There is a reason why I usually do not discuss weighty issues here,I have no solution to offer and I do not like to see myself drawing attention writing on issues I have only heard of or read about.But,that does not mean I do not have troubling questions lingering on in my head.My last journey back home was a time for heavy contemplation.Thankfully,I was among people whose actions did not bother me all that much and I was left undisturbed in the comfort of my reticence.If you travel by the Indian Railways,you might warm up to the actuality that you ,my friend,are a citizen of a country called India.That is,if you are not still in school,chorusing the national anthem daily or are a regular fan cheering for the Indian cricket team.As the train effortlessly crawls like a snake across the country lands,trudging on from one state to another in total disrespect for borders that really do not exist,it feels more like a drive through the sanctuary of humanity.The bustle of the slums,the clamour of small temples,the quiet of endless tracts of farmland,the smoke billowing out of the occasional chimney and me,the spectator, trying passionately to work up any remote,long-lost sense of bonding that I might have with the changing world outside my window. I rediscover,India and me,its an old story:
Being born into a family that is not even remotely military or political,my introduction to the ethos of nationalism was mostly through textbooks.I was told that a certain bald ,bespectacled man was the father of our nation and the fight for freedom of our country was something to be remembered with awe and pride.It was a little difficult ,I tell you ,to believe that the sleepy nonchalance of my colony had to be
earned with sweat and blood.Nevertheless,the mere sight of the national flag made oodles of patriotism appear from nowhere and swim in my little heart as if they owned the place.The earliest memory I have of representing India in some small ,sweet way was when I narrated the story of the Taj Mahal to a Russian friend who was a neighbour with a show of sentiment so rare that he must have mistaken me for some distant relative of Shah Jahan himself.But the true weight of embodying a country full of conflicting shades was felt when a friendly Australian tourist teased me asking if all Indians were effeminate,dreamy poets like yours truly and other Bengalis he had met,I swallowed my discomfort and managed to reply with a chuckle that it was unfortunate that he had not met a Sardar yet. Thinking of the futility of trying to bundle together such an amazing myriad of cultures with the strands of a shared nationhood,I was led to wonder whether India really wasn't a continent forced to behave like a country ,if the Punjabis are not as different from the Bengalis as the Spanish are from the Germans.
Also,from the very beginning,I was always bewildered at the way nationhood was practised around me.How people making a living out of partisan politics were foremost in wearing their nationality on their sleeves,At one point I was close to concluding that National days like the Republic Day and the Independence Day were grand designs ,annual checks to ensure India never lost itself totally to infighting.Another curious case which baffled me was how this self-proclaimed secular state had all its military equipment named after Hindu mythological figures. Perhaps,a nation possessing the most contrasting of realities should be pardoned such eccentricities.
Often,I opened up the atlas and felt humbled at how Vizag,my adopted hometown,barely clung to the knees of the nation and judging by how far it was from Delhi,I surmised that anything that happened at the capital must surely die down to mere bits and pieces of news till it reached us.Thus,I barely felt the force of politics and national affairs in my life (Unlike my friends from the metros who would surely have missed school on days of some bloody curfew or the other)and I reaffirmed my belief that the stories in newspapers served no more than as fodder for adult gossip.With the rise of a sense of intellect,I too brandished my bookish knowledge of current affairs to earn brownie points in debates and discussions.By late adolescence,I had mastered the art of carping eloquent on corruption,poverty ,red-tapism,communalism and other such popular Indian problems.
In addition to this,a funnier thing was happening,through an array of shallow magazines,I was being fed on the magnificence of the great American dream and very soon,I set my eyes on becoming the poster boy NRI entrepreneur,a vision of myself that I have given up,only recently.A glimpse of what I see as the last resurgence of such timorously formed ideas can be had at my
post here.Besides having a good laugh,I hope you will enjoy the innocence of my youthful brashness.I have been lucky all along to have lived off on the benefits of being Indian.Not everyone shares my fortune.Certainly,not the people killed in the recent terrorist attacks,they paid the price for being Indians with their lives.
When I was two, my parents decided to migrate to the South and make it their new home.After all,they were Indians and had secured in patrimony the right to reside in any part of a sprawling landmass.Studying and playing with my friends from AP,I grew to like their culture ,relish their cuisine and love their women,all this as Bengali reduced itself to a language used for verbal communication at home.At school,my favourite and most beloved teacher was Telugu,I don't think I could have exploited any more the bond of Indianness.Father's job at the Steel plant made sure life saw no dearth on the material side,the love of mother at home and of teacher's at school left me carefree enough to build the reputation of naughtiness that I am so very fond of and permitted me the extravagance of limiting my affiliation to my family and my school.Even today,I am not completely unmindful of the privileges of studying at the Indian Institute of Technology,luxuriating in the blind pursuit of knowledge,all on taxpayer's money.
The feeling I have for this country is not as much a case of patriotism as it is of solidarity and empathy that comes with twenty years of acquaintance with any place.India ,in my eyes, has grown from the country about which I once read in my textbooks,from the nation whose struggle for independence I parroted in exams to a larger-than-life entity which has embraced me and allowed me the arrogance to look down upon its weaknesses,the freedom to have grandiose dreams and the unfettered opportunities to chase them.
I am a young man,you see.I have only begun to ruminate and have opinions.I have to stand up to the endless barrage of new complexities and the only way I can do it is by taking and switching sides,a continuous revision of viewpoints.I do not wrap myself in the tricolour but I am surely not running away from the truth of the country where I was born.I have had my brief flirtations with anarchy and willingly played soundboard to a close friend's parochial anti-India rants but at the end of the day,it is more than a passing observation for me when I see how life has an uncanny way about coming back full circle because,in some ways,I realize,I have come to love this place alongwith its bamboozling contradictions,its amusing paradoxes.
