everything in India. It really is like asking me why I hate carrying
an illness. It slows me down, reduces my efficiency, causes pain and
irritation, and I might very well pass on the unpleasantry to others.
That's why it is hard to be happy with an illness. But there are
medicines for the physical condition.
What can we give India to stop it from being so sick? What is the
price we need to pay to turn it into a clean, efficient, working,
just, equitable, and prosperous country? The smallest price we can
pay is for each of us to turn our quaint little individual lives into
tiny uncompromising fortresses. We will not hear so many horns if we
stop using the horn ourselves. We won't see so much garbage on the
streets if we throw out less garbage, but then, we need to go further.
We need to get out of our selfish slumbers, and demand better. Let's
do our little duties as citizens - informing our representatives of
things that are out of whack. If our elected representatives and
people who work in the government do not receive complaints, then we
present a picture to them that all is well.
Clearly all is not well. Not when there is anxiety on a daily basis
even while trying to lead normal, peaceful lives. We shouldn't have
to be anxious about anything as mundane as sending our children to
school. But we are, for the challenges are enormous, starting with
getting into a good school, getting the kid to "perform", getting the
kid safely to and from school on a daily basis, and making sure s/he
is healthy and happy. It's a lot, when you have to deal with an
inadequate public school system, it's even more when you have decided
to avoid the public schooling system, when you have to deal with the
thousands of distractions like homework, when in your heart you know
the kid is better off playing for an hour, and it's a lot when the van
driver picking your kid up from school drives like a lunatic, because
he never went through a driving test, just like you!
We swim in this anxiety, and have got so used to it, we think it is
normal. We find it funny when people who have lived abroad complain
about the simplest things here, because we find it easier to subscribe
to the lower standards we have accepted for ourselves, rather than set
a higher one. It is easy being an animal, so why even try to be a
human being?
We find it easier to pay off a policeman rather than ask for a ticket
we could fight in court, because just a moment ago, we found it easier
to break a traffic law instead of taking the legal U turn half a
kilometre ahead. We just don't care, because we are Indians! Let's
apply the same logic to the times we DO get angry - when doctors
amputate the wrong organ, when women are raped in police custody, and
when we lose lives in terrorist attacks. Don't we ask the questions
then, like - where is the government? Well, the government is busy
trying to survive, thanks to the lower standards we have set for them!
Now, if we don't mind bribing our surroundings to put up with our
indiscipline, we should be perfectly all right with our country
bribing us to stop complaining, right? So, what does it take for us
and our country to get along just fine? Simple! We put up with
anxiety, with a broken system, and keep swallowing the "India is
great" rhetoric whenever it is fed to us. When the system lets us
down, when we have an incident that cripples us for life, due to a
fault of the system we ourselves subscribed to, then let's think of
changing it, let's talk about it for a little while, and then remember
that we've already been bribed - we're allowed to set low standards
for ourselves, as long as we don't question! Hurray! What a fun
country this is!
Till the next disaster, let's celebrate the victories that make us
feel good, and forget about the failures that have come to define us.
Let's turn a blind eye to all that is wrong within us, and a deaf ear
to those who are making a hue and a cry about every indignation they
are putting up with as Indians. Let's do nothing to support them in
their causes, and let's think of them as freaks who are just being
fashionable when they take up a cause, and let's make fun of the few
of us who have the guts to actually invest themselves in expressing
their concern about our country and its affairs.
Let's just be INDIAN!
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