Friday, April 14, 2006

Indi-Mentals

Following are some observations about us Indians that might make some people angry. But truth is always bitter. For our country sake I hope that they change and are rectified.
We hear people around us complaining about one thing or other always. For example in recent past reservation and Shewag and Kaif playing form are the hot complains.
Bangalore's traffic, weather, pollution and other long list of complains we can hear from one mouth or the other.
This has been problem with us Indians that we tend to use our tongues more than our limbs. Rarely you will find so many people having opinion about almost everything. We complain about politicians and we don’t go to vote. We complain about traffic but do we care enough to use public transport. We complain about the filth on the street but do we care enough not to throw plastic bags on to the street ourselves.
Another aspect of us is that we are inherently lazy. The best example of this is that we gained independence by not doing work for the Britisher’s.(I mean no disrespect for Non Cooperation Movement and Gandhiji).
There was the anecdote where there was a boulder lying on street and many people walking on the street tumble over it. They all complain about it out loud and swore at it, and move on, but nobody has enough common sense that they remove it themselves and get rid of it. That’s us Lazy Indians.
If we are not directly affected we tend to neglect the suffering of others. If it is somebody else’s problem why the hell one should get involved. But if we are in the same fix we expect other people to help us.
We don’t care for the landmarks we have. I have personally seen people scribbling on places like Agra fort where people from different countries come to see the architecture. Another time in Dalhousie Shimla (Switzerland of India) i have seen foreign tourists pocketing their trash
(wrapper and plastic bottles) while Indian tourists just casually throwing their trash on the grasslands. I can tell you it was a pathetic sight.
Another sad aspect of our society the way women are treated in our society. In a country where we worship Durga as the female form of the supreme power we had, and in some places we still have, practices like female infanticide, dowry and sati. This to me seems the crux of hypocorism.
We never seem to prepare for the future .We always react to a situation ,instead of planning for it,. Like now the situation of Bangalore is out of control then we are thinking about having metro instead of planning it before.(in places like London they have the Tube since a century now).
Writting all these things makes me sad. I sincerely hope that our country comes out these mentalities and sees the bigger picture and work together for a bright future.

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