That title could mean anything...during my college days in Calcutta, they meant "prem,politics & porashona" (strictly in that order: prem meaning 'love' & 'porashona' meaning studies in Bengali!). During my PhD days in California,I write them to mean "patriotism, politics, parties"(not sure about the order that is and/or the order that should be). Confused?
Circa July4,2008: Hundreds and thousands of people gather in different big cities of the United States to enjoy fireworks,parades, baseball games and celebrate a very special day: the American Independence Day. In the capital city this is further accompanied by live concerts and playing the national anthem in front of the US Congress building where people gather in scores waving the American flag. From Detroit to New York to Florida to San Francisco-it's celebrations time everywhere.And one will be surprised by the number of people who actually come out of their homes, not only to use the national holiday as a day for visiting museums, relatives and amusement parks but also to take part in these festivities, as proud Americans wearing t-shirts/caps that have the emblem of the national flag. And as they gather in one place, you can overhear snippets of conversations about what is going on in Iraq, what should be the next health policy legislation, what should we do about climate change so on so forth-bunch of aware,opinionated,vocal and passionate Americans. It's clear as you hear them whether a person talking is a Democrat or a Republican. Seldom will you come across someone who does not have a view and who is 'independent'. This is fascinating to me!
It suddenly dawns upon me, what is the American Independence all about?Who is it that they got their independence from? Not surprisingly the British who had were the most prominent colonizers in the 1700s. But how many of us living in the US right now really know the details of how America won its independence, how severe were the wars, who were the main freedom fighters so to say,how long did the wars continue etc, without immediately doing a wiki search on it? I bet very few or I could be wrong-does not matter. What matters is they are proud of their country irrespective of what had happened in the past.
Circa Aug15, any year: It's the Indian Independence Day. The PM delivers a speech in the capital city of Delhi, hoists the flag and it's telecast all over the country. How many Indians living in India on that day actually listen to his speech? Maybe the media should do a survey but I would not quote a very optimistic number. I remember 15 Aug newspapers would always be in big volumes coz with every passing year, there's always more to write about the past. They write long provocative articles about the great freedom fighters, the 200 years of oppression, the current 'shining' India and the glorious future. But other than these, what exactly happens in the other big cities of the country? How do we celebrate our Independence Day? Well, it's a national holiday and so we Indians get a day off and hence we......enjoy in our own ways!!
(Surprisingly, a wiki search on July 4 vs Aug 15 yields striking results in terms of the length of things to write about-- in utter contrast to the duration of time for which these 2 countries were under the British colonial rule!!!)
However, if we Indians, were so oppressed for as long as two centuries and if our forefathers gave their lives to win the so coveted freedom and when tons of movies have been made and songs have been written to commemorate this huge event..then why is it that a country of millions of people does not celebrate this most special day with pomp and grandeur, not just in Delhi but EVERYWHERE? If we can have fashion weeks like Paris and Milan and rock concerts inviting Michael Jackson and Bryan Adams and if we can use the images of Mahatma Gandhi in every possible way to glorify our dear country, then why on earth can't we spend money to enjoy this special day with extravagant festivities with flags and the national anthem and blatantly express our pride?
Coz we just don't care enough!
Despite having one of the most brutal and violent freedom struggles in the entire world, we have taken this freedom so much for granted that it does not matter to us anymore.
It may sound silly when I say why we don't celebrate-intellectuals with a lot more 'depth' will say just by celebrating you can't show the love for your country! Well my question to them is, forget what I said but how exactly are we at all showing our love for the country, not just on Aug 15 but on any given day of any given year?
By renaming our major cities in native languages so that they don't have 'foreign' influence in their names? By killing people in the name of 'demand for regional autonomy' as in the North-East? By demolishing mosques to build temples and temples to build mosques? By burning the priests of a church? By instigating riots/strikes at the drop of a hat whenever some demand of some party somewhere is not fulfilled? And I could go on....
When I see hundreds of Americans standing together singing the national anthem to remember their own freedom struggle I think, why have I not ever seen hundreds of Indians do the same thing except for school functions or a few national concerts and shows where it's more a ritual rather than a matter of pride?
Maybe on that particular day, celebrating our independence, standing altogether in one place does count. Maybe holding the flag in our hands and once again listening to Nehru's famous speech does help. To remind us forgetful Indians, what we were, what we are, how we have come this far, what was the extent of sacrifice involved, what we owe to our country and what we should do to move forward---together as one whole....as one entity...Indians.
Maybe there's reason why America today is still world's most powerful nation-despite being perhaps the most disliked country elsewhere. They care less about what others think about them and more about what they think about themselves. They love their country, are proud of it and do not feel ashamed to show that pride to the rest of the world. They criticize bad leaders and glorify the good ones. On their independence day I have seen and felt the expression of patriotism-in every possible way; have seldom seen that back home. They have politics and they have parties-they have problems too and tons of it; but they belong to a nation which values patriotism. Why don't we ever hear a certain state of the US, say Louisiana or Michigan or whichever, in today's new millennium, protest for autonomy? They have diversities too-ethnic,religious and cultural and most importantly in skin color. Yet they coexist-as the most successful nation; as a nation that draws people from all over the world.
We have the largest democracy in the world and a multi party system.
Surprisingly, most young Indians today when asked can't say which party they belong to or which party they support!!! They are mostly 'independent' coz very few people have an idea what each of the zillions of parties we have, stands for! Hence, young, educated middle class Indians often refrain from voting coz we don't know who to vote for! We have opinions and views but after a point of time we don't express it coz we feel hopeless! So we all leave the country for the 'land of opportunity' and feel very patriotic for India from thousands of miles way. We have Indian cultural festivals in the US where we invite Indian celebrities and heck, we even listen to the PM's Independence Day speech on youtube.com !! We even harbor dreams of some day going back to India and do 'something' for the country. And my bet is, as NRIs we will perhaps do more coz from the distance, patriotism genuinely sprouts when you are amongst people from so many different nationalities. So I would at least hope for that.
Monday, September 8, 2008
Friday, September 5, 2008
dreamland...
Just finished listening to Randy Pausch's last lecture and am in a trance of my own.A professor at Carnegie Mellon University with pancreatic cancer and only a few months to live..gave one of the best lectures I have ever heard..about childhood dreams :-) (couldn't help that smile coz pretty much thruout the lecture I have been smiling only to realize how long it's really been since I stopped to notice that am smiling!) and as it always happens with me..this got me into a wondering and wandering mode....asking myself...what were my childhood dreams?
I wanted to be a teacher..as far back as I can remember..when I was only 6 years old..in a fancy dress competition of my school, I dressed up as my favorite teacher(Mrs. Karmakar-I never told her and wonder whether she would ever read this!) wearing false glasses(just the frame and with no glass) and proudly walking with others in the fancy parade.I didn't win but that sure did leave some impression somewhere in my mind when years later I voluntarily chose to be in the academics shunning the lure of the wall-street-type corporate world. And as I write this, I remember my childhood dream all over again..something I had so totally forgotten in the pursuit of more short term objectives and goals and in the mad rush of the last 20 years!!
Do we all have childhood dreams? I bet we do coz as kids we have so much more imagination and such pollution free, simple minds that ANYTHING seems possible. But how often do we really remember what those dreams were, what they meant to us then and how close we are now to fulfilling them, if at all?
And I also realized, even childhood dreams are so much a function of one's own surroundings which in turn get influenced by the whole cultural-social-national-familial gamut of attributes that at times when you sit with a bunch of girls from different countries and hence diverse backgrounds, you realize what a wide range of dreams there can be even amongst kids!
It's all so much a function of where we belong, what kind of set up we are used to and what values are being instilled in us. And it's so much fun to take a stock of things after so many years have passed! As I was growing up and watching more television and traveling more to different cities with my parents who loved traveling, I developed this enormous liking for fashion and 'good life' (of course when I understood what it even meant!) and a love for going to new places and meeting new people. Wherever we would go, I would end up talking to strangers and making friends with them and then after we came back home, would eat up my mom's head about how I so wanted to keep in touch with all my travel-friends! And the fashion and party thing really got me hooked on to it and with it brought a whole new dimension in my dreams..I not only wanted to become a model(and hence appear on the TV of course!) but also wanted to enjoy life--whatever that meant at a young age! and I also wanted to write..I would read these short stories in Bengali and immediately visualize myself writing as well and other people reading whatever I write! The very thought of it was such an adrenaline rush!
And when I look back..it feels good to realize that luckily I had dreams which are not very difficult to accomplish..nothing like being in a space ship or being a national sports player!!!
But my point here is...do we really follow our childhood dreams as we move on with our mundane lives crossing one hurdle after the other, earning one degree after the other and moving from one city to another? Or is it that somewhere in the hectic competitive maddening race to reach 'somewhere' almost on a daily basis, we forget what we actually loved doing when we were kids? How many of us are right now doing things or are close to doing things we wanted to do as kids? I sincerely hope the answer is most of us..coz if it's not, then there's high chance we are spending hours and days living a life we never wanted to but we end up sleeping at night saying it's all a function of destiny!
Well..maybe it is..but maybe sometime if we try we also have the power and the capacity to change our destinies if we really believe in something. Maybe the dreams we had as kids or even as we were growing up, are made of stuff we really feel passionately about and enjoy even thinking about them and maybe what we are doing now is so far removed from it-could be circumstantial pressures, could be so many different reasons but I am sure it's never too late and that it surely is worth giving those things a sincere shot coz after all we do have just one life! And yeah..we would always have demands of others to fulfill...parents,spouses,kids,relatives,friends,bosses yada yada yada..and there would be endless forces trying to pull us away from what we really want to do (coz they would seem impossible now or silly or even absurd to achieve) but maybe that's we love and at the end of the day..we have the right to do something for our own sake too and the heck we deserve it!
When was the last time we had a dream to do something or be someone and when was the last time we wanted to achieve it and went for it?
As I take stock of what my dreams were and where I stand today...I realize the even better part of it...the wonderful journey and the feeling that I am getting an inch closer to fulfilling some dream of mine and that is what counts to me as I go to bed and that is what I want to tell everyone who is reading this...to dream and feel happy about it and maybe even try to accomplish a part of it..and as I write this..I fondly remember a good friend of mine who only today told me to just stop for a while, slow down,take a break and drift away into my favorite dreamland...I did that and trust me friends, it's all so worth it:-)
I wanted to be a teacher..as far back as I can remember..when I was only 6 years old..in a fancy dress competition of my school, I dressed up as my favorite teacher(Mrs. Karmakar-I never told her and wonder whether she would ever read this!) wearing false glasses(just the frame and with no glass) and proudly walking with others in the fancy parade.I didn't win but that sure did leave some impression somewhere in my mind when years later I voluntarily chose to be in the academics shunning the lure of the wall-street-type corporate world. And as I write this, I remember my childhood dream all over again..something I had so totally forgotten in the pursuit of more short term objectives and goals and in the mad rush of the last 20 years!!
Do we all have childhood dreams? I bet we do coz as kids we have so much more imagination and such pollution free, simple minds that ANYTHING seems possible. But how often do we really remember what those dreams were, what they meant to us then and how close we are now to fulfilling them, if at all?
And I also realized, even childhood dreams are so much a function of one's own surroundings which in turn get influenced by the whole cultural-social-national-familial gamut of attributes that at times when you sit with a bunch of girls from different countries and hence diverse backgrounds, you realize what a wide range of dreams there can be even amongst kids!
It's all so much a function of where we belong, what kind of set up we are used to and what values are being instilled in us. And it's so much fun to take a stock of things after so many years have passed! As I was growing up and watching more television and traveling more to different cities with my parents who loved traveling, I developed this enormous liking for fashion and 'good life' (of course when I understood what it even meant!) and a love for going to new places and meeting new people. Wherever we would go, I would end up talking to strangers and making friends with them and then after we came back home, would eat up my mom's head about how I so wanted to keep in touch with all my travel-friends! And the fashion and party thing really got me hooked on to it and with it brought a whole new dimension in my dreams..I not only wanted to become a model(and hence appear on the TV of course!) but also wanted to enjoy life--whatever that meant at a young age! and I also wanted to write..I would read these short stories in Bengali and immediately visualize myself writing as well and other people reading whatever I write! The very thought of it was such an adrenaline rush!
And when I look back..it feels good to realize that luckily I had dreams which are not very difficult to accomplish..nothing like being in a space ship or being a national sports player!!!
But my point here is...do we really follow our childhood dreams as we move on with our mundane lives crossing one hurdle after the other, earning one degree after the other and moving from one city to another? Or is it that somewhere in the hectic competitive maddening race to reach 'somewhere' almost on a daily basis, we forget what we actually loved doing when we were kids? How many of us are right now doing things or are close to doing things we wanted to do as kids? I sincerely hope the answer is most of us..coz if it's not, then there's high chance we are spending hours and days living a life we never wanted to but we end up sleeping at night saying it's all a function of destiny!
Well..maybe it is..but maybe sometime if we try we also have the power and the capacity to change our destinies if we really believe in something. Maybe the dreams we had as kids or even as we were growing up, are made of stuff we really feel passionately about and enjoy even thinking about them and maybe what we are doing now is so far removed from it-could be circumstantial pressures, could be so many different reasons but I am sure it's never too late and that it surely is worth giving those things a sincere shot coz after all we do have just one life! And yeah..we would always have demands of others to fulfill...parents,spouses,kids,relatives,friends,bosses yada yada yada..and there would be endless forces trying to pull us away from what we really want to do (coz they would seem impossible now or silly or even absurd to achieve) but maybe that's we love and at the end of the day..we have the right to do something for our own sake too and the heck we deserve it!
When was the last time we had a dream to do something or be someone and when was the last time we wanted to achieve it and went for it?
As I take stock of what my dreams were and where I stand today...I realize the even better part of it...the wonderful journey and the feeling that I am getting an inch closer to fulfilling some dream of mine and that is what counts to me as I go to bed and that is what I want to tell everyone who is reading this...to dream and feel happy about it and maybe even try to accomplish a part of it..and as I write this..I fondly remember a good friend of mine who only today told me to just stop for a while, slow down,take a break and drift away into my favorite dreamland...I did that and trust me friends, it's all so worth it:-)
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