The Madras Mail

I haven’t been in a temple in over a year. It’s something that I’ve never seen the need to do, considering that I now think it’s very cool to be Agnostic, a rather questionable way of saying that I simply don’t fucking care about God and his/her supreme power, or at least the way people prescribe to it presently.

In a rather quirky turn of events, I found myself in the Kapaaleeswarar Kovil yesterday a couple of days back. It’s a majestic expression of what Tamil Nadu is most famous for, and I don’t mean Rajnikanth. A towering stone creation that has a nondescript board that says, ‘Non-hindus not allowed inside’. This board actually made me laugh out loud, scaring that poor maami who was praying for her daughter’s health and her daughter-in-law’s painful demise. I think this was about the time I started asking my Dad, what he and my tribe were trying to do by all this. A bit of history here, my tribe refers to the ubiquitous gangs of people you will find all over Chennai, wearing their religion on their foreheads and making it so very clear to their children that they were born into a special family who could trace their lineage back to stoned sages from yore. Ah!

I’m not even going to bother.

I’ve just realized what I am, I’m what orthodox paatis tell their grandchildren to stay away from, ‘…andha payyan –oda pogathe da, avan cigarette, drinks ellam kudippaan…’, I’m what people like my brother consciously try to stay away from owing to the rather obvious rum stench, I’m what the class toppers decide is a waste of useful space, I’m the guy that wears his underwear on his clothes and decides it’s formal enough.

Dammit! … I’m Superman.