A recent article asked -
Why are Indian passengers in such a hurry to exit the plane ?
Where are they even going ?
Yes many of us have wondered about this too.
Perhaps it’s to do with our history of shortages & being very aware that we are simply too many.
Our grandparents, parents & some of us too have stood in queues for sugar, kerosene, milk & other basic commodities.
We know the value of getting there before the shutter is pulled down on our face. ~Sorry! Finished !~
We have rushed to railway stations & pushed our way to ticket booths only to learn that all seats to our destination were booked.
Or sometimes found that there is a chance, a minuscule chance on boarding that train because we were just in time to get on the waiting list.
We have stood at unearthly hours of the morning in queues snaking down a street for a child’s school admission form.
We learnt the value of getting there first & we never forgot to remind our child repeatedly, thus reinforcing the ‘tradition’.
To reach banks, government offices we’ve honked madly, perhaps overlooked a traffic light or two, pushed our way into bursting, creaky elevators to find the most powerful person of the moment, opaque & unyielding.
~Lunch! 3 baje aana.~
Come on, we are people who even when standing in line to pay our obeisance in temples think nothing wrong of tapping the person ahead & requesting if we can please move up the queue.
~Thodi jaldi hai~
Yes, God might too have quota of whom He can bless today.
So by rushing to take our bags before the seat belt signs are off, we are only ensuring that we reach Immigration first.
Who wants to be at the end of a serpentine queue when there’s duty free to buy & worse, the trolleys at the baggage carousel may all get taken,
then the cabs...then the traffic ....?
Three generations post Independence have honed this skill.
It’s in our DNA & it will take some time for us to realise (with some enforcing of strict rules) that pushing, shoving, impatience & getting there first only exposes our insecurity
& fear of paucity & insufficiency in goods & services that we were so accustomed to.
So stop. Pause.
Don’t worry.
That immigration counter will still be open for you.
Dear #Dharavi
We havent met but I’m sure you’ve heard of us.
Amethi! Amethi from Uttar Pradesh.
We bore the brunt of being the Gandhi Family’s bastion for 42 years and we forfeited
the future of our children to Sub Saharan standards.
We could have been that model constituency!
We could have been that opportunity for Rahul Gandhi to show case his abilities - to be replicated and held up as his vision for the country. But alas it was not to be.…
Our health center 👇🏼
The West it seems doesn’t give a hoot for the Uyghurs. Those forsaken, forgotten people of the Muslim faith in some corner of China and neither do the international media, NGOs, or activists.
Does anyone recollect a Western nation having recalled their Ambassador or imposed sanctions on the country which ruthlessly decimates the culture and faith of these people?
The West also chooses to ignore Muslim on Muslim atrocity and violence.
Not a flicker of reaction to the two Palestinians hanged, quartered and thrown into the trash just last night by their own.
Or for that matter the Yemenis bombarded to smithereens by the Saudis or the Baloch systematically butchered by the Pakistanis.
Class - Privileged
First Language - English
Religious Denomination - Iffy about this Sanatan Dharm, Hindutva business.
Thankfully recently discovered my inner spirituality.
Status - We are British (at least we’d like to be…please, please) in summer when we head out to London.
Portuguese .. erm Goan in winter when we soak in the sun in Goa which mind you is looking more and more like GK.
Opinion - Bharat?!?
You can’t do this!!! There will be international repercussions!! You know, don’t you that Mountbatten’s granddaughter is called India? Imagine their trauma!
Can say without hesitation that there was very little or non existent talk of ‘brothers separated by the British’ among people, in the 40’s and 50s after the bloodletting of Partition and the raider attack on Kashmir.
In the 60-70s we fought two wars and in my childhood Pakistan was definitely, enemy.
The 80s witnessed Khalistani insurgency in Punjab which we all knew where it emanated from.
In the 90s came Benazir with her chop-chop Jag-Jag, the Kashmiri Pandit exodus, Bombay bomb blasts, Kargil, Hijacking IC814…!
Then in 2000s, Parliament attack, Mumbai train blasts…
A 14yr old boy had been left with relatives in Lahore to complete his FSc exams while his family had made their way earlier to the hills of Joginder Nagar, as was their norm at that time of the year.
The young boy wrote to his father that his last paper had been postponed indefinitely and the educational institute was shut due to uncertainty and tensions in the city.
He was advised to take the first possible train out, to Jullundur or Kapurthala with their driver Gulab.
By now riots had broken out across the city but even then, neighbours were dissuading each other from leaving. Send the women and children away they said. The able bodied must stay back to protect home and hearth...and before long things would return to normal as they always did
Beginning to understand why Pakistan finds favour with the West…
Why they don’t get lectured on their shredded state of democracy even though their Army claims they are one.
Why they don’t get told off on Minority Rights even though they openly, shamelessly decimate theirs.
Why isn’t there even a murmur on Press Freedom when their journalists are bundled into car boots and taken away to undisclosed locations.
Not even get a raised eyebrow when they ethnically cleansed millions of their own compatriots in what was once called East Bengal.
No mention of the Idea of Pakistan as they slice and dice their own, differentiating between Shia, Sunni, Ahmadiyya’s..
There is nothing like the triumphalism of I told You So and Pakistan proves them right everyday, offering comfort when things dont look so good at home.