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I was pleasantly surprised today morning to receive a Facebook friend request from a very British sounding name of the opposite sex. Without batting an eyelid, I accepted the request, basking in the glory that finally a Firangi has deemed me worthy of such wonderful gesture. Lahwal Bilakuwal !! Expectantly as I looked up her profile, she turned out to be a fellow Bong from Bangladesh, her religion stated as Catholic-Christian !! Why on earth would a homegrown Bengali girl have a British name beats me. What has religion got to do with our Bangaliana ?
I got some really funny insights about dogmas that are both stupid and conformist at the same time, thanks to the profile page of Facebook. A person with a political view 'Communist/Marxist' will invariably be an 'Atheist' for his/her religious view. A one with a 'Liberal' inclination would be a 'Proud' (sic) Hindu, as if his pride in being a Hindu has made him politically liberated ! Some young Bongs of the Red type even go to the extent of having 'Harmad' as their middle name, lest Didi have any doubts about the strength of her bete noire. The 'atheists' would be the ones posting the maximum number of Durga Puja photographs on their respective profile pages though ! And then there are those faceless Bangladeshi girls who would seldom have their own snapshots in their profile but prefer to be represented by the likes of Katrina Kaif and Bipasha Basu, bolder as they are. How do I know their religion ? From their names, silly.
Now, there are some questions here that I have no answer of : why would the political belief of an intelligent individual cloud his religious or spiritual aspirations ? Similarly, why would individual religious beliefs supersede one's sense of regional and national belonging ? Why should names not represent who we are but what our religion is ? Lastly, if my photograph cannot be veiled, why would I try to hide behind the veil of another individual ? Dogmas are always purebred in pedigree and perversion. To be iconoclastic has never been easy. But I wonder if a modern networking site like Facebook used by the young and not-so-young alike cannot but help reveal the age old dovetail in us, what would ?
