Namaste: Bumper Stickers!

I belong to two very contradicting philosophies when it comes to stickers. One of them is that I hate to stick anything on my car, be it a bumper sticker or some kind of magnet. I pretty much like the neat and clean look of my car. On the other hand, I proudly carry & display all the tags I belong to or support. Be it my religion or my passion for war against terrorism or just that I love New York. Now the problem is I despise putting a sticker on my car. I don’t know why, but I was always reluctant to put one on my car while deep down inside I always wanted to put one or two on it. Honestly speaking, for over 3 years I have been debating over it and not sticking anything on the car always came victorious.

Now, not putting something on your car has pros & cons. It’s like if you don’t have anything on your car, you are not going to be bothered by the bigots who don’t just belong to your philosophies but absolutely hate them and to prove their bigotry, will follow you at your home and will creep you out. Trust me there are these kinds of people around, not many but it takes only one so yah that is the pros ….. And the Cons of not putting up a sticker are, you won’t get appreciation either from the ones who would belong to the same philosophy as you are but because you haven’t put anything on your car to display that, they wouldn’t know and there goes the compliment you were about to get or just the appreciation in their eyes which was going to give you stratification.

Same goes for putting one up. For instance, if you have one sticker on your car supporting abortions, I would automatically see you as a child killer and would try to not even look at you as I wouldn’t like to know who you are. On the other hand if you have one up in support of Tibet, I would be doing awwws’ and oooohs’ and would be trying to get your attention and when our eyes meet, I would give you a smile and thumbs up.

In last 10 years, I have come across lots of amazing bumper stickers. Some of them I received as gifts and some of them got distributed to me by some organizations and a few of them I even bought, even though I knew they will end up in my souvenir’s box, and they all did. All of them ended up in that little box of mine. I have tons of “I love New York” stickers. I have stickers of Indian, Israeli flags. I have stickers of almost every cause I support, be it anti-gun lobby or supporting wars on terror. I also have “I love my mum” and a few rainbow stripes and triangles and the one and only “I hate GW”. I have all these stored in my prized possession.

Last week, I had a change of heart. I mean for real A CHANGE OF HEART. Like they say, “for every action there is a reason” …. wait that doesn’t even fit here .. umm .. maybe it does, anyway, yeah so I was saying last week, I saw one of my boss being a bigot. I was stunned by it. I always knew she is not one of the most open minded persons in this place, but I wouldn’t have expected such a narrow mindedness against gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender community. I was like, we live in the state of New York where assembly just proudly passed same sex marriage bill and sent it to the senate and you have this much bias. I was literally trembling with anger and that cost me two nights of sleep. (yeah yeah, I am a touchy when it comes to certain issues which are more near and dear to me than my own life).

And the result was a BOLD “Equal Rights” bumper sticker on my car. And since I put the sticker up I have been parking my car right next to the bigot boss of mine in the parking lot.
Here is the picture, I promised: