Be proud to be an Indian...

....who owns his mistakes and wants to mend them. Indians are doing well in many different
spheres. However, there are definitely a few shortcomings and I would be glad if we could
overcome these and try going "that extra mile", as they call it. Sadly, even though it is
true, many would not even be ready to accept it :(. Of course, not all Indians do all that I
am going to write now. But those who do, should try not to get offended and instead,
understand my point and try to change their ways to make this world a better place to live in.

What tops my list is lack of basic courtesy and respect for another individual. Be it a lift,
bus, airports or any queue for that matter, we just want to push our way through and be the
first to enter. If not push, just try and sneak in somehow. If not that, we just ask a
'friend' standing in the queue to buy our stuff. This behavior is totally disgusting and I
really wish in spite of large crowds, we do not show this mad rush to somehow grab our thing
and not bother even if the rest go to hell.

On the same lines is the meager display of politeness. Given a situation where we know that
the other person is wrong, our first action is not to try and understand the other's point of
view. Invariably, we try to offend him, bully him, show him down by yelling at him. For
example, while I do agree that it is disgusting for one person to take a call on speaker phone
from his desk disturbing others, I certainly feel that there is a polite way of asking him to
pick up the receiver or book a meeting room. But what we normally tend to do is just stand up
and shout at him saying, "Hey, is that the way you take a call? What are meeting rooms for?".
And as you can imagine, he does not budge. The better way could have been to make him realize
his folly politely. Saying, "Hey, I am sorry if I am disturbing you. I was just wondering if
there's anything wrong with your headset. If so, can I help you? If not, would you mind
picking up the receiver." He would definitely oblige.

Another thing I wish to see tranformed in our society is all this hype and hoopla about
religion, caste, creed etc. Reservations are a pain. Not to mention, the age-old meaningless
traditions. I wish they all transform to take a more meaningful and logical form. A bride is
supposed to 'fast' on the day of her wedding right from the morning. What fun can she derive
on the most important day of her life. The list of such 'superstitions' is endless. Of course,
everything has been morphed to suit oneself. But there are many who are left with no choice.

Coming to creativity or inventions, I definitely feel that for the quantity we have, we
display really poor quality. It includes me too. We are such a huge population, but real
inventions seldom happen here. We are mere enhancers or implementers or even worse, just users of technology and science discovered by someone else. We can attribute a number of reasons to this like lack of infrastructure, lack of proper guidance, skills etc. But I don't buy any.
Think of creativity. There is no dearth of mediums by which we can display creativity. Still,
even today, we copy films, ideas for TV shows from other countries..:(. Its not that we are
doing NOTHING at all. But what we are doing is way too less when we look at the number of
people we have.

Then there is the much talked about Sports. We have this habit of appreciating and putting
people on pedestals for the smallest of their accomplishments. Fancy this - Ishant Sharma is
reportedly one of the greatest bowlers. I feel like laughing. In Australia, they are still
thinking if McGrath was indeed one of the greatest bowlers and a muchhhhhhhh junior Ishant has already been declared greatest in India. Its the same with Sania Mirza. The word 'great' is
used loosely in sports. Very similarly, teams are trashed after one single bad performance
also. If the Indian football team doesn't qualify for the world-cup, they are treated as if
they are the biggest traitors of the nation. These are major deterrents for sportsmen to do
well.

What should I say about our media. Lesser said the better. They anyway say everything. They seem to be the know-alls. We no longer have channels that report news. Or maybe, the word news has been redefined. Our 'news' channels have better stories than our soaps. God save us all in this regard. Everybody knows what 'great help' their live coverage was to our NSG commandos during the Mumbai attacks. And all channels are always the first to report whatever junk news. So what!!

Same is the case with law and order. Courts are a joke. Policemen are thieves. Lawyers are liars. Politicians are money-minting machines. Of course, similar is the case with other countries too. Magically, the country is till running. Defies logic.

One more thing I wish to see as a change in us Indians is the way we behave when we go to
other countries. We should remember that we go there not for the benefit of that country, but
only for our own benefit. We should not try to behave as if we are in our own country. For
example, it was insane of that family to go and immerse Ganesha idols in Thames River in UK
and argue with policemen when they prohibited them from doing so. We must shake off some
practices and try adapting ourselves to their culture and respect their laws and ways of
living. Even small things like giving your baby an easy-to-pronounce name makes life easier
for everyone ;)

One last thing is the apathy we show towards things that do not benefit us monetarily or
otherwise. For example, we never show any responsibilty towards environment. At work, we have separate bins for wet and dry waste. But people hardly care and mix both. Isn't it the least
we could do to help recycling? We do not consciously try to switch off lights/fans when not
using them. We do not try to save fuel at signals and blah blah. I agree that this problem is
certainly not specific to Indians but to everybody. Still, if we as Indians try making a
difference, the difference made would be immense.

I think I have cribbed enough about our wrong-doings. I thought there is no point writing
about what we do well. We should continue to do that correctly and also try and mend our ways
wherever possible. A little consideration goes a long way in making us better people, if not
anything else...