India...Oversimplified...

India... This is the country I was born in and have lived all my life in yet I know so little about. This is the country I come back to every time I go abroad and this is the country, which gives me an identity in this global village. This is the country, as I was given to understand in geography classes, which is so huge and that it stretches from Himalayas to the north to the Indian Ocean in the South, from the desert in the West to the borders of Myammar on the East. Then I heard some controversies that the world map doesn't adequately reflect India in terms of its size. In between these 4 corners India encapsulates states, religions, castes, tribes and what have you. This is a country so huge that it will take me a lifetime to understand just one aspect of its complex fabric. What is this country about anyway? They say you got to start with the history of the nation to understand its present. But then some say that history only clouds our opinions and we need to look at just the present with an open mind. As I ask myself this question I feel my vision is restricted as I can't look beyond my immediate community, Delhi (nation's capital), north India and my ideas and beliefs of what this country is like. I have come to realise that I can't think of India in one thought. Because there is no one India and there is no way one thought can cover all of India. I see so many versions of India around me and as I try to write about it my mind struggles to grasp the complexities of writing about this country (or atleast my version of it) in a few paragraphs. So much I read and so much I hear about this country and that just ends up confusing me even more. I think anyone (including me) who writes about this country in a few paragraphs should be accused of oversimplification.I can't explain this country to myself. There are so many contradictions to this country that no one view can hold fort but then if my explanation is full of contradictions and riders then it all comes out as a net zero. The other day I was looking at the Lonely Planet for India and this is what it had to say on its cover - "More than 330 million Hindu deities, one billion people and a burgeoning software industry - India is as dynamic as it is enduring" I was like gosh! It must be so difficult to write a guidebook on India. Where do you start and where do you end? and which class of people do you target ?I think India suffers a lot because of oversimplification. When we Indians say- oh! India is like this and India is like that, these general statements we make, we are being unfair as much to the country as to our fellow countrymen. This oversimplification stems from the fact that we don’t understand our country and we are not ready to admit this fact. So to hide it all we say India is like this and like that. Which is sad because there is really so much more to this country than what our small horizons permit us to visualise. These generalisations lead to a lot of clichés when it comes to India and Indians. One of them is about the success of the Indian diaspora. They say that Indians are sosuccessful abroad but then can't do much in India. But then who are the people who get the opportunity to go abroad? It is the cream both in terms of intellectual and financial resources that anyways have a huge chance ofsucceeding in India. The fact that most of these people are such a nuisance when they come back to India is ofcourse not talked about at all. There is also I feel a lack of pride (confidence, trust) in the country. Lack of trust in indigenous solutions to surmount our challenges. I mean an indigenous solution is not even considered while looking at various possible alternatives. This lack of pride also manifests itself in so many other forms. I feel we devote very little time and energy to understand our roots. I am not sure why this happens. There is good and there is bad and while we should criticise the bad we should also appreciate the good and use it to tackle the bad. I wrote the above over 3 days as and when I got time. I look back at it now and think what kind of bull do I write sometimes. This sounds like a speech that would do a politician proud. This is the speech that I shall make to the nation tonite at the stroke of the midnight hour. I shall assume my elevated position on my balcony, look to the moon and pretend that it’s the flashlight of a camera and proceed to exercise my vocal cords. I just hope the dogs don’t howl to wake up the neighbours before I finish my speech. They can shout and scream after the speech is over. They always shout and scream. This time I’ll just pretend that its applause.