... for You and for Me!

Of late, I’ve been hearing from and about juniors from my degree college. Since I haven’t kept my transition a secret, and in fact, have been very open about it, obviously, they have heard about me and express their feelings on the phenomenon that I seem to represent. Here are two blogs with such expressions:

http://those39hrs.blogspot.com/2008/09/unanswered-question.html
http://prescient-quiescent.blogspot.com/2008/09/brave-decision.html

The one thing I appreciate in both these cases is the acceptance of mistakes, along with the sensitivity to realize that there WAS a mistake. At the same time, I hope that they and others, who have in some way experienced a similar feeling on getting to know about my true identity, would extrapolate it to their interactions with human beings in general.

It is very easy to laugh at someone, to find reasons to ridicule them, reject them, look down upon them, disassociate with them. But before you do that, do you ever try and question yourself whether you have any reason whatsoever to treat them as a lowly person? Whatever their life, whatever their way of living it, as long as they have not done anything to interrupt YOUR life and YOUR way of living it, should you really put them in the victim box and hurl all kinds of statements at them?

And this, I’m talking not just in my context, but it also goes for every kind of distinction that we humans have made amongst ourselves. Rich looking down upon the poor, slim people laughing at those overweight, Hindus killing Muslims, vice versa, straight men and women making fun of homosexuals, men considering women inferior, seniors ragging the freshers and so on and on and on… All these are manifestations of our prejudice and our unhealthy need to feel superior to someone else around us. “Oh, she sings well, but she’s so ugly!” “He may be excellent in studies, but he just can’t talk to a girl! Loser!” And these are very regular examples.

I wonder if anybody around me, except my friends, ever paused even for a moment to wonder why I wouldn’t be manly, or why I stuck to feminine mannerisms even though I was the butt of all jokes in college. Of course I knew everybody laughed the moment I turned my back at them. Of course I knew that they all thought I was creepy. Yet, why wouldn’t I change myself? Did I WANT to be made fun of, every instant of my life?

One of the blog authors above says he may never understand why I underwent a sex reassignment. But the question is – Must one understand everything to be able to accept it? The beauty of this world is in its diversity, in the many breathtakingly beautiful colours of possibilities that Life offers. There is no way you can understand everything, but even if you don’t, is there no way you can accept it and respect it as another person’s right to their way of life?

Every human being has a reason to be the way they are… ‘Normal’ is a very subjective term. It varies with each country, culture, society, and even, individual. And the world can be a better place only when we open our arms to everybody around us, irrespective of whether or not they fall along the lines of OUR definitions of ‘normality’.