The Rage of Young Atheists Raised by Mothers Who Fasted for Them

By Sadhika on

I exist, I suppose, in the middle of everything I despise and everything I depend upon. I live in my mother’s house, and I hate it. So hateful is my fate to me. Every room here reeks of her. Her devotion, her sacrifice, her fasting, her insistence that my life was worth her suffering. And I can’t escape it. I live here, breathing her air, eating her food, sleeping in the small room she gave me, and yet I hate her for it. Or perhaps I hate myself for the way I cannot leave.

Even so, my hate is not as simple as you think. No, it is far more meticulous. I even amuse myself with it sometimes. I am quite fond of it. One could even say I love my hate.

You think you know hate? Ha! You don’t know me. You see, it’s not that simple. You think this is just youthful rebellion, some fashionable atheism, some hip imported ideology I can paste on my face and walk out the door? No. It’s deeper. Filthy, crawling deep into the marrow of my bones. Do you know what it’s like to sit in the house that fed you, clothed you, raised you… and hate it? Hate her? My mother! My own mother! The one who fasted while I slept, whispering prayers that went nowhere, for a creature she barely understood—me! 

A fat lot of good her fasts are going to do me! Or her, for that matter. Yes. She starves herself while I sleep, while I pretend not to notice. Lentils boiling until the smell crawls into every corner, chapatis rolled so thin they seem to disappear under my hands. And she whispers prayers, ah, the unending stream of prayers that she mutters to herself. Prayers that the gods might watch over me, that I might live long and healthy. And I—ah, I! I spit on the idea of gods, but I cannot spit on the air thick with her devotion. It follows me. It smothers me. No, better I should vow to wreck my health so I can show her that her God doesn’t exist. Or that he does exist and chooses to ignore her prayers. Yes, that would be much better!

You know what I hate? I hate the way they expect gratitude like it’s a currency. Like I owe them my soul for boiled lentils and half-empty prayer bowls. And I’m supposed to kneel? To… what? Recite a mantra of guilt every time I breathe? I live in her house, and I despise it. I despise her. Is this what growing up in a cage feels like? 

Yes, I live in her house, yet not a day goes by that I do not plot my escape. I scream at her, sometimes when she is in the next room, sometimes when I am alone. And in those screams, I confess more than I intend. I confess that I am weak. That I am dependent. That I am the sum of her sacrifices and my own incompetence. I scream at this house, at the air, at the invisible prison built of turmeric and sweat and expectation. You think I can reconcile it? Ha! I cannot. I will not. The world tells me to embrace reason, to reject superstition, to be clean and rational and enlightened. This is what happens when you give in to the demands of society. You become her. Mindless. Religious. Conformist. Unemancipated. I’d rather be dead than be her.

I hate her! I hate her! And it is not only she who fasts. I too have starved myself from joy, from ease. I have starved myself from love, and yet it clings to me, sticky and unavoidable.

Inspirations:
Mike Leigh’s Naked (1993)
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground

Author's Note: This post is the first of a new series I plan to launch in 2025 on my blog, Dregs of Yore. It is not meant to be comfortable, nor is it meant to offer moral lessons or justifications. Instead, it is my attempt to inhabit the minds of characters I might otherwise dismiss, disagree with, or even dislike. 

The posts in this series are not confessions, arguments or endorsements. They are exercises in empathy of form rather than empathy of agreement: acts of listening to voices that do not belong to me, but which might as well exist somewhere in the world. I am not here to prove them right or wrong; I am here to represent them as truthfully as my imagination might permit.

Writing in this way forces me to confront the unfamiliar and the uncomfortable. It demands that I step away from my own convictions and give space to a character’s rawness, even when it jars against my own sense of self. To me, this act of putting oneself aside is not only a writer’s discipline, but also a writer’s responsibility. Through these exercises, I hope to train myself in the ability to give life to characters who are not mirrors of myself nor vehicles for my certainties, but fully formed beings in their own right. 

One day I will write fiction; until then, this series is my apprenticeship. And you, dear Reader, are my witness.

Image source: The Fallen Angel by Alexandre Cabanel.

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