The Underage Optimist

Welcome to Republic India-Excellent

Yes, we did it! It took us 28 years but when we finally did win the Cup, we won it in massive style. We won at home, chasing the highest ever total of a World Cup final, recovered after the loss of two big batsmen, and with a stunning six as the victory shot. It is not possible, at the current moment, to praise the team enough. Their victory will give a lifetime of bragging rights and inspire an entire generation.

Equally stunning were the celebrations that followed right after the win. Even though it was close to midnight, within minutes, millions took to the streets. In something India has never witnessed before, there were impromptu victory processions, happy traffic jams, ecstatic people on the roads and a street party to which, literally, everyone was invited.

Why did we feel so great?  What makes this win so special and is there a bigger impact of the win that we can carry into our own lives. After all, as some may say, this is just a game. It has no tangible impact on ordinary Indians lives. Yet, there is no denying the mood-elevating effects of winning the biggest trophy of our biggest game. It is like a booster dose of self-esteem and hope administered to the entire nation.

To understand why this win is so big, it is important to understand the context in which this has come. This trophy comes at a time when the only remarkable news coming out of India was the scams, including a big one in sports. The only remarkable people were the corrupt politicians and their cronies. Many of these people roam free and are even celebrated by Indian society. This is India – connections, the clique of powerful people who scratch each others backs and give each other mutual access to their power to enhance it. This is the way people rise in India who you know is more important than what you know. How you trade your power for another persons power is the core skill that will make you rise in life.

In the middle of all this, our men in blue brought home the World Cup. It was not a competition of connections. It didn't matter who your father was, which minister was your best friend or how much money you had in the bank. Only one thing mattered excellence. For the only way to win this Cup was to play better than everyone else, in match after match. And we played better than anyone else.

Such global recognition is rare for India, but this win showed the way to another, more glorious, Indian path to success : India-excellent. The India-excellent way to success is still hazy, but the young generation is getting a whiff of it. And it smells a lot better than the stale odour of success generated by India-connections. In fact, young India loves the perfume of excellence. That is why the youth came out onto the streets at midnight for the players, but they wont for any politician. The success that comes from excellence feels good its like a fresh and juicy apple. The success from connections tastes like reconstituted fruit. From a distance they may look the same, but for the person achieving it, the feeling is worlds apart. You can't kiss a bribe the same way as Dhoni kissed the trophy. You can't celebrate an unfairly earned telecom license the way Team India did after the match.Your ill-gotten gains may win you some fake friends, but India-connections is just not the same flavour as India-excellent. India-excellent is cool, India-connections is not.

With this win, youngsters today can see two paths. As they grow up, they will have the choice of two roads. India-connections is a well-travelled road. It may be easier, but ultimately less rewarding. The India-excellent road that Dhoni and company have paved for us is the harder one. However, it is more meaningful and more rewarding.

The clash of these two India's will dominate the next two decades. Right now, India-connections has the upper hand. In the finals, tickets were essentially reserved for the India-connections. If you didnt have the right contacts, you couldn't get a ticket. This, ironically, for a contest that celebrates excellence. But i dare India-connections to contain India excellent. It won't be able to. Lurking beneath the tiny, creamy layer of India-connections is a talent pool so vast that it can transform our nation. One person's success can ignite the winning spark in millions of hearts. And Dhoni's men haven't just provided the spark, they have lit a fire. As a tribute to our team, let us resolve to win, and win using the path of India-excellent. After all, if we can be great at cricket, we can be great at anything. Let this trophy be the start of many Indian victories. Thank you, Team India, for making so many of us so happy.

"Anti-India"

Teacher arrested for 'anti-India' exam questions

Srinagar, India -- Police in the Indian administered Kashmir arrested a teacher of a local college on charges of writing an exam "with anti-India content."

"We have arrested Noor Mohammad Bhat under (the ) Unlawful Activities Act," Srinagar district police chief, Ashiq Bukhari said.

He said the teacher who teaches English in a college here had written an exam for graduate level examinees with questions attempting "to glorify the Kashmiri stone pelters and to project separatist views."

Bhat had included a question, "Are the stone pelters real heroes? Discuss."

The content of the exam dealt with pro-independence unrest which has lasted more than five months. During the conflict young boys have resorted to pelting Indian security forces with stones ever since the unrest erupted on June 11 after a 17-year old boy was killed in a police action here in Srinigar, the region's capital.
The unrest which has so far claimed 110 lives. It has also left hundreds wounded, some of them left disabled.
The unrest has also seen the arrest of hundreds of youth charged with the offence of stone pelting while scores have gone underground to escape arrest.

Another question on the exam required translation of an Urdu passage into English.

"Kashmir is burning yet again. The blood of the youth is being shed like water. Even young boys are not being spared and are beaten to death by police and security forces. Bullets are being pumped into the chests of young girls and women. Though people across Kashmir are shedding tears of blood, yet the rulers are in deep slumber. Even prayers have turned ineffective," it read.

A student said he was taken aback on seeing the exam and hesitated for some time to answer the questions. "I was perplexed, but later I thought it may be a plan of the government to probe the mind of the young students on the unrest," said Mushtaq Ahmad.

"This is a new dimension added to the unrest after months of shutdowns and curfews," said Abdul Quyoom, a local resident.

The mountainous Kashmir region is divided among Pakistan, China and India. In the past, India has poured thousands of security forces into its part of Kashmir to fight what India called a Pakistan-inspired insurgency. However, since the defeat of the insurgency, Indian forces have found themselves fighting mostly Muslim Kashmiris who say they have suffered oppression and want independence from Hindu-dominated India.

Wrong Pic On The Right Page

The book had the right picture. The people got the wrong picture. For there are certain ill-conceived and malformed ideas and notions people have of us, as Indians. Not that I blame them, but I hope that someday, someway, this notion changes.


This realization started with the few courses I took recently. Whenever there had to be pictures of a famine, a natural disaster, or some health related issues, the text book was filled with the “bhookhe-nange log” (hungry, poor people) back from Africa and India. There was a chapter on the malaria prevalence and there were these tiny, diseased kids in the text books. And then there was this chapter on wood smoke, indoor air pollution, and related health issues, and there was this picture of this sick, old lady bent with age fanning the chulha, with subsequent statistics on how many women and children died of wood smoke alone in India.



And then we were having a class discussion on air pollution, and my friends, who seemed to have visited India for a couple of months, pointed at me- So they could give you a better idea about the traffic snarls and the associated air pollution problems in India. And do also enlighten us on the sulfur haze and acid rain too.


I wish I had been asked to tell the class about out rich cultural heritage, how Indians have bagged the Nobel prizes and the beauty contests at the international level. Sigh.

The class looked at me with anticipation.

Uncomfortably, I did start with the acid rain, the oil refinery issue and how it was corroding the marble in the Taj Mahal. I just needed to get to Taj Mahal. And then my speech went like this-

And as you must all know, Taj Mahal is considered one of the seven wonders of the world that attracts thousands of tourists from all over the world. It is a symbol of love. If you happen to be in Agra, you should also visit the capital city Delhi, the Red Fort and the Qutub Minar. And the food in India is awesome. And India is famous for its handicrafts.

Quite a far cry from the air pollution issue I was supposed to discuss.

But then, when I think of Africa, all I can think of are diseased children, fleas, mosquitoes, plague, the tsetse fly, suffering and death, while I am sure Africa is one of the most beautiful places with pristine and virgin forests, birds, and animals. I certainly do not blame these people.


People here have an idea that everyone in India cooks in the chulhas in the sweltering heat, coughing blood and dying of lung cancer. No wonder I was asked if my mom too cooks in a similar chulha, crouched amongst a pile of wood and cow dung. What more, I was asked by a friend,  how the people in India keep the doors and the windows open, since the place must be swarming with bugs and reptiles. The poor thing imagines our homes to be in the midst of some Amazon forest perhaps where we wear clothes made of palm tree leaves and live in huts built of bamboo shoots.

Like some of us were explaining the occurrence of tuberculosis-

“Hundreds of years ago, the Caucasians lived with cows and goats and cattle and thus tuberculosis became widespread. The strain became more violent and started to develop in humans too. No wonder almost every Indian harbors TB germs in their lungs- latent or virulent”

Sheesh…

This doc was working in India for some time, and of all places he could choose, he chose Bihar. No wonder he thinks that every place in India is like Bihar. Arre bhaiya, I as an Indian will hesitate thrice to go and work in Bihar (the extra hesitation because that is perhaps not what I should feel about the place). Similarly another friend here wanted to do some work on arsenic in drinking water, and of all the places and months he could choose to travel in India, he chose to go to Kolkata in the month of June. The sweltering heat and the humidity is something even we as Indians cannot tolerate. When he came back, his face was as red and brinjal-violet as a monkey’s, nicely baked and caked. No wonder when another friend's niece wanted to make a world tour on her own, she was strongly discouraged to go to India for personal safety reasons.


“India? No way. Girls get raped and molested there.”

Yes they do, I agree. But not all girls get molested, right? And this happens in the US too. Some of the US text books here claimed that Hindus in India practice sati and johar. Well, we did, a lifetime ago, but we do not anymore, right? The members of the Hindu students’ association had a tough time challenging the notion and finally establishing the fact that this is history and it no longer happens.

My department thinks that I come from a “privileged family”. By this, they mean something akin to the lifestyle any IAS officer would be accustomed to in India, with servants and drivers and cooks and all kinds of help one could imagine. I once told them that we have a maid (am sure most people do). Comparing to the way manual labor is expensive and unavailable there and contrasting to the pic they have of India, my department has inferred that I belong to one of the richest families who can afford a maid. A privileged family is what they say.




Of course there are certain things people here love about India. They love the cuisine, the biryani, the paranthas (they call it nan bread there). Every side dish is a curry for them. They love the colorfulness of our national costume- the sari, and still wonder how one piece of clothing can be wrapped round and round. They know about Diwali (Dheewyaali) and Durga Puja (Dhurgha Poojas). But in all, they have the wrong pic of India. Not all homes cook in chulhas. Not all homes are infested by snakes and venomous spiders. Not all people suffer from TB. Not all girls are molested on the streets everywhere. Not all places are polluted and sweltering hot.


They just need to have the right pic on the right page of their minds. And I have a feeling that it’s high time we did that.

How do I do it? Ask me.