My Mother is an Ugly Woman
My sense of shame in being an Indian in front of foreigners has somewhat changed over time.
When I was younger, I used to be very bothered whenever I saw people begging, pestering a visitor at the traffic intersection and of course, the sight of people defecating in full public view.
These sights do not put me to shame anymore.
I have come to terms with the underlying causes that make my countrymen beg, bother foreigners near touristic places or live in squalor next to heritage sites and five star hotels.
When people do not have a roof above their heads and everyday is a matter of survival for the majority, what use is my shame?
I am deeply aware that every civilization must progress on its own terms, in its own time. There are no short cuts to uplifting more than half of a country with 1.2 billion people into a developed state. I have done my own bit towards that cause, and I will continue to do what I can, but in my lifetime it is very unlikely that there will be no beggars on the street, or that people will stop relieving themselves in public view, or that I will see the vanishing of squalor that co-exists with the sometimes ugly opulence in our cities. So, these days, when I am with a visitor from overseas, I am not ashamed any longer with the sights, smells and sounds of India.
But last week, I held my head in shame–deep shame–and this happened in a small University town in Germany.
I had been invited there to speak at a student event. Along with my wife Susmita, I had arrived the day before, and we were touched by the affection and hospitality of the students and the faculty. During the dinner that night, we had told our student hosts Paul and Leo that if ever they came to India, they must stay at our home so that we could return some of their hospitality. Because our two daughters left home a long time back, we live in Bangalore all by ourselves, and love hosting young people from around the world.
That was the night before.
The next day, when the student event actually began, my talk was preceded by one from an Indian gentleman based in Germany; he runs the German operation of a family-owned Indian conglomerate that is a household name in India. The gentleman has been in Europe for a long time, and has evidently done well for himself.
He started his presentation titled “The Indian Mind”. It was a medley of Internet jokes customized for India, a bunch of PowerPoint slides that frequently spam all of us depicting the greatness of ancient India, and a bunch of cartoons that depicted the so-called “the Indian way”. There was also a short movie that contrasted Germans and Indians based on cultural generalization. Finally, he delivered his own take on what Indians are supposedly like.
The presentation opened with the macabre picture of a skull with a dollar sign stuffed inside it.
The narrative to match this dramatic, if disturbing, image went something like this:
An Indian went to see a banker in Manhattan. He wanted a $100 loan; he was willing to pay any amount of interest, and offered his Porsche as collateral. After taking the loan from the flummoxed banker, he went off to India on a month long vacation. When he came back, he promptly returned the $100 along with the interest of $20 and reclaimed his car. When the banker asked him to explain this puzzling behavior, our man proudly said, “Where else in Manhattan could I park my car for an entire month for all of $20?”
WOW!
The two hundred or so young German students laughed at the joke.
Then came slide after slide on the glory that once was India: Aryabhatta to Charaka, he depicted the story of zero to the fact once upon a time, India had invented chess. He told the audience how we had figured out gravity before Newton did, and the concept of inter-Galactic travel before anyone else.
The audience sat in awe.
Then he switched over to a film clip that sought to contrast the past with the present.
His film clip showed Indian legislators break chairs, throw footwear at each other, and not stopping there, break their microphones to hurl missiles at each other until blood flowed from the injured, and finally some law makers were seen taking cover under their tables.
The German students were now bewildered and I started to feel uncomfortable sitting in their midst. But then I told myself, maybe the truth must be told and this is important knowledge about India that the 200 future leaders must know. And why not? As I gulped down my discomfort, more Internet jokes followed.
One was about corruption and inefficiency.
A man supposedly went to Hell only to find that there were regional options available down there. There was this American Hell that offered a hundred lashes. Next to it, he found the German Hell that offered a choice between an electric chair and fifty lashes. The man moved on to check out the Indian Hell and finally settled for it. Why?
In the Indian Hell, there were power-cuts so the electric chair did not work and the person in charge of lashing sinners simply took his salary and never came to work!
The students laughed some. That was indeed funny!
Then he went on to tell the next Internet joke.
Americans had invited international bids to build a fence around the White House. An American and a German firm that submitted bids had taken careful measurements and then they had quoted $700 and $1200 respectively for the work. Then there was the Indian firm that took no measurements and simply quoted $2700. The bewildered decision-maker called in the Indian bidder and asked him to explain. “How can you quote such a high price when you have not even taken measurements?”, he asked. Our man replied with supreme confidence, “I do not need to take measurements. I will pay you a thousand and take a thousand and we will sub-contract the work to the lowest bidder.”
WOW!
Then our presenter showed a short film contrasting how Germans and Indians thought of the idea of forming a queue - the Germans fell into instant orderliness and formed a single file but Indians pushed around, and broke the line as soon as one was formed. Then he showed a German parking a car, and how an Indian does it, and a few other such things including how Indian bureaucracy and politics differ from that of the Germans.
Everyone in the audience was getting the message.
At this point, he returned from the movie to slides.
With dramatic flourish, he showed a picture of a bucket full of crabs.
“This picture was taken on an Indian beach while I was with a friend from Germany. He was curious to know why the crabs were not escaping the bucket. I said, ‘Let us call the fisherman and ask him’. The fisherman listened to the question and told us, ‘These are Indian crabs. When one tries to get out, the others simply pull him down’. ”
Oh well, never mind if you have heard a dozen variations of the same joke.
Now the attention of the students was beginning to wane a little bit. So, he came to the end of his presentation on India.
He had a slide that said Indians liked to receive (and, thankfully, also give) presents.
And then he went on to hold aloft his magnum opus, a slide that prophetically read:
“Indians do not mean what they say
and do not say what they mean”
It required a story to explain.
So, he narrated how a group of Germans were once called home for dinner by an Indian. The Germans being Germans took the invitation seriously and actually showed up only to find an unprepared host who opened the door in his pajamas. The message was clear. Do not take Indians at face value.
My mind turned to the dinnertime conversation the previous night, and I wondered what Paul and Leo were now thinking about our invitation to come stay with us when they visited Bangalore!
Finally, the man gloriously wound up, saying that despite all this, India was one of the fastest growing economies in which if anyone chose to put in his money, it was bound to fetch a great return.
The audience clapped and then everyone took a fifteen minute break.
¤
I headed to the toilet.
There was a long queue.
Suddenly a young German student in the queue, unaware that I was behind him, did a mock drill of breaking the line to form what he called an “Indian Queue”.
I was the only Indian there, and I had only my countryman to thank for the ignominy.
¤
I had to wait until that afternoon for my talk, and when done with that, we returned to our hotel.
The next day, one of the student organizers came over to drive us to Frankfurt in a rental car so that we could leave for the US from there.
While driving on the Autobahn, unfortunately, the car drove over some object and its two left wheels burst. We pulled over, and, after counting our blessings for what did not happen, called for help. After probably an hour, another student organizer reached us and we switched over to his car. The first student had to stay with the damaged car, waiting for a tow-truck to arrive.
Soon we were on our way.
The entire episode had shaken everybody, but thank God, no one was hurt. Nonetheless, many plans had gone haywire. We were all past our lunch time by the time the second car had arrived. So when we finally reached our hotel in Frankfurt, we invited our young friend to join us for lunch since he too had missed his, and was to now drive all the way back to his University town. When Susmita asked him to park his car and come into the hotel to have lunch with us, he responded spontaneously, and without any malice, “The German way or the Indian?”
We tried to laugh off the repartee, but deep inside I felt hurt where once upon a time, I used to feel shame.
Poor Susmita started convincing him that we really wanted him to have lunch before he drove back, and of course, he joined us, but I wonder how on earth we were to change the newfound knowledge on India that was now deeply imprinted in 199 other young minds because an Indian in a position of authority had so convincingly delivered the message that we do not mean what we say and don’t say what we mean.
¤
I can deal with my poor, uneducated, disheveled countrymen back home, begging at traffic intersections, troubling foreigners, living in squalor and defecating in public view, and behaving in a thousand other unacceptable ways.
But I have difficulty when the educated, the well-to-do, the ones who have everything going for them, mentally defecate, trying to impress the world at the cost of their own country.
After lunch, when the young man was finally on his way and Koblenz was behind us, I thought of the idea of motherland.
The word “Motherland” evoked the image of my mother.
In that moment I wondered if there is anyone in the whole world who thinks that his mother is not beautiful.
Worse, is there anyone who actually tells the world that his mother is an ugly woman?
Rightly said Subroto. Majority of our countrymen dont have many options any way. But it is upon us , who are though lesser in no. have choices to act and behave in a certain way. You can see “Indian queue” in all the canteens and cafeterias of any software companies in India. If people with professional qualification dont even bother to think if what they are doing is correct (no queue , no lane driving, no stoppage at red signal) then at the most we can be is armchair intellectuals nothing more.
Subroto, I served in the IAF. My wife and I quickly learnt to disregard proforma invitations - or, as your German friend put it, “Indian” invitations.
Sad, but “we are like that only”. I would be more charitable to the gentleman (?) concerned and believe that he was trying to “tell it like it is”. And not, as you not so delicately put it, mentally defecating:-)
This one reduced me to tears. Am too choked up really to say anything coherent.
Thanks and regards,
Geetha
Dear Mr. Bagchi,
I also felt on similar lines after reading the article.
We are a nation so insensitive to respect our own land and its citizens and its culture. The educated ones, the more sophisticated behave as if the rest don’t deserve to live in India. When one is in a departmental store or in a shopping mall, these people sigh and behave that they dont below to India. Sadly, as a nation we failed to identify ourselves with what we are.
Regards
Damoo
Dear Mr.Bagchi
You’ve hit the nail on the head with this one! Brilliantly conveyed your thoughts about how some people demean their our own country in an attempt to impress an audience.
This is an eye-opener for people who think it’s ‘cool’ to look down upon their own country. I really hope the German students read this post of yours and some damage can be undone.
(And indeed thank God, Mrs.Bagchi and you escaped unhurt in the accident.)
Regards
Sona
I have seen Russell Peters, a UK based comedian performing on TV. Even though the similar kind of jokes forms the core of his performance yet he never does what you mentioned here. He acts like a professional and people laugh at his jokes and then nobody remembers.
But, here I came to know about an Indian who in a position of authority had so convincingly delivered the WRONG message in an unprofessional way to gain some benefits.
In his own words, “Indians do not mean what they say and do not say what they mean” - so, the audience should ignore what he is saying because he may not mean it. But in German way, some of them took it very seriously.
Sir,
A mere porridge served by one’s mother is much tastier than a rich kheer served by their neighbour. Coming from a family where as a child I had everything that I needed but never everything my friends had, I know this statement is true. Thank you for sharing your experiences, for only then do we realise that there still exits an educated rich lot who can do anything to taste the kheer ! The feeling is more than just “shame”.
After reading this article, I had two emotions. One from the heart and other from the mind. Heart felt bad for what a son is speaking about his mother to other people. But mind said that this person is not truly an Indian, he is a global citizen as he is being raised away from motherland. He gave as is picture of India, glorifying the past as it was and disgracing the present as it is amidst the IT and development. He might have exaggerated a little more though.
He did that purely to let future businessmen, pursuing opportunities in India, know and understand the common Indian and what not to be surprised with.
Well, I am not surprised at all. Leave alone patriotism and pride, many of our country men take slandering Indians as their full time job and win accolades for it. “The White Tiger” by Aravind Adiga is one such horrible attempt. And abroad they make mockery of this by awarding such people great honour. I felt the same way you did when I read “The White Tiger” and watched “Slumdog millionaire”.
When and how are we going to move from being “cribbers” to “solution seekers”..
regards
Meenakshi
Sir, i agree with u 100% that those who have achived some thing in there life and become big they donot pay any respect to our system, he may NIR or indian living in india they just want there benefit and they got all things to run there way not respect the low of land and nither they trat the INdia as there mother.
Reminds me of a famous Indian saying “Satyam Shivam Sundaram”.
It is very much possible when you have no respect for your ‘mother’ i.e country. Let me tell a story.
One day my 7-year old daughter & myself was travelling with a widely-travelled close relative. He threw a piece of paper out of the car-window. My daughter protested and he told that the paper is bio-degradable and so it is not causing any harm to the environment. My daughter accepted the logic.
-”But what about the cleanliness? Will you do the same thing on a Singapore street?”
-”No way. But here no one is stopping me”- was his answer.
So is it only fear that you need? Don’t you love your motherland?
Dear Mr. Baghchi,
thanks for writing the article with such a splendid caption which i have heard from my mentor also in the same manner
he also speaks tellingly and with such a strong reactions who boasts of the country in which they work and earn more so belittle the motherland
r radhakrishnan
Sir, this is very common observation i had when i spent a few years living in SE asia..Indian expatriates take special interest in laughing off over the inadequacies of our country… very happily… not only infront of foreign nationals but also this kind of talk is very common in the parties of expatriate indians…
My experience is whenever i have tried to argue (after listening to such comments..) the usual comment from ppl is … “you should not get so emotional”
Dear Subroto,
Thank you for that wonderful post about how some people are trying to tarnish the image our motherland.
Positive awareness of one’s own country is a must and trying to a create a better tomorrow should be of utmost priority for every Indian.
Regards,
Vijay
Very nicely written !
I totally agree with what you have said in your blog. Once people get educated in India and go outof the country, they start hating the homeland and talk meanly about it. Even if they cannot do anything positive, at least they should refrain from talking negatively.
I belive that India is a great coun”tree” and its “leaves and flowers” are as beautiful as its glorious “roots”
By the way, I had an opportunity to meet MINDTREE people (Shiv et al) at a SAP seminar in Dubai yesterday. In fact I came to know about Mindtree through ” Go Kiss the World”. I am great fan of the book and I had read it in one sitting. I have also recommended it to several of my friends.
Shiv told me that you are coming to Dubai in February. I hope to meet you then.
Rakesh Edavalath
Beautifully written as always, sir!
Thought it is very hurting, thinking back - isn’t what he said finally all true? I know, I know but we do act like that, on the roads, in offices, in cinema halls, in private places, in public places…..
But I still love my motherland more than all others….and I have resolved not to be like the examples given….
But when I try and be nice on the road, the same brothers and sisters mock me!
Shameful indeed
Dear Sir,
I fully understand your feelings. I lived in Germany for three years for Masters Degree in Engineering, and I am currently living in India. I was humbled by their behavior. But instead feeling hurt when someone ridicules our behavior, we should accept the present status of affairs in our country, and try to change it through proper education. Because in my opinion, truth is the truth whether it comes to open or not. Currently our education does teach multiplication and divisions. Using this education people could get jobs and they could multiply their material wealth and divide people on various grounds (education, job profile, material possession). We coined the phrase “Man is a civilized animal” without bothering to get the approval of the fellow animals on this planet. Even if we agree to the above mentioned phrase, We are less of “civilized” and more of “animals” compared to the Germans or Americans etc. We need to revamp our education to teach who we are and how we should treat others in daily life. Our moral education should get rid of the image that whatever it teaches cannot be followed in real life. To achieve this, moral education should include more practical and real life lessons apart from teaching highly idealized Ramayana and Mahabharata. Because the past generations accepted Ramayana and Mahabharata without questioning. But thanks to evolution and the dramatically changed environment of today, current generations do require more logical explanations to accept whatever they are told.
Thanks & Regards,
Manivannan Elumalai
Hello Manivannan Elumalai,
I totally agree with your below statement-
‘But instead feeling hurt when someone ridicules our behavior, we should accept the present status of affairs in our country, and try to change it through proper education’
We need to learn from our mistake rather than defending it. Though ours is a very old civilization, our present generation’s so called educated and learned person’s forget to abide by the basic manners & behaviours. Irrespective of where we live we need to be a good citizen and project the best of our background & brought up as this is what creates the impression on our country & parents.
Regards
Prakruthi Mysore Gururaj
i have no words to express my gratitude to you for firstly opening my eyes to the truth and secondly, the fact that there are very few people who can see beyond the obviously visible to the human eye. i wish your words could be read by more people.
Sir,
Excellent blog….
This blogs speaks for many many situations that we encounter in our corporate lives also here….
I work for a back office in India, and from what i have noticed, Indians working (deputed) to the front offices across the globe, Propagate the worst images and most twisted ideas about india and indian way of working…..
This issue might look harmless, but if we take this picture into account across all MNC’s….it’s a pretty shameful issue.
The damage has been done….and thanks to the reach of these educated and the well-to-do types….much more is on it’s way….
Dear Subroto,
The only word that can best describe my state of mind - goosebumps!!
Am too numb to react.
Thank you for a thought provoking post.
That was an amazing story. Living here in US I understand how it must have felt being in that position. It is sad that Indian go ahead and say things which makes it difficult for other people to not only explain it to the foreigners but also completely misleads them about our nation.
Article touched my heart.How sad to know that it’s a true story
Although I have never travelled abroad, I have heard stories about how Indians behave when they are abroad, all abiding by the custom of that country and the same person when he/she returns doesnt think twice to wind doown the car window to spit on the road.
feeling naturally very ashamed while rading and experiencing the tragic conversion of an indian into a mentally defecate N.I.R.
how are we going to ovrecome this state of cultural and historical defection? how and when?
-arun
Hello sir,
I have experienced the same once. I was really upset and still feel the pain when one of my friends told a foreigner that most of the Indians are still in 1947. Though it may be true to some extent, he should be at least aware he is also one among them and in one way or other he is also responsible for that or have responsibility to help fellow Indians to come out of that darkness
-Pragathish
Nice article Gardener. Liked it. As I read it, thought it could be a fiction. Later felt, may be it is real. I have a few reservations though!
[Note - I am not expecting my comment to be published. This is only to pass on the message to you]
What is there to feel ashamed of? Aren’t u Sir showing another Indian mentality? The gentleman is the one who should melt with shame - if he has really wronged. This article also exposes a strong feeling of insecurity within us. If it was for an American or a British, probably they would have taken it as a good humor, laughed along with others and forgotten the entire fiasco.
Today IT TSARS like you employ educated young youth (who instead should be addressing the core issues of India, teaching and building roads) for an American MASTER, make them to genuflect before an American client. What of that? Tell me one thing - what bit have you done towards the cause apart from bringing in dollars from west to east, writing few articles, some books and blabbering endlessly? -:). How many people in the world have profited without you or ur galla having received your share?
It is very easy to invoke popular sentiment without actually working. As per the lessons learnt in your books, i too am on my way to become a fat corporate rat. But what i do feel seriously is we indians are hypocrites. We need strong reminders from time to time to jolt our inner being. And when such opportunities come, we need to learn and work instead of infecting others with the feeling of insecurity and fear.
Wherever it may be, within country or abroad, its our responsibility not to make our country ashamed by whatever we say or do. When someone do wrong in India a news could title “XYZ did this” but abroad it would be something like “An Indian did this”.
It reminds me of an old story from my school textbooks where because of the book tempering by a foreign student, a library put a board at the main gate of library saying “Anyone from (CountryName) are not allowed”.
Its really shameful that because of some irresponsible person those 200 students got a wrong impression of Indian.
Dear Subroto
That was a great story told by you in your inimitable style. Although whatever the other gentleman presented happens to be utter truth, the forum he chose to present it was inappropriate. It looked as if he was bent upon deriding his “mother”. What a pompous fool! I don’t think he will ever realize the harm he had brought about… sadly, there are many like him. These guys are the worst enemies - not poverty or barbaric customs.
However, cheers ………. RC
As other members have said, this article touched my heart. Even though, I renounced my Indian citizenship, no one can take out my Indian-ness. Having said that, I look at this incident in another angle. One is so ashamed to see the way the Mother India is in, because of so many corrupted sons who spoilt her image.
I look at India as a mother who needs help from her children to take care of her. She needs to be dressed-up nicely, fed nicely, keep her healthy. She needs sons, her citizens to do that. When the sons are not giving her bath, dressing-up her, not feeding her, not taking care of her, how can one show her beauty?
The sons and daughter, citizens, have to think, how to make her proud? It is not to say that what that German Indian did is right.
India, the mother, is so lovely. The sons do not value that.
Dear Sir,
All i wish and hope is that this emotional experience of yours as put here, be read by all those 199 other young minds and also by that one N.I.R.
Ed
An excellent Blog which shook me up as I read it.
If the presenter had provided some “Real” facts in a serious manner, it might have been taken as a presentation of reality. The fact that the presentation was done with jokes interspersed means that the presenter was wanting the audience to laugh with him at the picture of India that he was painting - whether “Real” or “Unreal”.
I tried to understand where my sense of shame was coming from as I read this blog -
- From someone thinking that their mother is ugly (This part I could have dismissed as realism so I don’t criticise this)
- Going and telling the world about it (Maybe again for a person who sees the reality, this part needs to be told, but only if the intent is to do something about it)
- Then laughing about it (This is unacceptable)
- And trying to make others laugh at it too. (Here it becomes unpardonable).
Yes, India has its own set of problems, and those have to acknowledged and be dealt with seriously - but the humour does not capture the essence of those problems, and just gives it an unsavoury flavour. To me, it all does not come as one package - and that is where my sense of shame comes from !!
Dear sir,
Excellent, well written. It is true that there are people when they are blessed with wealth or health or education they forget every thing including their motherland and parents. Those people never success. They may very happy in public views, but they are very unhappy in their daily life. They will return and they must return. here the lesson for us very clear . Jananee janma Bhoomishcha swargadapi gareeyasee. our mother land & our mother is greater and precious than heaven. JAI HIND
Mr Bagchi,
I am an old fan of your writing and visited your blog just today and found it worth. I don’t have much to say but wanted to share that no one will ofcourse say that his/her mother is ugly. But a fello who has left her mother far behid and long ago and have disconnected all relations with her can say any odd word. Because he has made all these by betrayal only. He has no ethics.
Regards
-Ravi
I was feeling very shame about that Indian Guy (I can’t call him like you called “Indian gentleman based in Germany”). I am also living in USA but I never talk like this with my colleagues. I guess we have a lot of people (mostly who settled / working in abroad) like that guy. They should change their mindset to tell about their mother(INDIA).
Sir, while we all feel bad inside, none of us (including myself) have the guts to change the system here. We are not responsible and accountable for our own actions. In such scenario it is ourselves to blame. Not that Iam justifying the well educated, well to-do NRI at Germany ridiculing the Indian ways……..as Gandhi said “Be the change”….
Rightly said sir. There are our countermen who are really proud expressing about our nation, unfortunately there are these type of countrymen as well. They just want to have an instant popularity among the audience. Similar to the movie Slum Dog Millionaire, it was just taken for global attention. I understand there are problems but it has to be talked inside the nation and not outside. A developed country can take such movies as they can stand up quickly but not a country like India. The image of the country goes to the bottom and to erase this from global peoples mind will take a long long time. So media guys please be careful on what you say about India to the outside world. All of us in IT who work internationally or in offshore projects are really the front ends for our nation so be alert what you talk to the foreign people (if the info from media reaches to million people, words of an individual person reaches to 100s of people).
Every one in this world have some issues in the family which he/she may not talk someone who is outside of the family. Same way the problems with in the country as to be discussed with in and not outside.
I salute you Sir for your nice article.
Thank you.
Right said Mr. Subroto. The so-called elite should stop their mental defecation. We do say some ceremonial words when we meet and leave people. Something like you should come to lunch sometime. That doesn’t count as an invite. Its just a cultural difference.
sir
you have an exceptional blog here. some of the articles, simply put, are quite fascinating. This one however touches an issue which is quite sensitive to me personally. While this person in the position of authority has chosen to publicly call his mother an ugly woman, i beg to disagree whether he has actually done so. To my mind he has called the children of that mother ugly. there has to be reason beyond the standard internet jokes for him to say so. I have been in a US graduate school for a number years and I am about to get my PhD. I have come across a bunch of people from different nationalities. I would agree that my number is far less than yours but I would like to believe, that my spectrum is fairly broad. In no other nationality, have I seen regional biases ingrained so deeply as the sons and the daughters of my mother. In a very small research oriented school such as mine, you have a bengali group, a chennai group, a punjabi group, a marathi gang and so forth and while i dont know how the governing dynamics are within a group, I know the intergroup dynamics or people who do not represent a significant geographical majority are treated shabbily at best. It is as if they are invisible. People from two different parts of a mother like say a right arm and a left arm may not talk to each other for weeks or months not unless a clapping is required. And of course backstabbing and back biting like the crabs in the bucket you refer to is galore. With every crop of arriving graduate students, I see the class senior to them eyeing them with envy, belittling them for they are the ones who come here to eat their piece of the ‘American’ pie. Contrast this with students of any nationality and you will see it is not our mother but its delinquent children who choose to abandon it are ugly
Sir,
I would say Kudos to you for taking such a daring step and publishing your article. I am 100% with you for this.
I am a sikh by religion and belive in what you have written above.
Regards,
Surinder.
hi subroto,
Go kiss the world ia s book that meade a diference to the way I want to look at life.
Extremely soory to say that the professional was not up to the mark that you have set for yourself
Dear Subroto,
I recently finished reading the book, “Go Kiss the World” and found it very inspiring. I have also read the ” High Performance Entrepreneur”.
Just a small suggestion, I could not locate your email id and hence responded through the comments section of your blog
regards
Anirban
I have been working in China for over 2 years now and often I see emails being circulated among the chinese colleagues, regarding the Indian civic conditions including some pictures of slums and potholed roads to the dirt and filt left on the sides of roads and kids picking up the recyclable plastics/metal cans. The average chinese thinks quite low of the Indian cities in comparison with the new chinese ones. And, since I have been around for quite some time, I also get to see some of such emails regarding India and everytime I get to see such email, it is often a muted requirement from my chinese colleagues to comment on it. I would not call it a mandatory requirement to comment but it turns out to be so. So I start with by saying that yes, these slums exists and it is very much a reality just like it exists in any other part of the world US, Europe, China. But those images also reminds me that I should be a professional at work and maintain high degree work ethics and values, so that my chinese colleagues relate to India through me and not the images of India that they see in their emails. In absence of an alternative approach, I hope this approach is reasonable. I would like to request Mr.Bagchi for his comments or guidance on it.
A profound blog. Let me add another trait of Indians!! Take the story of that Indian who parked his porche in Manhattan for $20: Well, the story is not Indian but an American Jewish. We do take stories of others and change it to Indian; I get so many email forwards of this nature.
Beautifully written !!
Reminds me of the time when I visited an Indian restaurent in Lawrence and was very surprised and ashamed to find the pictures of “poor indian people with shabby dirty clothes on a barren land” all over the place.
I don’t know why i didn’t ask the owner the reason for depicting this kind of a picture of India.
- Prabhjot
Sir, I resolve to do more +ve then -ve for India. How?
Lemme tell u a story of an Indian who was in a remote place in Japan. I’d read this story in my Moral Science book in school.
Long long ago, this Indian man was observing a partial fast on a particular day when he needed to travel by a bus. Before he boarded the bus, he searched through the nearby places for fruits to satiate his stomach.
(Most Indians do not observe a complete fast. They consume small amount of fruits or Tapioca Pearls delicacies called Sabudana khichdi or vada for the fast)
This Indian man could not find fruits anywhere. He returned to the bus and occupied a seat. It was still 15 more minutes for the bus to leave. Being frustrated, he murmured to himself, “How can they call Japan a developed nation, when I can’t even easily get fruits here?”
A Japanese fellow passenger heard him. He got down from the bus and in 10 minutes returned with a basket full of different fruits for the Indian. The Indian was surprised. He asked the Japanese person about the price of the fruits. The Japanese man replied, “Sir, the price of these fruits is that, when you return to your country, you should not ever mention to anyone that you did not easily find fruits at a remote place in Japan! That’s all.”
Simple explanation - English educated Indians. During the British era, they brain washed us en-masse, into making us believe that we are an inferior culture & race and certain other sections, who happily collaborated with them, as the European descendants meant to rule Indians. These collaborators in order to gain the Master’s acceptance had to belittle Indian culture & embrace the western culture. People still carry this tendency of elevating any western cultural idea at the expense of Indian culture. This behaviour can be found in all other former colonies too. The only difference between other colonies & Indians is that we still have our culture intact and the rest dont. I dont worry too much about these kind of brain washed sell outs. India has always produced geniuses like Swami Vivekananda, who have shown the true India to the rest of the world.
So true. It is the Indians who revel in putting their country down than the others. I find it incredibly frustrating when I hear people putting India down before others. “Oh its dodgy in India” “It’s very corrupt there” “We dont get this quality in India”. While somethings are true, one has to be mindful about how it is presented. And denigrating your own country is hardly the way to ingratiate yourself with foreigners.
Dear Mr Subrato Bagchi,
The way India is projected else and within is that of utter shame. Strikingly similar has been my experience with certain people of assumed social hierarchy and it’s unfortunate that what the world cannot see is, the diversity and color of India,her children and her legacy!!
Nice thought provocating headline… the best usage of words to slap on indian face who talks or thinks like that about India.
Sad but true…!
At a optimistic note ” We shall Overcome ”
Technology has empowered Indians and has given them a platform to create awareness and influence behavior, this blog itself is one the biggest example. Its Just a matter of time when this country will do away with the so called “Indian Way” of doing things, until then lets keep expressing ourselves and create awareness.