What’s with the Indians in a foreign country, the so called
NRIs? They don’t seem to miss a chance to undermine their native country. Do
they forget they belong there? OR take pride in all the misdoings of their
country? Is everyone like this or is this specific to the Indian gene?
This thought is provoked time and time again by many around
me, but I always manage to suppress it. But, today’s incident had to be put
down. We had a baby shower today for a colleague. He himself looks like a kid
by the way and he is having a baby girl next month. So we all gathered around
opened the gifts, ate cake and pizzas, and
it was then when an Indian out of nowhere uttered these words aloud to a fellow
Indian “Isn’t it nice that here even before the baby is born people do all this
stuff and in India nobody cares even after the baby is born”. There was a very
uncomfortable silence in the crowd as am sure nobody knew how to react or what
his point was. I stood in a corner
observing everyone’s reactions while trying hard to maintain my straight face
while my disappointed face was fighting its way out. Why disappointed, because
what he said wasn’t true. We in India had our versions of baby showers, the
only difference was we made it ritualistic and gave it another name that’s all.
Was he not aware of it? That’s not even a question because it’s impossible for
an Indian to not know that. Anyways, People moved on to talk about other
generic topics when the same person struck again. This time he said “In India
we don’t get to know the gender of the baby until it is born”. Okay this made a
little sense and this time people acknowledged him and joined in to say how
surprised they were and how important it is for them to know the gender. Very
little do they understand the consequences of revealing the child’s gender in
India and that there is more to it than to just worry about shopping for appropriate
stuffs for the baby before its birth.
Recently on CNN I had read this piece whose headline read “Women killed her mother-in-law to protect her unborn baby”. This wasn’t in India, this was in a country where they revealed the gender of the baby which made the mother-in-law very unhappy and she started forcing her daughter-in-law to have an abortion against her will. I guess it is not fair to assume that everyone read it or know about what happens in India when the gender of the baby is revealed before its birth. Well, there are many unwanted babies abortions happening all over the world, some Indians just tend to be disgustingly choosy when it comes to abortion. Anyways, let’s not go there.
Moving on, this wasn’t the first time I had heard such blatant
accusations against India. In my short stint outside India I had come across
many Indians who do not hesitate to blame India and its system for everything. The
wildest thing I have heard from an Indian living abroad is this “The ambulance
comes within minutes here; and in India people do not give a damn about a
person’s life.” I cannot presumably post a good argument against it, because to
some extent it may seem like that could be the fact. But, I always wonder how any
country would perform with a population as huge as India. Would they still have
everything in order and continue to perform as efficiently or breakdown and
join in the chaos. One can only wonder.
I do to some extent agree that things are not perfect in
India. But, is any country PERFECT perfect? I fail to understand the point of putting
our dirty laundry out for display in front of total strangers. Are they trying
too hard to blend in or am I trying too hard to not accept the reality?
