I read an article the other day. It confused me and then it got me thinking and now I find myself writing about it.
I live in India, a country I am both proud and ashamed of just as I am about myself. In this democratic nation where free-will has as much meaning as your neighbor will allow, the courts make decisions that seem like a page out of literature. I wish I were joking, or maybe my lack of proficiency in legaleese allows me to believe that verdicts that unfold across multiple pages longer than the standard A4 , in language with more literary devices than Blake would remember- including rhyme and rhythm, are a mockery of a system we can do little to alter.
This particular verdict had something about a woman who was living with a married man and appealed to the courts for support after he left her to go back to his family (after 18 years might I add). The courts denied her request for multiple reasons and activist groups are up in arms about what this verdict means for the future. A future that they promised is what every illiterate (or was it uneducated) woman who didn't know better would face.
I read the news on an app on my phone, I do it because pretending to know whatever the app will tell me that Facebook won't makes me feel sane- my sanity is defined by the knowledge important or otherwise, that I acquire. That ritual of unwrapping the morning newspaper and folding down specific corners and hearing the paper crinkle just right does not exist to me. The news therefore is not a prediction of my day ahead, it doesn't mean enough to me. This piece though, the implications the reaction of it won't leave my mind.
I think back over and over again to groups of men and women who believe literacy or education somehow teaches you not to listen to the sound of your heart- not to believe a man you know is lying and build dreams in thin air. It has to be a joke. It must because otherwise the reality I know is.
I don't hold illusions about education- it does its job, for better or for worse one walks away with bundles of papers that proclaim everything from intelligence to capability. What it fails to do however is teach you just how vulnerable you are. I think, and shoot me if I have this wrong, that the sense of accomplishment that earning respected degrees lets you feel, closes you off to the reality that to another person you mean as much as their happiness will accommodate. With an education we are blind to our inner weaknesses masked by the endless layers of self assurance and confidence an education will create. We keep telling ourselves, because we must in this rat race that we are too smart, too accomplished to be treated with anything but respect and awe.
A broken heart though, is a broken heart. Love makes us do foolish things, things we will ourselves to believe and a wounded heart has nothing to do with an educated mind because life teaches the true lessons and she isn't kind to people whose sight from within their soul is lost.
I live in India, a country I am both proud and ashamed of just as I am about myself. In this democratic nation where free-will has as much meaning as your neighbor will allow, the courts make decisions that seem like a page out of literature. I wish I were joking, or maybe my lack of proficiency in legaleese allows me to believe that verdicts that unfold across multiple pages longer than the standard A4 , in language with more literary devices than Blake would remember- including rhyme and rhythm, are a mockery of a system we can do little to alter.
This particular verdict had something about a woman who was living with a married man and appealed to the courts for support after he left her to go back to his family (after 18 years might I add). The courts denied her request for multiple reasons and activist groups are up in arms about what this verdict means for the future. A future that they promised is what every illiterate (or was it uneducated) woman who didn't know better would face.
I read the news on an app on my phone, I do it because pretending to know whatever the app will tell me that Facebook won't makes me feel sane- my sanity is defined by the knowledge important or otherwise, that I acquire. That ritual of unwrapping the morning newspaper and folding down specific corners and hearing the paper crinkle just right does not exist to me. The news therefore is not a prediction of my day ahead, it doesn't mean enough to me. This piece though, the implications the reaction of it won't leave my mind.
I think back over and over again to groups of men and women who believe literacy or education somehow teaches you not to listen to the sound of your heart- not to believe a man you know is lying and build dreams in thin air. It has to be a joke. It must because otherwise the reality I know is.
I don't hold illusions about education- it does its job, for better or for worse one walks away with bundles of papers that proclaim everything from intelligence to capability. What it fails to do however is teach you just how vulnerable you are. I think, and shoot me if I have this wrong, that the sense of accomplishment that earning respected degrees lets you feel, closes you off to the reality that to another person you mean as much as their happiness will accommodate. With an education we are blind to our inner weaknesses masked by the endless layers of self assurance and confidence an education will create. We keep telling ourselves, because we must in this rat race that we are too smart, too accomplished to be treated with anything but respect and awe.
A broken heart though, is a broken heart. Love makes us do foolish things, things we will ourselves to believe and a wounded heart has nothing to do with an educated mind because life teaches the true lessons and she isn't kind to people whose sight from within their soul is lost.
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