How important is "i"?

We have our many stratified Indias… Rich/Poor, Liberal/fundamentalist, Urban/Rural etc etc. Now, even though urban India rakes in a lot of moolah, controls instruments of public opinion and chooses to believe they control the country; our ‘netas’ prefer to sing their songs to rural India.


Though many like to believe that urban Indians are better off in terms of awareness and are relatively more ”intelligent”; the truth is we are more caught up in our everyday mundane-ness and we probably have less time to contemplate over matters of national interest. Maybe the average politician will find it just as easy to hoodwink you and me (us urban Indians), but they chose rural India because they are larger in number and are probably more prone to hero-worship than us :).


But we have our issues too; considering the present dearth of charisma that haunts our politicians, any level of charm or new found ‘finesse’ seems to blind us. Be it an American/British accent, Italian (or any other awe inspiring…) heritage or spanking intellectual demeanor, if it’s new; we fall for it.


So why do we get influenced this easy? Why do we let TV channels con us into believing that anyone sitting on their panel is an expert? Why do choose to vote for a candidate even though we know his party at the centre is not going anywhere, or is leading us to a place we’d rather not visit? Why do we blindly swallow opinions? Why do we choose not to see both sides of issues? Why are we so prone to extremism? Why do we choose to seek out only our differences and not notice that the world sees us in one colour, whether we like it or not?


Maybe it’s because we unite only in the face of an India/Pakistan match, or when we are at war. Or maybe it’s because we don’t care anymore. Those of us who remember life in the 80’s and 90’s remember that we did have a lot of social interaction. Real interaction, most of which changed with the economy; post liberalisation… We gave up our social interaction for other “more meaningful” things. We scorned the 9 to 5 lifestyle; we embraced work-holism and decided to devote our lives to better material standards.


Soon, wave after wave of the worlds many social illnesses swept over us. Life revolved around one most important thing; something our art, theatre and film began focusing on, the ‘Self’. Individuality, it became the new favourite thing, “What about me?” we quipped. Individuality was the narrow window through which we escaped the world around us, and while we rushed through the window, we crushed our souls. We ceased to care. And here lies the root of our problems…


I neither denounce individualism, nor do I embrace it.


So, let me ask you this; when you look around you and see where the nation is headed to, are you happy? Probably you don’t care much cause you’re not going to be here anyway; or you’ve given up all hope of change, or do you think it’s high time we did something?

No, don’t worry; I’m not here to profit from your sense of duty and neither do I wish to ‘organize’ or ‘establish’ any political or pseudo political body. All I’m doing is asking you, when the time comes, will you act? Do you believe we can do something to change everything that’s happening around us? Do you think change is imminent, failing which we will simply rot?

It’s high time we came out of our cocoons of comfortable and mind numbing individualism and started thinking more about the people around us. And of course, the trees and dogs and everything else too…