Family Rituals

When I first became an atheist, my parents and I would have silent battles when family friends' parties come up. They didn't know I was an atheist, but they did know I found hour-long prayers to be utterly boring.

So they would do whatever it took to get me to come along. Like telling me we were going to a dinner party. I would go... and find myself sitting for a two hour prayer.

Eventually, I caught on and stopped going to a lot of family events altogether, unless I knew exactly what was happening in advance (graduation party=ok. Housewarming=prayer-in-disguise). Which meant I missed out on a lot of family and friends' gatherings.

Now that my parents know I'm an atheist, they don't try to hide the prayer idea any more. They just assume I won't be coming if there's prayer involved. And unless it's close family or a very important occasion, I don't go.

My point is that I'm disappointed that so many of my Indian community's get-togethers revolve around prayer or singing Indian hymns (bhajans). I ended up participating in more Indian festivities in college (a shocker to me) only because they were more focused on cultural aspects of being Indian instead of the religious side.

It's like Reggie alluded to in the post below: religion is just ingrained in the community. And in my head, just because I don't share the religion doesn't mean I'm not part of the Indian community. I'm not sure everyone sees it that way, though.

-- Hemant