I: India

This one had to be a no-brainer considering Pickles and I are making this trip here at this time. And yet, it took me a while to actually come up with it!

So, Pickles and I are here in India, making our almost-annual trip and both of us are having a good time, not to mention the happiness of the people around. I'm making a note of the most important facets of this trip so far.

1) The most important is the amount of Love that Pickles and I have been at the receiving end of. I can see why it is so easy to get spoiled on this. From parents, sisters, cousins, friends and all, its something that keeps pulling me this way every single time.

2) The number of people Pickles has been meeting is probably more than he would meet in Singapore in a year. No, I'm not kidding! And yet, he remembers the names of every single person he's met so far. I'm hoping I can keep that memory instilled.

3)The food! I really dont know where to start on that one. On one end, I'm stuffing my face with all that mom's cooking just for me and on the other, the numerous restaurants that I want to relive and newer ones to try.

4) The weather, this time is a bitch. It is the same as in Singapore, hot! But at least its not humid, so I'm happy to deal with that.

5) The traffic, can it get any worse? Apparently, it can!

6) It feels like a vacation and yet it has been pretty tiring considering my day revolves around Pickles' routine. It is hard to fly solo!

I'm not looking forward to the end of this vacation and I guess no matter how many days I spend here, it will still never be enough!

Celebrations

This was taken last month at my sister's engagement. Yes, that's my excuse for the missing posts, the last few days ;)

The madness that is cricket!

Picture this: A country with a population of over 1.2 billion. It’s a working day but lots of office goers are suddenly on sick leave. There are not a lot of people on the street. Shopkeepers not interested to sell you stuff because they are busy doing something else. Crowds are thronging outside electronic stores and tension is in the air. All is quiet and suddenly you can hear collective roars of applause or sighs of dismay. What else can this be?

No prizes for guessing what triggered this post. It’s world cup time and whats more, there was an exciting India versus Pakistan semi final match that India won last night! I should have posted this last night but I was busy, you know doing what.

Cricket has always been special to me. It was the one thing my dad and I bonded over. I can’t say that about a lot of things but cricket was one passion we shared. I can remember how he would jump up and down when he saw India scoring that last run or taking that last wicket to win the match. And that grin on his face, it is something that I can associate only with cricket. I can think of few other things that made him respond like that.

So, my colleague and I were discussing the popularity of the world cups yesterday: cricket versus soccer. 

“So, every one in the Indian sub continent is watching this cricket match?” he asked.

“ Well no,” I said. “ I think every Indian, no matter wherever in the world he/she is, is at least following this cricket match”

Non-Indians at my workplace are amazed to see so much enthusiasm amongst us. Is it your National game, they ask? Errr no, that would be hockey. But I can’t name all the hockey players nor do I remember where they played last, which is sad, but true. No other game in India gets as much importance as cricket does. Though we do complain, we are all party to that.

But one thing cricket does, is bring out this deep sense of patriotism whenever India is playing. Or how would you explain smiling at random Indian strangers and sharing that look of pride, whenever someone is making conversation about last night’s match. Tomorrow we shall all be strangers again, but for today, we’ll celebrate together. India won last night’s match and that too against Pakistan. We are all united in one thing. We were cheering for India to win and we are so excited to be in the finals.

I can imagine the tension that would be back home in India. One of those times when I wish I was back home. Back home to be a part of that frenzy.

But wait, it’s here too. Watching a game in India amongst our own people is fun. But what I realized is, watching it with people of different nationalities is fun too. Especially when we’re doing well. Its fun to go to work in the morning and say, “We won, you lost. Tough luck, eh?” The Singaporeans have no clue what we’re talking about. Even though their team lost, the aussies are still are good sports. I say that because they are now supporting India. My British boss enjoys a good game of cricket too. Thank God, we had a tie with England. My boss and I were both happy. I know how important that match was to him. It was to me too. If we’d won, I would have had to stay out of his way for a week.

And what’s more. We’re in the finals. It doesn’t matter whether we win or not but I just hope we can give them a good fight. May the best team win. But, I sure do hope that team is ours.

Celebrating Independence Day in a foreign land

Found myself at the Indian High Commission on an early Sunday morning to celebrate the Independence Day. After getting out of school, August 15 meant little more than an annual holiday. Now being in a foreign land, I was compelled to be there at the Indian embassy to celebrate the day. May be I was compelled by a sense of duty to be there when the Tricolor was being unfurled. May be it was a need to justify to my country that I’m not a foreigner, to tell her that I still love you even though I am not with you right now. I don’t know what it was, but I am glad that I was there.

At the celebration, a bunch of school kids were performing to this song and then as is the way with things, they go wrong and all of a sudden, the music just stopped. The poor kids were in a fix, not knowing what to do. Then, something happened. There was this chorus from the audience, singing the song so melodiously and so in sync that it sounded like a practiced performance. The kids then continued to dance as the chorus sang on till they set the audio right.

Had a depressing discussion with a friend about what India doesn’t have and what we have that we should be really proud of. Of course, we argued on a few things but what we agreed upon without a doubt was Indian music and how music binds us all together, in one way or another. I think it’s in our blood.

In the evening, I went to this concert by Shreya Ghoshal. She’s a popular playback singer who made it big recently. She sang quite a few popular hindi numbers and then sang a Bengali song. Though probably 80% of the audience didn’t understand Bengali, they still enjoyed the music, applauded and encouraged her through the song. This can happen only in India, the acceptance to other languages and cultures. We enjoy music in any form, language no bar. Music does bind us all together.

And in the end, when she suddenly burst into the national anthem, the response of the audience was almost synchronized; every single person rose without a moment’s hesitation and sang along. I know it is what we are supposed to do but it was a feeling I cannot begin to describe. For a moment, it was as if we all knew each other. It was a sense of pride, a sense of belonging.

The Great Divide

It all started with a simple enough question, ‘Where are you from?’ This is a commonly asked question whenever we meet new people, considering that we are in a foreign country. My answer is a straight ‘India’. A recent incident and some more related incidents changed the way I look at my own countrymen.

I was out with a bunch of friends (all Indians) and somebody asked us the same question. The answer could have been a simple ‘India’ and that would have been that. Instead, that friend of mine chose to say, X, Y and Z are from south India and A, B, C and myself are from north India. I was stunned for a minute and wondered why he did that. It bothered me that even though we were from the same country, he still thought it was necessary to divide us like that, with a line between the north and the south. Why the division amongst our own people? It bothered me but I thought it wasn’t worth losing sleeping over and finally, I decided to let it go instead of confronting him about it.

But recently, I’ve noticed this weird thing amongst some of the so-called ‘north Indians’ I know, they actually think they are a better race and so should be clearly demarcated and separated from us south –Indians. What a load of crap! Really!! It was bad enough that they lived with the notion that south Indian means you are from Chennai and give you that condescending and ‘I am superior’ look. But to have that demarcation among friends, is really so shallow.

And off late, I’ve heard a lot of ‘you south-Indians this and us north-Indians that’ kind of thing that makes me cringe each time. I agree that India is a very huge country and the culture can differ a lot. But what really makes me feel bad is that, portraying such a division in thought in a foreign country just gives the world a wrong impression. Things are not much different than they were before independence. No wonder they used ‘Divide and Rule’ to conquer India. The fact that I’ve come across so many of similar-thinking people, it really makes me wonder, maybe, we are still divided. Maybe that’s why we haven’t really made great progress. Maybe until we think that we are all actually from one and the same country, we wont really go anywhere.