This Is Not Our Culture

“Son, do you see this picture? This picture is your Great Grandfather’s picture, who devoted his life to our community, fighting for us all. And all you can think of is ways to defy the sweat and blood of your own family? Look here, in my eyes, do you in the least believe that you can ever be happy by doing what you are doing? Violating our beliefs, blatantly ripping apart the core of our principles. Do you think you are a better person now that you yourself are the reason because of which, what is most natural, is going down the drain? What will it take for you to understand, that you, my son, are one of us. Don’t you realise by doing what you are doing, you are going against the nature, and you will be damned, for, this is not our culture.”

These were the last words my father said to me, after which I left my home, for good. Quite an emotional man, you’d say, well, he did win an award in school drama. So what is the story behind all this psychobabel about culture and being deviant?

I am a skunk. I am a skunk so I am supposed to stink. However, I don’t particularly think that stinking is the right way to approach fear and danger. Stinking is something I must be doing, let’s say, genetically. I refused to stink, so most of my childhood was spent with dad, learning how to stink, and how to be normal amongst the skunks. Day after day, I would be made to try and stink, but I just couldn’t, it went against my principles because I kept to my belief that facing fear and danger was much better than just stinking away the fear.

After leaving home, I have been alone, no stinking whatsoever. My father said that I would die within two weeks of being away from home, because I would not be able to survive in the wild without my power to stink. It’s been a month, and I have developed some wild fragrances for all the females of the jungle. My clientèle is increasing rapidly, seems like stinking is not a very popular culture. Dad has read about my perfume business in newspapers, and he only managed to send me one hate mail.

I later on, came to know that he sent many such mails, but the mails just stank so much so that every springbuck that was given the job to deliver, fainted due to the aweful stench. Only one managed as he was suffering from acute cold and nose blockage. And yet they say, stinking is our culture. A culture which is a culture only for the ones who follow it, and a torture to others. You have to agree with me on this one, the smell is just too awful to put any other smell to shame.

I was informed that my dad fell off a branch the other day. He was in hospital for quite some time, and they discovered that he had totally ruptured the glands that made him capable of stinking. Basically he can’t stink anymore. It’s taking a toll on him. He is having to live everyday with the knowledge that he can’t stink anymore, that he can not do what he believes is rightly the culture. Again, that’s what he thinks. I think the man takes himself too seriously. He has been lying in the hospital since he was injured. I don’t know why he did it, but he wrote a letter to me which I received the very same day, it being a letter that didn’t stink. It read :

Dear Son, I have confined myself, doing what the norm has been, closing room for any new alternative or opportunity. I never thought outside the box, refusing that there were more ways of living your life than the ones set by the world that was before you. It is by circumstances that I am being forced to live my life differently, something that I now wish I had done willingly.

Life can teach you many cultures, you can not restrict yourself. To restrict yourself is to go against the culture of your own life, and to go against life is to go against nature. It must have been so hard for you to stand against the views of your own father, a father who only tried to impose on you. Once I proudly said that “this is not our culture”, and today I say to you, to live upto your belief is the right culture, the sole culture.

Your father

© 2008

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