This is my first "official blog" and being my new year resolution, i thought i ll hit the nail on the head by starting on something that's close to my heart ..
DISCLAIMER :
Iam a proud Indian and this article although might contradict that in lots of places, i wish to say that iam so proud to be an Indian but then the anxiety for my country has prompted me to write this more than anything else (apart from some steamy debates and discussions with loads of people..)
I have been in Singapore for the last 1.5 years and the country amazes me in every sense of it.Be it the roads, the luxury, the cars, the bikes, the system for everything they have that seem to be so well integrated and well in position, the multitude of cultures and most importantly the attitude of the people.The Singaporeans go into the books as one of the most perfection loving people that i have ever come across.Their attitude is something is what one should look into.(although i agree that they aren't the best people to hang out with if given a choice).I totally agree with people with opinions like 1."Singapore is as small as my d*ck and its so easy to get anything done. 2.Singapore is this so called democracy that's "Hitler" like and to put it in better terms (quoted from one of my buddies) "If Lee Kuan urinates, the country urinates" .. An answer to people who think so is based on one simple thing that i have mentioned already ..However small the place is, the attitude is what that ultimately counts. The people are so much in love with their country that they think 100 times before they do anything that they think might hurt the cause of his / her nation.May be one could say that these kind of values are inculcated either coz they see their parents follow the same or may because of National Service (for the men at least) ..But then lo!Its working isn't it?
So now India is something that amazes me with its sheer attitude of people,politics,everyday news and the list is sadly endless..This is something that's sad as one can observe that this is being said in a negative vein but nevertheless its all true..Red tap ism, bureaucracy is something that's part of all countries but then is corruption?Is poverty?Is illiteracy?Is rape,murder of children to this ghastly extent ever heard?Then as its said "welcome to India!"..
Welcome to India means u have invited urself to some trouble or the other..Lets consider this situation ..An Australian couple come to Goa for Christmas and then go down to Bombay for New year ,to gateway of India to find themselves being surrounded by horrible people looking at a chance to grab the women and molest her?Can u imagine how bad the state of mind will be for one foreigner when this happens to his wife on the New Year eve when he doesn't know the language, the people and the culture.That's a rude rude shock right?A tourist bus in Agra being attacked and several INDIANS injured as the people hurled stones at the bus thinking the bus had pple from the West and the icing on the cake goes something like this - A police man to the reporter says" they protested against Saddam's killings and we had no option as this didn't involve us directly " .. Have u heard of such comments?Shocking isn't it?Then i say again "Welcome to India".
So where are we now?In a middle of a huge quicksand?Where is India going towards?India - second largest growing GDP , great economic growth rate, boasts of having a huge pool of NRI's willing to spend crores for the sake of the nation and its economy.We have reliance, infosys,Wipro, Tata's,Bajaj and so on ..but then what?How does this affect the normal guy on the roads who is waiting to get an opportunity to either create trouble or get his hands on something that he might relish on - may be kids?may be lives?are we housing terrorism in those young innocent minds on the roads having nothing to do?Are we doing anything at all to manage those burning issues that has come to shed so much bad light on this great country?
Iam pained when i write this but then this is the harsh reality ..What is being done is so very slow that this might just not be enough..There might be new airports, new cyberabads,new electronic cities, new metros but then how about the basics for starters?Why is the attitude of people so bad?Are we so bad after all?Any girl who is reading this knows how much of ogling and stare happens when she walks on the road, or takes the bike or the car?Is there anything fundamentally wrong in our heads?Do we consider women as mere things to satisfy us?This is indeed shameful but then whats the solution?How will the India of 2020 (so to speak) be a country that looks up to women, looks more clean, free from pollution ,have great societies, have well educated people and more so looks more class with people and their polished minds?
May be iam just expecting too much for iam talking about India isn't it?The country is cursed and so be its destiny!!
6 comments:
hi
nice start. i guess u r being harsh and pessimistic. well if u r admiring singapore's multitude of culture jus coz we hav a few international students here, then how abt 26 diff cultures? dont u tink tats wat makes our country so complex, interesting, and tough to manage. i read somewhere.. "if sumting is true in india, then the contrary is also almost always true"... have hope in out motherland. u cant judge her or lose faith in her!!
nope Anuja! I don think it's the "few international students here" that Mahesh is refering to. It's more than that. It's about the rather significant C.M.I.O populatoin that he is refering to. More broadly speaking, this could be interpreted as a system, just as Mages puts it. The system is very good.
However, what needs in-depth analysis is the area pertaining to factors for the perfection in the system. And unlike India, Singapore has such a fiercely top-down approach in it's policies. And by that I mean most things are political here. We've all seen it. And we'll see it till we're here ad afterwards. But do you see anything similar in India? Is the law as strict there as it is here? Are the people forced to think in certain ways in India? Are there not just one too many political parties back home that account for most of the misery?
Judging by politics, it's hard to say which one is better. Both have their good and their bad. Bad in Singapore's context being that the top-down approach is probably stifling creativity in it's people!!
I'd still agree with Mages here. India seems to time and again remind me that there might just be another thing called destiny. A movie like Guru just probably also just furthers that! It's scray! But it's true! And the worst part is, nothing can be done to solve it over night. Coz our population you know is a few thousand times that of Singapore's. Probably more.
All boils down to attitude, I reckon. Who knows, one day Indians might change that 'destiny' belief. Until such time, lets try and gradute! :D
Hi,
I found your argument very one-sided ... However, most of the things about India that seem to bother you can be attributed to a variety of factors ... Primarily the Education levels of people back home, our culture and rich heritage, Our great history as a country, and also the pride most sub-continent people have (Trust me, Its much harder for an Indian to apologize sincerely than it is for a Caucasian. It all comes down to pride) ... There is of course, a strong , but intangible relation and link between those factors ... It cannot be very easily explained,. But, the one thing that did irk me a little is, "Any girl who is reading this knows how much of ogling and stare happens when she walks on the road, or takes the bike or the car" ... I wonder when we Indians will grow over this notion that its a SIN to stare at women ... The way some of us speak about it, u would think the offender would have to be castrated in punishment... Well, trust me, that "staring and ogling" that you described happens everywhere, not just in our place ... In the West, it is considered nothing more than the "appraisal" of a woman, whether character-wise or sexually, depends ... If the woman takes offence, she is a bitchy type..Simple. We still live in a conservative society and some people have a problem with it. To hell with them.
There are two categories of women who are stared at: 1. those who seek attention .. and get it, either for the way they dress or their manners and actions...2. Those who want to dress fashionably.. Well, do so, by all means, but then dont complain when guys look at you. Cos its natural to look at something attractive, and it happens by instinct. (Take it as a compliment, dont moan about everything being against you, Women!!)
Of course, I am not saying Rape etc should be condoned .. Hell, No, thats an entirely different matter...
All I am saying is people will be the way they want to be, will do nice things, listen to nice things, and "stare" at nice things too ... or nice women if it must be stated explicitly. In the West and elsewhere, people are broad-minded enough and accept it as something natural, (Blame god for creating guys this way, not the guys themselves) ... Then Why dont we? Or do we want to go the Gulf way, where its very easy for a guy to have his prick chopped off, for being a little naughty and silly?
Hi... i know been long since i commented on this post which has been written again... ages ago... but better late than never... u could say we indians are damn lazy... lol
but jokes apart... i agree with anuja... never lose hope in our nation... we show a lot of patriotism too like the singaporeans... in fact after the tsunami, the bhuj earthquake all our countrymen came together as a nation.. to help out those who were affected by it... u may say this is just an act of humanity... but all the same it was the attitude that counts... we definitely showed patriotism...
during world cup cricket??? i remmeber during 2003 world cup finals... i went mad and i painted my face with the tricolour, and during the ind pak match didnt study for the ss exam i think... in these little things we show a lotta respect for our country... we have a lotta sense of belonging...
what we lack is probably a sense of responsibility towards the nation... i would actually count us intl students as a form of escapists because if we were really that concerned... we could have started a movement... a serious one... not saying sitting in singapore we cant... wont be that effective... something to think about.. yeah ?
Hi.. I know it has been too long a time, but i still wish to leave my comments just in case you read it sometime.
I agree with you when you say that the attitude of the indian citizens towards the nation is wrong. For most of the indians the meaning of the word "Nation" is still a mystery. Most people believe that the "Nation" is either the land that we occupy or the our identity and status in the eyes of others. But sadly they fail to realise that the meaning is much simpler and "Nation" just means the society we live in.
The present day indian faces a lot of challenges in his life. Economic challenges, social challenges, etc etc.. But how does he meet them? Does he fight with the sword of honesty and ahimsa? Does he care how much pain he inflicts to others in taking the path of voilence and corruption? No.He does not. Because the for him the "society" is not a part of the nation.
But i disagree with you when you say India is doomed. If you consider yourself a part of this "Nation", this society, then it is still not doomed. Most of them who live india do not believe that they can form a proper system and make it work. It is that fear that has lead to the failure of the system. But there will be a change, and our duty is to contribute to the change. We can do so by being honest to our society, helping the society in whatever way we can and by setting an example for others. This is how you reach out to people and bring them into the right path. Accepting that they are doomed will neither help nor will it help them. You might think that this is not going to make any difference. But atleast you can rest peacefully thinking that you have made a difference and hope more and more people start thinking like you do. I believe strongly in this. I will never do anything against the law when i go back to India. And i am going to wait for countrymen to change.
Put babe, anusaa and sriram machan. I know we are all passionate Indians - wont do a thing against the country and i am sure this feeling has been fuelled on seeing the bright society of Singapore - the trump card of the state nation is its citizens. The citizens are the most valued attributes here..
Ofcourse India is going places with the IT and Economic status going far and wide. But then we are looking at basics right? The attitude of the person. A person who says that India is the best, will find people among him saying tht littering in the streets is cool and makes him feel better and more shockingly that he is in INDIA.
When you have such people, what can the goverment do. its like a vicious cycle where the govt does step 1 and we do step -1. We blame the goverment to be corrupt and not being bothered about the country's progress.. So where does this boil down to?Its the attitude.. A classic personal example..
At Madras Airport, while i was coming back to Sing after my vacations this december, there was a "working population" group in the same flight. The flight was at 11.20 in the morning and there was a Sri Lankan flight at 10.50. Its 9 AM in the morning and i wait for my baggage check and boarding pass collection. The Indian airports take ages to process one person and not surprisingly there was just one counter for 2 flights (the Singapore bound one and the SL one).
The time is 9.20 now and the hero of the scene enters. He comes and asks the person behind me whether this was the check in counter for the SL airways. The guy gets a postive response and then "aramse" walks straight past all of us - meets a couple of his friends and joins them with a huge package bound to his destination. People were taken by surprise. He didnt look educated but then it was stupid. [how we do at sci canteen when we have a class at 1PM and we come to the canteen at 12.50 and more so when the class is at engg].
I got terribly pissed (my dad termed it youthfullness when i told him the incident) and went and asked him to join the line at the back. His reply was "Whats your problem.I have a flight at 10.40 to SL"(it was in tamil ofcourse). I said "That doesnt bother me.. I have been waiting for a long time and we are not fools here". The reply got a little vulgour and it was as expected coz he was not a person who you would associate to being decent to a third person.
And during this shit, there were people arnd me tuned in to their pods, messaging on phone frantically as if their breath was running out and ofcourse the public who u felt were curious on what was happening but never gave a shit.
The security guy tried his best to tell that person that he was wrong and ofcourse that guy was way ahead in his verbal battle that you cannot speak to him more than a couple of mins. So i control my blood flow and stand in the line. When i get my chance to get my baggage checked in, I asked the female in the counter, "Madam, why did u let him in .. .." and her reply was "my job is only to screen bags and not involve in fights".. This was my third shock of the day. The female looked educated and i didnt expect this from her.
I was buring with anger and wanted to get my message straight. So i go to the customs clearance and stand right next to him and when the line got to move, i went a notch ahead. He was like "Dude, come back (the tamil version sucked. so the censor!)I said i have a flight at 10.40 and need to rush as it was alredy 10.20. He said he doesnt care. Then i said i dont give a damn and the argument turned into a brawl to an extent. Then i managed to get my nose in front of him and got the custom clearance.
So when i get ready to board the flight,our hero Mr.X was right there and i was surprised for 2 reasons. One was that he lied to all of us that he was going to Sl and needed to check in early and second was that the friends that he claimed to check in with were some third persons who took the SL bound flight.
I was so damn angry that i felt like knocking the breath out of him but then when he turned and looked at me, i gave him a sarcastic smile. This was the start of the drama. When we reach Singapore, the guy stands right infront of me for the clearance and there he stands like a sweet innocent man who doesnt know what it is to break rules. He has his hands folded when he speaks to the person who was asking him some details. Mind you the same man, who bullied the security guard in India does this in Singapore.
I wonder what sin our country has done to have people of such attitude. Be it the commoner, the check in lady or even the public who thought a drama/fight scene was to happen and wanted to watch it from away angle instead of getting involved. Indians are not to be beat right?Very true!!
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