Making sense of India

Hi ,
There are many things which make a country unique, some for instance being the culture, climate, economic condition, language , religion , etc.. But as everybody has read in their Social Studies subject in their school days, India is known for 'Unity in Diversity', nobody knows what it is really, but everybody tells this, and they fight among each other for water, electricity , language, and of course minister berths :)

Sometime back a colleague from SouthAfrica was here in Bangalore,and the period of stay in India for a month, so company had provided a nice decent hotel. The hotel room obviously had a tv, so she started watching some movie in HBO, and she saw that movie had english subtitles, so she muted the audio the first day, and  assumed that the movie is dubbed in the local language Hindi, and after some time, she accidentally unmuted and realized that the movie was in english only, and next day morning she was asking us, why it was so ?!?
What do we reply for that ?!?!
So then I realized not everyone could make sense of India, nor can make sense of other countries, until we go there and stay there for quite a long period of time, oh for us its much more complicated, we cant make sense even in our neighboring state, leave northern part of India. I come from Tirunelveli, southern part of TamilNadu, which is quite near to Kanyakumari. I consider my place as beginning of India, while the people in north consider it as the end of Indian region. So perspectives change inside our country itself !!
To make sense of India, its a simple thing, unlike the most common perception that India is a difficult place to make sense, thats nonsense :)
Just switch on tv, you can make sense of India, and you can become a Nostradamus even predicting what will happen in India in the near future..
Around 7 PM, start with a news in NDTV, a typical news begins with Cricket match, either IPL , or International matches, often India and Srilanka series, and local trophies, women cricket and it goes on..
And then all cricketers current, past, future have a discussion about the day's play, to make sure that nothing happened that day in the ground and off the ground, is left. They discuss about the upcoming matches, upcoming series etc, and whenever they decide its time for dinner, they move away..And the news slowly fades away with Hockey players complaining about lack of money or payment to them , as well as poor grounds for it , and it takes months and years to remind people that Hockey is our national game. And then some news on tennis , if Sania wins some trophy, or if Saina gets into final of some tournament which nobody bothers to watch. Atleast NDTV bothers to have other sports in their news, while others cleanly ignore, they can even change the program name to Cricket 24*7*365.

Now if we see 8PM news session, then we see that headline will be Pakistan ties up with India , the news anchor will be bored to say that, unless Pakistan does some mischief , as expected it does some illegal stuffs, and news anchor as well as the people get a topic to speak continuously.. It will be followed by some political party doing a bandh , hunger strike, or yatra.. They strike for hike in fuel prices, but the state in which they rule will have the highest fuel price, news reporters wont report that, they go and ask the party head, your bandh was successful , how do u feel, or your bandh was failure, what next , etc the question list goes on..

Now its 830, the news will be about the court proceedings of the scam which will never terminate, and it will be in news for say 30 days, and then nobody bothers to even notice what happened next in the case. Then some guy from South releases a song Why this kolaveri, and whole country speaks of it, and even international audience too. Then everybody starts admitting that southern part of India is actually talented, and they start praising the hero, who did the song, and as expected if you see the youtube links of the songs, you will see lots of comments complaining about the song too.

After all these, its 9PM, then its time for India's talent hunt. All channels have their own programs to find out who is the best in say singing, acting, quizzing, directing,comedy,dancing etc etc, nobody bothers to know who is the best in politics, who is the best person to vote for, who is the best person who can make India corrupt free. And all these will have celebrities as judges, bollywood stars for North Indian channels, and in the south regional stars will be the judges, nobody thinks whether the judge has even done dancing or acting properly in his/her whole life time. And of course,some made up drama, in a elimination round, some persons over reacting, the drama goes on till even beating crying in public.

Aye ! Speaking of tv programs , how can we forget the ads , sometimes I get confused even , whether ads are between the programs or program is actually between the ads. Most of the ads you see will be some cine star or cricket star endorsing brands ranging from biscuits, pens, facial creams,shampoos, body sprays, cars , bikes, beer , alcoholic beverages too. And some ads are literally funny, I even wonder who on this world thinks of this kinda ad, and who sanctions it , and who pays for it, those ads will dont even slightest connection to the brand they advertise to. The ads have a common theme, dark skinned people doing a comic appearance or menial jobs, while the fair people are the ones who are praised everywhere, and if it comes to women, women who multi task are the most admired people, be it either cooking and talking or something, and of course their prime motto in life is to make a guy smile at her. Those facial cream ads, how can one forget those, these ads are there for ages, from the time they started these ads , if we calculate the whole Indian population should have been fairer by 2000 itself, and the chance of seeing a dark skinned person in the roads would have the same probability as India regaining the football world cup thrice.

And I forgot about the soaps, while the movies are hero oriented, all the serials are heroine oriented, in fact there wont be a hero even in most of the serials, the husband 99 out of 100 serials will either be a drunkard, or a irresponsible guy, or a good for nothing sanyasi kinda guy, while on the contrast, the wife will be the king maker, doing all things, managing the family, which often extends to a couple of generations before hers and after hers too. And there will be this mother-in-law , daughter-in-law problem invariably in all, and dowry issues etc.

So that's it, we have made sense of India. As they say, we are like this only..

Speaking of these, it doesnt mean that am not a true Indian, am a true Indian, and essentially contribute to the extent I can in all the above mentioned, and things which cant be mentioned too.. And am proud being an Indian too..

Bye til nex,