India trip particularly the 1 week visit to Chennai has been pretty exhaustive, but not too bad considering that I am not a huge fan of Chennai. As I have been growing up, my idea of god has changed quite a lot. I was at the Srirangam temple day before yesterday morning and something caught my attention inside the premises - the line " Only Hindus allowed beyond this point." The very first voice in my head exclaimed that the line was so racist. May be that was not perfectly said, but I meant to say that we claim that god is one and we openly practice religionism to the highest degree. Choices and beliefs are personal to people as I always say. People may choose to marry people of the religion they choose and may choose to follow religious practices and cultural beliefs based on their wishes. But to me, religious places should be accessible and allow the entry of any person irrespective of their race, color, caste, creed, religion and what not. As they taught us in school, when animals enter such places, we don't really throw them out or restrict their entry based on their religion or caste, then why not treat humans equally. I keep hearing from people in India about how people now are getting more and more broadminded and caste-ism, religionism, etc are slowly seeing extinction. But I don't think I would agree completely. No matter how much we claim, that these things don't exist anymore, yet, these are pretty much existent though in a smaller degree. I am not a lot into sociology, but from a layman perspective religionism exists everywhere. One morning in US, I was on a call with my mom and suddenly there was a knock on the door and I was hesitant but still went ahead and opened the door. A family of three was at the door. These people asked me some useless questions and voices in my head were screaming, " come to the point now!". Then the female says she wants to introduce me to Christianity and about me me converting into a Christian. I was completely annoyed. I mean why force people to convert to a different religion? It sucks completely. Meanwhile in India, people still are losing their minds over religions. It is hard sometimes for masses to accept that ultimately we are still human beings. May be because we have a so- called sixth sense and since we are humans and each one of us different in our own ways; we tend to segregate ourselves based on religion. It is pretty much human nature to associate and categorize ourselves, but excessive zealousness towards one particular category which kind of portrays an addiction isn't good for the very human existence. As we move forward in time, aren't we supposed to develop ourselves and improve anything currently existent? Shouldn't we be moving towards broadmindedness? Shouldn't institutions which some people blindly follow, teach people better things? Shouldn't these teach people that god is one, and that religion is just a mere categorization and doesn't necessarily portray people as being different as in some high and some low. There has to be a realization that all this is not going to bring any good to anybody and there has to be a change in the mindset of people. Ignorance may be bliss but not for these kind of social issues.