What a day it was today!!!!It started with reading an email of some wealth comparisons between India and Pakistan…

Mukesh Ambani’s phenomenal wealth and the fact that he can buy all the companies listed on the Karanchi stock exchange and still would have a few billions left… about the aircraft he gifted his wife and the details of his 60 storey apartment complex, the details of which were doing rounds of the internet sometime back! It also talked about Sabeer Bhatia, and Sun Microsystems etc and how many Indians make it to the silicon valley

so good head to head comparisons of what India’s wealth is about and what Pakistan’s wealth is about… needless to say India is rich, both in financial terms and people terms!!!

Makes you proud right? good!

And then I was talking to Deepak and Pritam about the disjoint value system in the US and how kids are raised here! some interesting discussions at that time too! About how Diwali is, and about how Holi is… about how there is something called Life that you can celebrate in India, and how even in a state fair you will feel disconnected with the thousands of people who surround you in the US! About how US is a bit different from Europe in terms of community and systems (mostly emotional and personal)

And the day ended with watching “We Were Soldiers” based off of the Ia Drang Valley Battle in 1965 in the Vietnam War! I have been watching a few American war movies lately, and while these movies try to glorify almost everything they should about USA, there is a lot that you get to realise if you want to connect the dots!

America and its soldiers have been in war (their own or adopted) for years… continuously! and almost every family in the USA would either know or be related to a active defense (I don’t think “defense” is a valid term here… “offense” is more like it) person, or a war veteran! They have all the reason to be bloody proud of their people…and that simply translates into being proud of the country! The people give a lot to the country, and the country gives it back to them, and the cycle continues! I am not saying bottlenecks do not exist here, or the leadership has always been good! I am not saying that its perfect the way it works either! I am saying that behind all the value system that I was talking about in the second part of this post, there is a much strong value system that connects almost every person to this “COUNTRY”. and that makes all the bloody difference!

Back to India now… where I know of more bottlenecks than smooth flows of this pride… where praise of the country is limited to speeches, and some long lost books… where the independence is said to be the work of one man called the Gandhi, and people ignore people like Lala Lajpat Rai, Azad, Bhagat Singh, Bose with ease… where leaders like Mayawati ask the central government for a Rs.2000 grant to solve the power situation UP and spend Rs. 500 crore on statues (BITCH)… where leaders like Mamta Banerjee lead people to throw TATA out of West Bengal when it would have put WB on the World Map… where the youth craves for ipods and latest gadgets when just about 50 kms off the highway kids still have to walk 5 kms to the nearest school… where we lead the world in the number of terrorist groups operating in the country (27 out of the 34 groups which the Ministry of Home Affairs labels as Terrorist Organization under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, are home grown groups! another record actually) where we tend to forget the mumbai blasts, or the attack the Parliament, or the Delhi Diwali blasts, or 26/11 for the latest news on something more commercially viable and move on….

where we claim to be proud of the country, but when it will come to identifying what you have done for this country, you might just be short of words and things!!!

Don’t get me wrong!

I am proud of India and its growth, and I feel bad about not knowing crap about its history and how its growing in leaps and bounds! I just feel helpless at times! and extremely sad about how this country might just collapse one day :'( and none of us might not be able to do anything about it!!!

Before I end this post, I just want to remind myself that I am going to do whatever I can! Period!

And if you have a comment on this post, I would appreciate if you do something about it too, in addition of just voicing your opinion!

I should stop now! have a good day everyone!