The green past

A step back in time for me last week. Ah! how I had longed to go to my beautiful Chickmagalur. Things haven't changed a lot, maybe just the way I look at them. It striked me for the first time what I had been missing all these

Indya and freedom

Today seems to be the day to contemplate on what truly is patriotism?. After thinking about it hard enough, I can reach to only one conclusion "I can't say exactly".Patriotism to me seems to be a very strange word.

I have grown up all these years to belive, that I am a proud Indian,a true patriot. I now realize that I should have stopped once in a while and asked myself "What am I patriotic about?", "What is this India that I am proud of?". It trulybaffles me now to think that a boundary, a thin line of demarkation can seperate two people into believing in completely different set of ideologies. Surely I am not proud of this piece of land they call India.

So may be it's not the geopgraphy, but the people, people of India, my fellow country men that I am truly proud of. Hmm..let me see. What differentiates other people form my country men? We get angry, sad, happy and at times crazy just like others do. We follow relegion, sometimes fanatically, enjoy art may be of varying tastes, food ...anything..same there too. May be we get angry a little less than others..that's why we are still taking whatever is thrown at us by the politicians..which is hardly anything to be proud of, but this will be a entirely different topic. Coming back to the original issue.. why is it then, that I am proud of my country men?

And then it hit me, it's not what we do, but how we do it, that makes me feel that I belong here. It is the Indian culture that I am truly proud of. Yes that may be the answer I am looking for. But I have seen just too many things here to make a fan of our way of life. Sure we have a lot of things that cannot be praised enough, but we have some problems, some huge problems that just cannot be overlooked, and definetely cannot be prided upon.

So maybe I am not 100% proud of my culture, I may just be used to it. So what I truly feel, after all the emotion and the sentiments drain away if we are left with pure reasoning, we are not proud Indians, we are just Indians, living in this country, used to this place, the people and the culture.

But emotions are a good thing , and I am still a proud Indian. May be not so much as to vouch for my country for everything, but to feel happy once in a while and be thankful to everything good that this place has given, and may be it's the culture here that teaches me, to be truly happy just concentrate on the good things :).