Where is India headed?

I remember writing an essay in school. India: Unity in Diversity. 

A melting pot of all religions living in harmony, making it unique and severely complicated at the same time. Complications?!! Nah!! Never heard of that while growing up.

Making friends was always based on the principle : The many the children,the better games we get to play as part of our evening play time.

No one ever questioned why we crowded in front of a Ganesh pandal?? We just stood there waiting for the tasty prasad. There were no restrictions as to who Santa was allowed to dance with as he went on distributing goodies. I don't remember missing out on a single Eid celebration in India, savoring the tasty kheer and the biryani. Almost everyone of us has lit a sparkler for Diwali, even though we complain about the noisy crackers now. I would be lying if I said that I did not enjoy seeing colored faces at Holi (though I'm not a big fan of colour).

The point that I am trying to make desperately here is : we all love the thought of a vibrant and a multi-cultural India. After all we all have grown up in such an environment, that we have learnt to make friends outside our religious circle constantly and never has once RELIGION been an issue for fights among us. ( though we did fight over who could bat first once we won the toss)

As much as we loved listening to animated sermons and singing hymns at mass in church, I remember being super excited to catch an episode of "Jai Hanuman" on Doordarshan. As each other patriotic citizen of India, I loved waking up to the tunes of  " Ae mere Vatan ke Logon" on 15th August and getting goosebumps every time Roja played on TV. I proudly proclaim my Indian citizenship every single time I fly in and out of the country. You feel all the more patriotic when you land in a nation full of white skinned people and suddenly spot one of your own. My eyes still instantly light up when an Indian smiles back at me in a heavily crowded Subway. Its a connection which will always make you feel one with all your fellow Indians no matter which part of the world we are in, we will always cheer for India, in a cricket match. 

Our ancestors saw India fall because of the ultimate weapon of hatred : DIVIDE and RULE.

Nearly 70 years after becoming independent, we are still falling prey to such tricks,albeit utilized by a few politicians for their own selfish needs. We are still separating ourselves from the thought of a vibrant superpower and regressing ourselves to being mere puppets. Waging wars over social media, blocking our friends on Facebook because they don't agree with the opinion generated by your pea sized brain and plastering supremacist views all over your wall so that someone takes notice of your views finally - if that's what its boiled down to, then its probably a good idea to take a refund on your education.

What India is, is because of ALL its citizens. Not one less, not one more. Religion is a matter of a personal choice. And its high time we set our personal choices aside and view our people just as Indians first. And lets admit it- India has much bigger problems awaiting solutions than just sticking our noses up into religious meddles.

At the end of the day, Religion is not evil, its evil people who corrupt it.

An Indian's guide to living in America

Follow the following guidelines only if you are Indian and living in America on a work permit:

(Tourists do what you want to do,as long as you don't murder anyone; in case of which you will earn a one way ticket back to Motherland all free of cost)

1. The spices you find in the USA are not as spicy as you find in India.(Patel Brothers the grocery store all Indians flock to in times of the masala crisis)
   
2. If you are living in NYC or LA you can get off with a lack of street etiquette but not in Southern countries;its still trendy to greet someone you meet on the road.
   
3. If you are vegetarian, then be prepared to accept eggs as a part of vegetarian diet or stuff yourself with pasta and salad as your sole options.
4. Learning to cook a few basic dishes won't kill you.( For those who can't YouTube and Pinterest are always there for you)
   
5. Be ready to spend your income on taxes ( yes, everything is taxed;heavily)
6. For any small purchase be prepared to stand in long queues in Walmart.(And the good news is Walmart has only three cash registers out of 25 at any given point of time)
7. Be prepared to walk,talk,drink and eat all at the same time i.e. Morning time. (Dunkin' Donuts/Starbucks your morning saviour unless you can whip up a power packed nutrition punch of scrambled eggs and toast, just like that!!)
   
8. Internet speeds are fast enough for watching movies online. ( and there being no dearth of pirated movie sites you can catch up on the latest flicks- Hollywood and Bollywood alike)
9. If you are in a relationship with someone in India, get ready to give it up or make up with sleepless nights.
   
10. Lastly,the most important one- Rewrite your own rules.

Things a Catholic in India is tired of hearing

Though India has a sizable number of people belonging to different religions, Roman Catholics still remain a minority among the various other minor communities like Jews, Parsis or Sikhs. It is quite a challenge to answer the questions that people have about your way of life and the myriad generalizations that accompany them.

Here is a list of things that being raised as a Roman Catholic in India I have been subjected to (some are drawn from friends' experiences) :

1. Do you eat bread /pork for breakfast everyday?  The Catholics in India have been referred time and again as PAO (which is a slang term). It is generally thought that the only item that we eat is bread(pao) with different kinds of meat.                                                                            FACT - No. Catholics do not necessarily eat meat especially pork all the time. We do consume vegetables on a daily basis and yes, we do patronize chapatis and rotis hugely as part of our daily diet and it doesn't make me any less Catholic.                                                                                                                   
   
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
2. You must be from Goa if you are Catholic.                                                                           FACT :No not all Catholics come from Goa. In fact Christianity was introduced to India through the southern state of Kerala by St. Thomas and the state has a sizable Catholic population.                                                                                                                                                      
   
                                                                                                                                                                                               
3. You must be a drunkard.                                                                                                            FACT :Not all Catholics are drunkards a trait which has been popularized by Bollywood to the extent that it is thought that we are introduced to alcohol in our cradles. It is a personal choice for everyone as much as it for people belonging to any other religion.                                                                                
   
                                                                                                                                                                                          
4. You must be from a convent school.                                                                                     FACT :Though convent schools are regarded as the highest form of education, there are many schools which provide the same quality education and many of us have been educated there.                                                                                                                                                  
   
5. English is your mother tongue.                                                                                                 FACT : No. English can't be our mother tongue because we like any other Indian belong to this country and have picked one of the many languages of this country.                                                                   
   
6. You must be watching only Hollywood movies and listening to English songs.                                                                                                                           FACT :We like many other Indians watch Bollywood movies and can sing Hindi songs like anyone else.                                                                                                                                                                                           
7. Friends wishing you on Good Friday and asking you "what is good about Good Friday?"                                                                                                        FACT : Let me break it up for you. Good Friday is named so as it is observed as a day of fasting and penance and hence, the name which is translated as holy.                                                              
8. You must we wearing only dresses and jeans and not any Indian wear (read sari and salwar kameez)                                                                                                 FACT : My mother has been wearing a sari ever since I have seen her and is not very comfortable in Western wear. I do possess many pairs of salwar kameez and make no qualms about wearing them (though comfort comes first and I would pick a pair of jeans and a t shirt over anything else in the world)                                                                                                                                            
   
9. You have to be good at football and not any other sport.                                                           FACT :We like and enjoy cricket as much as a game of tennis or football or snooker for that matter. Sports is again a personal choice and in a cricket crazy country like India there are many of us who would rather cheer for Sachin Tendulkar than for Cristiano Ronaldo.                                                                                                                                                    
   
10. You must be good at singing and playing at least one musical instrument (read guitar) .                                                                                                                    FACT : Most of us do sing in the church as a form of prayer and not because we are inherently good at it. Some of us may pick up learning an instrument in the church as we are interested in it and not because we are a prodigy of Beethoven.                                                                                                                
    

I am sure there must be many other stereotypes we are subjected to, which I may have not touched upon. Feel free to comment and let me know of any other generalizations that I may have missed out.

Tissue Issues and more...

Having been raised in India, I learned many things different from the way the West does them. One of the many things being SHITTING.. (yes! I'm no shitting about it though). The Indian subcontinent does things a wee bit differently in this department. First things first. Most of the places in India do not have the kind of pot that Americans do.

The pot that you see above is what most Indian households use. Though much of the urban populace has learnt to poop sitting on a Western pot of recent, there are many who have learnt to squat sitting in the toilets. As this has been the norm for a very long time in India, usage of toilet paper was unacceptable as a means to clean oneself after going. Many toilets have the usage of a bum washer in order to wash and clean up the butt crack.

Now, this is what a bum washer looks like. It works like a water hose or a hand held shower which when sprayed in the area, cleans up the area with a forced jet of water. Now why will a person in their right minds, who has been cleaning up his butt crack with a fresh jet of water, start using a tissue or toilet paper in order to do the same?

Firstly, no matter what quality of paper you use to wipe your butt, it is still paper and it does not quite give the freshness and cleaning which water does. Moreover when you are (this is for the ladies) in your period with a stream of blood flowing out your vagina the last thing that you would want to be doing is infecting your genitalia with bacteria from your poop. If you cleanse the same area with water the same problem is handled in a hygienic manner. The area feels much more fresher and cleaner. The slime caused by the blood disappears in a jiffy!!

Moreover no matter how much toilet paper you use a single sheet will never give you the satisfaction that a single jet or spray of water can give.

And then there is always the fear of your hands touching your ass while you are trying to clean it up. And YIKES!!! that's a terrible feeling....

I have seen Americans shake hands at mass with other fellow church goers at the exchange of peace during mass. I have also noticed a considerable number of them use sanitizers immediately after shaking hands. If Americans are so particular about health and hygiene, how did this immensely important piece of hygiene just slip the minds of engineers??

I won't even get into the debate of the Squatting habit which is proven to be highly beneficial to health (especially to pregnant women).

It can be read in detail at the following link :

http://guruprasad.net/posts/why-indian-toilet-is-best-scientific-reason/

And the last but definitely not the least important reason for using water is that you don't have to risk getting your underwear dirty or smelly and keep checking for poop stains.

So,

Indians all over the world

The importance and the wide usage of software systems in the USA has brought a steady influx of many Indian software professionals, since the Y2K. Most of them are from the southern states of India, with highly difficult to pronounce middle and last names. So much so that their names don't fit into the ten-letter box provided in their immigration forms. Most of them are from the smaller towns of India, nonetheless are the brightest brains in their nation. The allure of getting huge pay packets in the West brings them across the seven seas to try their sweat and luck in a foreign nation. Most of them tag their families along i.e. the ones who can, the rest just leave them back home and support them financially till the expiration of their visas or till their family is mentally prepared to live in an English speaking populace.

By 'mentally preparing' themselves I mean adapting themselves to the culture of a different world. Many Indians have a strong perception that speaking in English implies that the person is well educated (read in an English medium school). The possibility of speaking in a vernacular tongue is a curse as you are taunted and not perceived as being a COOL kid. I am writing this today because though we are well educated we are still blind to being open to our own fellow beings, in many ways and we still try to conform ourselves and everyone else to a BOX that we put everyone in. And we do not need a white skinned person to actually discriminate against us... YES!! .... Because

WE ARE CAPABLE ENOUGH TO BE RACIST TO OTHER FELLOW INDIANS!!

Lets see how :

1. We advertise and wholeheartedly endorse fairness creams in hope for a better complexion.
   

It is human tendency to yearn for something that we do not possess and have a strong desire to obtain it. That is what the whole fairness circus is about. We long and yearn to be so fair that milk will get a complex after seeing us. Fair girls are considered to be beautiful. So if you fail to have any kind of good qualifications or are not marriage material your only saving grace is FAIR SKIN.. If you have fair skin then it doesn't matter whether you are short or tall, fat or thin. If you are in India and you are of a marriageable age you're safe if you have glowing white skin. And if not then may you be saved by your Gods.Or by your brains if you have any and if that is considered something!

Many Indian mothers fret the day they have to look out for a groom for their dusky (yet beautiful) daughter, because she does not conform with the Indian standards of Bridal Beauty. The mother tries out every possible beauty treatment on her girl with the everlasting hope of being touched by the magic wand of Fairness creams which guarantee you with milky white complexion as shown on television. These advertisements however fail to point out the use of lights, make up and most importantly Photoshop to brighten the faces of their models who are actually dusky dames. Or they conveniently choose models with fair complexions. However any amount of cosmetic use isn't going to make up your personality which is the very basis of your compatibility with your spouse. No amount of glowing skin will help hold the relation. Had becoming a better person been the focus of fixing up marriages there would be lesser cases of domestic abuse and sexual harassment.

Because when all that beauty is taken away with age what can't be taken away is PERSONALITY

2. Marriages are made in heaven ; but they are FIXED in India

India is among a very few countries in the world,(rather the only) where arranged marriages still happen. The process of an arranged marriage is as follows :

1. The parents decide that the boy/girl is of marriageable age i.e. he has a job,is in his late 20s, well settled, aging and sick parents with no one to look after them, need a cook or a caretaker (for a boy) and she is in her early 20s, may or may not have a job, knows to cook and clean, looks matured enough(for a girl).
   
2. The parents look out for a matchmaker i.e. a person who maybe a relative with great networking skills, the local temple priest, an agent(yes!! there are people who thrive on match making), marriage bureau,wedding receptions(they can be the best place to spot any bachelors/spinsters),internet sites (rarely used but growing fast in popularity).
3. Credentials are exchanged. Aspects such as salary, height, weight, skin colour(has to be fair), hair colour, colour of the eyes, figure (preferably slim),virginity, marital status, age(girl has to be younger to the boy) are looked up and matched.
   
4. A meeting is arranged by the matchmaker between the parents of both the prospective bride and the groom. It is mostly held at the girl's residence where the girl has to be decked up so that the boy can see her in all her revelry and decide if he wants to marry her. If you do not wish to have this program at your residence then either lunch or dinner can be fixed up at a restaurant where the same procedure can be carried out. The girl is asked many questions based on her housekeeping abilities whereas the boy has to reveal his fat pay package. The boy and the girl are given a few minutes to spend with each other within which they have to decide if they want to spend their lives with the other. It is a DO OR DIE situation for them (literally!!)
   
5. If they have made their choice then telephone numbers are exchanged and an engagement ceremony is conducted as an agreement to the wedding where all the details of the BIG FAT WEDDING are decided.
6. If step 6 does not happen then the steps from step 2 are repeated till desired results are achieved.
   

BUT NO ONE QUESTIONS THE COMPATIBILITY OF THE COUPLE

That is because where marriages are involved we prefer color, money and status above the happiness of the couple involved.The bride sadly gets to choose just her trousseau and jewellery . And  if you happen to be in love that too with a person who does not belong to your caste, creed or religion then Almighty Lord save you!

In India marriages do not just happen between two souls but between two families

3. If you are a blue collared worker, then you are not HUMAN.

Dignity of labour is a term which has eluded Indians from a very long time. Take this incident for example. There is this friend of mine who I met while completing my Master's degree. She has been juggling many thoughts about her career for a very long time. After knowing her for a considerable period I have come to the conclusion that the income earned in the job is miniscule in proportion to the position she was willing to occupy. After completing MBA, it is very difficult in a recession driven India to find a job which actually pays you according to the course you have taken. It eventually boils down to how well you know people in the industry and how many reliable contacts you have which will lead to a job opportunity. In spite of having all of these, sometimes its still difficult to find a decent job. And that's all right. Because we have to work our way to the top.

The recession of 2008 stripped many Indians of their high paying jobs and robbed them of their income. Many were forced to take up jobs much lesser paying than their actual qualifications. Some of them were ready to do it for a steady income, some simply weren't able to bring themselves to do it.

A huge chunk of the Indian population come to Mumbai - the Hollywood equivalent of India,everyday,in search of high paying glamorous jobs in the glitterati of Bollywood. Very few of them have real talent and the rest want to just take up acting for the high life that it promises. I know of a young man who spent his youth waiting for some film director to lap him up in his new venture , than working hiss ass off for such a role.

When I completed my MBA, I couldn't find a job. The only way that my parish priest could offer to help me was a temporary post in his school. Knowing that that was my only source of income and the last resort to prevent me from going crazy sitting at home unemployed caused me to take up that job. And I am glad I did! I did realize that it was part of some DIVINE plan to help me out after I finished helping out the children who were left to fend for themselves after the teacher went on an unannounced long vacation. Fate works in strange ways.

However , we Indians fail to understand that

Wish we empathized with the maid who works at our place and looked at her just as the way we looked at ourselves.....

Taking defeat in your stride!

Day : 2nd April, 2011
Place : Wankehede stadium, Mumbai
This was the day the Indian cricket team lifted the World Cup in the ODI format after a long hiatus of more than twenty years. The last time India achieved this mean feat was in the year 1983. The team was led by Mr. Kapil Dev.
Day : 6th April, 2014
Place : Shere Bangla National Stadium, Dhaka
Sri Lanka beat India to lift the world cup in the T20 format.
The last time the two teams met each other in the final was the last time when India lifted the cup.
There has been no dramatic change in the Indian team save for the loss of a few prominent faces, namely Tendulkar and Sreesanth. The latter who had a rather shameful exit as opposed to the former who held a glorious career marked by a tearful farewell.
Inspite of this there has been a slew of jokes going on around over the internet, social networks and messaging portals. Its rather very sad to see the changing face of the fans, who at one point were ecstatic when the team won the world cup. The other moment Yuvraj's house in Chandigarh was being stoned.
Why is it that the greatest game to be followed in India,stoops to such low levels of sportsmanship?
Why don't people who call themselves ardent cricket lovers admire the Sri Lankan side for a great game of cricket?
Is it that difficult to appreciate another person for his excellence?
Isn't it what any sport teaches us? To be humble in victory and gracious in defeat?
The same Indian captain who led India to victory has been criticised for his choices almost killing his achievements over a number of years.
The disappointment of fans is understood but i fail to understand the anger towards one player, blaming him for the loss. Cricket is a team game where each member is responsible for the performance of the team; be it horrible or outstanding.
It is essential that we applaud for the team which wins and take the failure in stride.
Most importantly for the Lankans who made this match an important and memorable match for Sangakkara and Jayawardene befitting their farewell.
Kudos to the Lankan lions and Team India better luck next time!!