I.N.D.I.A

There are times when I feel like I've been conned. I 

distinctly despise that feeling. Being a person of above average intelligence it's a point of pride to keep thinking to myself that I am not going to let someone take the better of me. Well, that is something which is easier said than done in India. And I am not referring to falling victim to one of the numerous fraudsters prowling around over here. Oh no, an article on that topic is going to turn into a novel if someone takes the pains to write it.

There are other things, small things, which keep happening day in and day out here. People who respect moral values and politeness are mocked at in every turn of the road. Everyone sees it. Everyone knows about it. But no one really bothers to think about it. A feeling of complacence has set over the average Indian population regarding the loss of decency in everyday life. 

"India brings out the bastard in every one of us" - 

this was one of the wise cracks I heard in my first year in college and along with the rest, I laughed too. I never spared much thought about it because, well, having spend most of my school life abroad I didn't know the way things rolled here.

First year in India to me was like an Industry grade 

siren wailing in the ears of a sleeping child. Cocooned by the comforts of an upper middle-class family settled abroad, my parents had brought me up to be  "The Good Guy". They taught me to respect elders. Help someone who seems to be in trouble. Treat girls with respect and care. Speak gently to all. Follow the rules. What they didn't teach me was that none of this is really going to do me any good in a world of Hypocrites where earnestness and morality is a joke. Needless to say I learned the hard way that 'The Good Guy' doesn't last long in India.

 I was on my way to the movies one day. Like most of the college crowd, my mode of transportation was a rickety old bus. The bus was not very crowded and I found a seat. After a few more halts the bus got pretty packed. As I looked, I saw an old man who was having a hard time dealing with the twists and turns of the hilly roads which lead to the city from my college. I waved at him and got up to offer him my seat. The moment my ass left the seat, it was replaced by the ass of Mr. Mustache  who was standing right by me. The old man gave me a look and smiled. I tried to look at Mr. Mustache but he was religiously looking out of the window and avoiding eye contact of any kind. What surprised me most was the shamelessness of the action rather than the gravity of it.  This was one of the first setbacks in my attempts to live up to 'The good guy' code my parents taught me.

Another concept which is alien to us is the concept of

queues. Public queue system in India is a joke (with the notable exception of wine-shop queues but that is a different story). When a pack of wolves or a pride of lions kill, there is an orderly manner in which all the members claim their share of the meat. Though this is not exactly a queue, it is some form of order in the natural world without which chaos would prevail. In India you wouldn't  find any such order while the most dangerous animal of them all hunts for a rickshaw or a ticket at a railway reservation counter. I understood this after waiting for more than 4 hours in an SBI bank to get my check encashed.

Though all this seems like trivial incidents in a bored

cynic's life, the fact of the matter is that these basic attributes which is expected to be the norm in a developed society, is absent in India. All these have a 'broken-window effect' which ultimately leads to the prevalence of issues of a more serious nature.

Why is it that an Indian is a model citizen in other

countries of the world? Why are women reluctant to walk alone after sunset or as some of the cases indicate, even in broad day light? Why do we turn a blind eye to widespread nepotism and state regulated favoritism? How does our elected leaders have the guts to pull of multi-million dollar scams with our hard earned money? These are grave issues and it would be foolhardy to associate them to a single root cause. That being said, I feel that the falling moral standards among the citizenry of our nation may be one of the main reasons leading up to these more serious plights.

After a year of my stay in India I slowly caught on

the joke. I was given a crash course by life on how things work here. In retrospect I realized that the reason why I never get anything done here in a decent amount of time is not because I did something wrong, but because I did something right. When you try to live up to a moral code in a society that laughs at it, you are bound to run into a lot of road blocks which eat into your time and money. But does this mean you have to change the way you are? Well I guess that is really a personal choice. All I know is I still spend a lot of time in the non moving end of a queue. Most of my bus journeys are on foot and my interactions with others remain (mostly) cordial. I haven't learned anything that Mother India tried to teach me. I am still in on the con, but now at least I am aware of its existence. Not that it feels any better.

I was once waiting in Dubai my connection flight to Qatar. My ever thinning mask of decency was still intact enough, despite my experiences. And that was why I moved my bags from the place next to me as a foreigner was looking around for a seat. We struck up a conversation and he told me he was just returning from a 2 year overseas deputation from a reputed foreign bank which was trying desperately to grow its roots in India. After a few minutes, as is customary,  I asked him how his stay in India was and did he like our country. Being a gentleman he did not explicitly share his feelings with me. He took his tab and wrote down the following.

INDIA : I'll Never Do It Again.

I don't have a solution. But at least I am completely convinced that we, as a nation, have a problem in our hands. Which is more than what can be said for 70% of our so called educated masses. We have to understand that cultural degradation is a problem which requires some serious introspection. Our generation is slowly succumbing to complete egotism. The longer we remain aloof to this, the harder it becomes to pull out of a quickly descending communal spiral.