Undergraduate /
"Significant Experience" essay - need advice on the content of this essay [22]
Hey guys,
Can someone please give me some feedback for my common app essay? I will be really very thankful. Also tell me if this would be a fine topic to write the essay on. I am applying to the top universities (Cornell, Carnegie etc.)
".... hate these hermaphrodites" was all I could eavesdrop on the conversation that engaged the two grade 11 students behind me. I had the least idea what hermaphrodites meant, which drove me curious to look up what it meant. Oxford defined it as "a person having both male and female organs". The definition could only strike a 13 year old child with disgust, shame and bitter condemnation. I slammed the book, and closed the chapter forever. But I had never known that I would see them myself sometime, only to change my views about them.
I have been living in Jakarta for the past 4 years and have paid visits to India, my birth country, every summer. Despite the torrid sun casting his daunting hot rays there, love of our family continually pulled us there. But for me, one of the main reasons attracting me there is my best friend. Out of a 4 weeks trip, I spend more than a week with him. But even a week seems short every time. Our tactics of passing time might sound very banal but have always bookmarked the pages in our memory. Once we entered an Adidas shop at a mall to check out some t-shirts. We ended up buying 2, one for each of us. My friend carries a hook with him wherever he goes. He considers it his lucky charm. He had it that day as well. The salesperson handed us our bag. My friend was rolling the hook with the long and thin thread it had. While walking out the store, accidentally the hook got stuck in the hair of the salesperson, and with a slight pull, came cutting through the air with his wig attached to it. I, my friend and the other customers burst into peals of laughter upon seeing the suddenly transformed bald salesperson. A moment ago he was a handsome spike styled man, and by the second he turned into a bald dumbstruck man. His head resembled a constipated egg. We ran out of the store as quick as we could, tenaciously laughing at the situation of the salesperson. This was just one of those pages from our grand book of memoirs. The rest of it is filled too with such events.
Two years ago, again my summer was spent in India. I was with my friend. It was the very first night of the day we met. We were returning home from the mall in a rickshaw, cracking jokes and gossiping. A few minutes later we were encountered by a crowd of locals facing a wall and spitting vituperative remarks. The rickshaw had to stop due to the commotion. Upon asking, even our rickshaw driver didn't know what the problem was. I and my friend had to get down and take a peek at the scene circumscribed by the locals. We were able to make some space through with great difficulty, only to find them thrashing 2 hermaphrodites. Two 15 year old lads subjected to such a merciless scene may only sound like a fabricated story. But the sight terrified us. Upon asking one of the men among the crowd, we were told that they were being punished for being drunk and bumping in 2 men, and the biggest of all, because they are hermaphrodites. The person then pushed us away, joined the crowd and ordered us to go home. Without a second thought we sat back in the rickshaw and asked the rickshaw driver to turn around and look for another way, even if it would take longer.
I spent the entire time that followed the event, immersed in thoughts about the scene. Why does the world condemn this one group of humans? What is their fault in being born the way they are? What is their fault if they have not been assigned a separate sex like others? Hindus themselves regard God as the creator of everything and preach about respecting his creation, but now they themselves were being the ones violating their tenets. I could not do anything to stop the event. What could a 15 year old child living out of India do? That one event changed my impression of hermaphrodites. It compelled me to take an ethical stance in this issue, then or never. Until today, that event strikes me whenever I come across the word hermaphrodite. All I can do is hope that they are understood and that the world begins respecting every creation in the world. It is worth realizing that just like those two hermaphrodites, there would be millions more subjected to the same situation. The recent Gay law in India granting freedom to gays relieved me greatly. At least the world is considering these unique beings. The name still alarms me with hope, that they will too be granted freedom someday. After all freedom is everyone's birthright.
