God has been grateful to me. I am born in a good family, I have good friends but most importantly I am born as an Indian. I am not saying because of Patriotic influx of feeling on the eve of Independence Day. I am saying this because Indians are by default spoilt for the choices. Although in most case you make choose something out the choices available, we don’t , we just embrace all the choices. I have the choice to wear a sari, salwar suit, skirt, trousers and shirt, business suit , I wear all of them without feeling out of place in any of them. I can speak hindi and comfortably switch to English when I like, I haven’t chosen any of them, I have open heartedly embraced both of them. For sweets we just don’t have 51 varieties of ice creams and cakes, we have 51 varieties of sweets/mithais whose ingredients are totally different from one another and not just the flavor. In relations we just don’t have uncles and aunts we have chha, chachi, tau, tai mausi, mausa, bua,fufa.I am spoilt because I can go to any of my neighbors ( we don’t just have one neighbor we have neighbors) without a prior appointment. We just don't have the festival season during the year end, we have it through out the year. I savour equally a sawai made at my muslim friend's place, cake at a Christian friend’s place, mithai at my place, halwa at a sikh friend’s place on our festivals(its not just theirs its ours). I am spoilt because of my nationality .
I am born in a country which enriched with multiple costumes , languages , literature , art , dress , manners. We are used to seeing variety , color in our everyday life. I ask to be born as an Indian in my next life and the lives after that.
As far as choices are concerned...
ReplyDeleteFrench have more than 400 varieties of cheese, and they can choose a new cheese every day of the year without repeating themselves.
China has a rich culture.
They have a society where everybody is known by the roots he has. They all live in communities, and people of the same community stay, behave and make choices like a family..
I sense strong underlying National pride in you.
Would you still be proud had you been a German instead of Indian? Would you rather hide your history or highlight it?
What exactly are you proud of? Of being born in India, something you had very little control on?
As an Indian, what do you say about the choices you DONT get to make?
That’s what I have said 51 varieties of ice creams with different flavor or 400 varieties of cheese with same ingredient, even if they don’t repeat cheese any day of the year don’t they get bored by eating cheese everyday. If am able to recognize those subtle differences (in cheese), I will rather be a professional cheese tester.
ReplyDeleteChoice and china does not go together. Their government makes the choices for them.
These are just instances which you can name x country and I can refute and put some counter argument. Number of religions/culture/dishes/languages of India outlasts the number of religions/culture/dishes/languages found in any other country. Let me quote a passage of Vivekanand which he presented at Parliament of Religion. Don’t read it from religion prospective but from Indian prospective. Replace Hinduism by Hindustanism.
“Three religions now stand in the world which have come down to us from time prehistoric--Hinduism, Zoroastrianism and Judaism. They have all received tremendous shocks and all of them prove by their survival their internal strength. But while Judaism failed to absorb Christianity and was driven out of its place of birth by its all-conquering daughter, and a handful of Parsees is all that remains to tell the tale of their grand religion, sect after sect arose in India and seemed to shake the religion of the Vedas to its very foundations, but like the waters of the seashore in a tremendous earthquake it receded only for a while, only to return in an all-absorbing flood, a thousand times more vigorous, and when the tumult of the rush was over, these sects were all sucked in, absorbed, and assimilated into the immense body of the mother faith”
I know I had no control of being born as an Indian. But now if God comes and asks me that name the country you want to be born in…. It would be India and just India , for the next birth and the births after that. Since I am spoilt by being an Indian. I am spoilt for choices.