Christians into, into chatholics and protestants. I have not much knowledge about the other religions and their subdivisions if any.

The previously made divisions were now further divided.

Everyone was interested in religion, but not its essence. In a tangible idol, but not what was preached through it. Religion started dividing people. Crusades of the past, Jihads, all causing bloodshed and nothing else. And where was GOD? Why was he enjoying all that was being done in his name? Why couldn't he have stopped all this vandalism using all the power he was believed to possess? Why could people no longer trust their shadows? Why was it so difficult to believe a person? If it were so difficult to believe a living person, how could one blindly believe the existence of god? A god whom noone had ever seen.

Why is it that people never try to think of things the way they have to?

After a long thought, I realised I was only expecting miracles from a person, no, a force, no a sprite, no....infact from something that i wasn't even sure of. That was when I gave up my belief in religion and the humungusly wierd concept of GOD. Atheist is what I am now...and quite happy with it.