Will 1 be all, the trepidations of being an Indian

One of my friends raised a very interesting query – between Olympics Gold and Bomb Blasts in Jaipur, Bangalore and Ahmedabad, what are the moments that make me proud to be an Indian.

Before you go on please be aware that “However thin you cut the bread, it will have two sides” … and there is the downside to each of these aspects but what is good is what I am representing here.

Great question, and you know what I am proud of our …

Culture, 

Frankly the best description I have read about how great our culture is comes from a very simple and silly section of the book called “Shantaram” by Gregory David Roberts. In one of the many trips that Linbaba or Mr Lindsay undertakes in the book, he is traveling to his guide friend’s place somewhere in South India. His description of the rush of people to the “Unreserved Bogie” at Victoria Terminus is both hilarious and significant to my discussion.

At the end of the experience he writes something on the lines of concluding that at the bottom of each Indian lies a set of excellent values that have been created in our culture like no other. On one hand, there are a whole bunch of people who are at each other’s throat trying to kill each other to get that one small piece of space in the bogie to sit, and on the other they touch a persons feet if the overstep in the crowded train later on when the train is running and every one is settled and sitting.

And you know what, I love the values that our system has taught us. It’s amazing how Happy, we Indians seem when compared to any of our global counterparts inspite of so many things that are not working in our lives on a daily basis. It is the basic values and principles that we are taught in our culture.

And you know what I am proud of our Education System.

While my son is today growing up in a totally different education system than mine, I am fully aware of the great things that I got from that Education System. I came across this great initiative in US that speaks of what the western world thinks about it.

And you know what I love our diversity.

Where else can you get the aloo kee tikki, kosha mangshor jhol, the avvial, the Konkani fish curry, the hyderbadi biryani, the ghewar, the chingdee maacher malai curry, the shorshe ilish all together. In fact there are dishes from various places that can keep your appetite whetted for 365 days a year two times a day without ever repeating a menu. And yet we need one common language of ENGLISH (a foreign language) to communicate with our own people. What was yesterday a bane to our society (that English, a foreign language is taking precedence over your own mother tongue) is today our Boon (as those companies who have fuelled India as the Call Center Capital of the world).

More in my next postings.