The Lost Indian

If you are like me, a non resident Indian, living in the West, you would have had several situations where you were asked about your country of origin and its great ancient culture and like a proud peacock ( the Indian national bird) you would have waxed eloquent about all these things, reeling out information about all its major cities, it’s movie extravaganzas, its lavish weddings made popular by movies like Bride and Prejudice, the Taj Mahal the one and only wonder that Indian’s can boast of, and other knick-knacks like the bindi, why we wear it? What is it with all those colors?

But deep down you know and they know (from Hollywood’s badly made stereotypical movies like the Slum Dog Millionaire and other such) that really it is all a dog and pony show with little substance or reality with present day India and Indians.

Recently it has become rather obvious that, we Indians have become a race of people, very cocky and superficial, with only superficial knowledge of what was once a great culture ( at least what we were lead to believe from all our books and mythologies ). As a people, we are trying to live and thrive and pretend greatness based on this past glory. We for the last several generations have never taken a single step to make our ancient culture into something that is living, so that its great cultural traditions and glory are reflected in our day to day living. Rather in reality we are carrying around a cultural dead body, hoping someone outside will presume it to be a shining crown and not look too deeply inside and figure out the truth.

Therefore, It is with great shame and embarrassment that I talk and write about what I believe makes and shapes our present day Indian psyche, thinking and behavioral patterns. I include myself in all of these criticisms below, because no matter what I have to say in this article, I know and acknowledge that I have the same blood running in my veins and come from the same stock of people and gene pool. But that doesn’t mean we/I cannot see things clearly for what they are and start the process of deep and thorough cleansing for a better India and a better, more fulfilled and complete Indian that we can all feel proud of.

This above statement is a promise being made in all sincerity and is meant to be both in word and in deed because we Indians are known to be great talkers with nothing to show for it in deed, because it is far too easy for us to discuss any subject without bothering to make any changes whatsoever in the way we live.

As a result of the above cleansing process, we as Indians should get to a point where we are a living breathing example of a proud and varied ancient culture I believe this understanding and incorporation of culture into our way of life is that which will lead our country and its people on to the path of true greatness .For in the vast repositories of our ancient mythology, folklore, and traditions lies hidden something so profound that it has the ability to help every other nation in the world to improve the well being of its people.

But first, I believe we should understand what is it we are cleansing? This can only be understood by actually tearing apart the thin veil of proprietary and image we Indians have developed and carry around with us all the time. The veil of being an ultra modern country and people that are on the brink of greatness because of growing IT strengths and novae riches, the veil of having a very liberal view of the world where everything is good, as long as we look at both sides of any issue, and don’t agree or disagree on anything of value. A veil that says that as long as we dress in ultra modern outfits and prance around like we are more Americanized than the average American we have arrived. As long as we don’t know or understand the values of the American life we are copying is based on ( honesty, integrity, hard work, creativity, banking on individual strength and courage) , we are just wearing a veil and pretending to be something we are not.

This is what I think needs to be thoroughly cleansed.

I would like to start of with a classification of modern day Indian stereotypes that we tend to run into in our daily lives, at work, on the street, in parties. As we read thru this classification I am hoping that we will emerge with a common thread of what constitutes the psyche of the LOST INDIAN that I am talking about and what we need to do to eradicate this ‘Lost ness” that we see so rampant among us. Here are a few, I am sure you will recognize.

The corporate ladder climber:
This person has used all of his English speaking abilities, no doubt brought about by his convent education to pretend that he knows everything there is to know about Technology. We have scores of these people that are quickly trying to impress their bosses to climb the ladder of success. Ask them about anything else and they are dumbfounded. Is there anything else other than becoming, “the chez” and showing off?
This person will be the first to brag about or make sure you know in a roundabout fashion where he/she is in his/her career and quickly proceed to give you advice on what you need to do to get further. He has absolutely no idea or interest in anything else, cultural or otherwise. He will start showing some interest in other activities as soon as his kids come of age and need to be exposed to their own people. Then the person will use whatever clout he/she has built up until that time to push their kids into our faces in all public and social activities.

The “All about my kids” mom:
This Indian mother never tires from talking about her kids. She will bring them into every conversation to make sure you know how successful her kid is at school and what a fantastic person she is becoming. Watch out for some venom if you happen to talk about another kid in her presence. She will make sure you know that her kid is the best. This person does not care for anyone or anything other than making sure she has given her utmost to her kids at the detriment of everything and everyone else.

The gadget guy/gal
This is the group of younger more “cool” crowd. This is a group that thinks having the latest gadgets in your hands is what makes you cool. What no IPod? Don’t even come near me, you aught to check out the latest stuff that Apple is dishing out? Have you seen their latest iPad I just got it for someone as a” present” This is the conversation you will hear from them. If you don’t have these things or not up to the mark on these gadgets you are definitely behind the times and not at all cool! There is no need to know anything else or do anything that benefits anyone else. Just make sure you get the latest gadget and you know you have arrived. Oh don’t forget to show it around whenever you get a chance at a party. No sense in having a gadget that someone has not seen or admired. Again this Indian is too involved in looking cool, there is no time do anything of substance for anyone else.

The talker:
This person will be able to talk about any topic under the sun. He knows a little about everything and nothing in detail. He will want to make sure he has a rapt, captive audience that is listening to his every word. This person tends to be self centered and wants to let you know that he has succeeded and needs you to corroborate that. It is seldom that these talkers are actually doers, but you will find a few that are just as good as their words and may end up doing something good for others after all.

The cat on the wall:
This person is always on the fringes and never makes a commitment or a definite statement on anything. He doesn’t really have an opinion it is the opinion of the strongest and loudest person in the group. He is also very self-centered and only interested in taking care of himself while appearing to be very concerned. He will not lift a finger or give a penny for charity. He doesn’t have a thought in his head about anyone else except how to please his neighbors by not saying anything controversial.

The snake in the grass:
These are the kinds who are for ever comparing themselves to everyone else, and while praising them upfront are trying desperately to find a way to bring these people down or move up themselves. They will not do anything for anyone unless it directly benefits them in someway.

The spiritualist:
This person or persons pretend to know all about spirituality. They will show up at every spiritual discussion, very serious about learning more jargon that they can use on unsuspecting people and impress them. Their lives are mostly self motivated with hardly a spiritual bent in anything they do.

The perpetual reader:
This person is always up to speed on all the latest books and news. But he is not ready to bring that knowledge to bear into working towards helping anyone else. It is theoretical knowledge that only useful to the one person who gets it.

The money maker:
This person uses any and all means to become rich. He will not hesitate to do anything shady to get deals. But will spend an inordinate amount of time in prayer and spirituality probably to overcome something akin to guilt for not paying attention to anything else.

The preacher:
Will preach to anyone who will listen on what is the right thing to do. He will quote all spiritual texts to ensure he has a captive audience. Only a few of these kinds of people will actually practice what they preach.

The Street Smart Indian
This is the Indian that has learnt to use the “street smart policy” in his everyday life.
Now this street smart policy or worldly wisdom is a very recent phenomenon. What it means is the Indian need to be the most “Chaalu” at every instance of his life. I will explain this fantastic word in a second for it describes to perfection what this Indian would do. He will talk sweetly with everyone around. Find the most perfect, cost effective, most useful (only for himself) thing to do, and will do it, even if it is not the RIGHT thing to do. And that is being “Chaalu”. This is a Gujarati word (Gujarat is a state in India and the language spoke there is called Gujarati), which means doing things a certain way to get by and make the most of everything around you including using people, and trampling them if it suits you. The height of this activity is achieved when the people really can’t figure out if you trampled them or someone else trampled them for you. You remain the sweet talking Indian. So the more street smarter or Chaalu you are, the better for and you will go far.

We can continue to come up with several other stereotypes of Indians but the idea is to realize that across all these people there is one common thread. I call this the one missing element. This missing element is the utter lack of public interest. By this I mean, their interest in anything only extends to the individual in question and their immediate family. The Interest that the individual does have is a very materialistic interest that he/she uses to make the most of everything available to him to improve only the lot of himself and his family for this life and beyond (that is why you can see this individual at religious ceremonies and sometimes in spiritual discussions). But under no circumstances will this interest extend to anyone else.

So for a person that is struck with this malady, there is NO INTEREST whatsoever in doing anything that does not directly benefit the individual or his immediate family. So Community and Civic duties are a far cry. There is no public outcry on anything outrageous that happens in the society around since it does not directly affect the individual or his immediate family. This utter apathy for anything outside of his self interest is the missing element or the malady that has stricken the Indian anywhere whether the person lives in India or abroad.

I would have to call this above malady stricken Indian, the Lost Indian and you will not be able to miss him in all of the stereotypes described above and anywhere else in present day India and abroad. It is so rampant even God, Religion and Culture and anything remotely different from day to day mundane activities are all molded into a format that would feed this malady in the individual described above.

Today when you visit India for a vacation, you can see a mass of Individuals stricken by this malady running thru the rat race of our time, feeding and caring only for himself and his family and this individual. He/she does not have the time or the energy to look beyond himself and his malady described above to see the horror of the world around them.

If you look at India today, it is one of the dirtiest counties in the world. Literally every where we look at whether it is a village, a town or a city bustling with activity and people we see trash everywhere we look, no garden or park or roadside is immune from this. We cannot walk on the streets least we step on human and animal waste that abounds everywhere there is a wall or a road. So we live in this shit but try to pretend it is one of the greatest countries in the world.

An Lost Indian, when confronted with this, would immediately direct your attention to the high tech industry that is growing by leaps and bounds, high tech cities, lots of modern cars, great looking individual bungalows. Look at all this he would say, see how successful we are becoming. We have the most gold and money in the world. Look how intelligent we are, how many PhD’s and Engineers we produce every year.

We blame all ugliness on the Municipality and of course the panacea for all evils, our ever increasing population. We complain that the country has not kept up with this unprecedented growth. There is no infrastructure so what can we as individuals do?

So the individual must do what he must do, just shift his focus to himself and his family and try to forget the shit around him literally.

Yes definitely our Municipality is so out and out corrupt that we cannot even expect them to the do the basic things like pick up the trash we throw out on the streets even once a week, let alone hope for trash pickup on a daily basis. Our population is huge , well so is China and so are other small countries in the world with the same or sometimes higher population densities, but nowhere, I mean NOWHERE in the world do we see shit on the road. Isn’t that something to be ashamed of? The Lost Indian does not have time even to discuss this. It takes away the time from his other very necessary chores to join the rat race and make money for himself and his family.

Of course we can talk about the corruption having made its way to all rungs of the ladder from the peon to the top. We all know that. We have known it for 50 years. We the people don’t think we have any responsibility expect we will complain about it. That is the Indian psyche. Don’t do anything about it, we can’t do anything. The system is bad, we don’t have an infrastructure. The Government needs to do something, but no we only need to complain or protect ourselves by being “Chaalu”.

This corruption that we speak above is not just corruption in terms of money but the corruption of our minds. The movies are a prime example of this. For example the Telugu movies that the Tollywood industry spews out every second talk about one thing. “Love”
Boy meets girl, boy falls in love instantly and they break out into stupid, lewd dance sequences. We all seem to be ok with it. This is huge money making business and no one is about to listen to you, even if you are quite aware of the impact of these things on young and old minds alike There is not even a thought thrown in to figure out what we can each do to improve our country and life of our people, all our people not just our individual families.

So coming to the point, where is the discriminating mind in this Lost Indian.
A mind, that realizes that the life of human being cannot be all about materialistic satisfaction of an individual and his immediate family. It is about the Individual’s other responsibilities. For example, his social responsibility for one, What about the responsibility of building a society that looks beyond itself for the preservation of all that is beautiful in our living world? Where is the Indian that is conscious about this? I have not seen one Indian that has taken any of these responsibilities beyond talking about it in a social gathering or writing a paper or it.

By the way, writing a paper is one of the symptoms of the above Lost Indian malady.
This writing a paper symptom is probably a remnant of British Colonization. We Indian’s can write a paper on anything. We learn this from childhood. All it takes is find a few good books and plagiarize as many ideas as you can from them, and call them your own, after all you took the trouble of writing it.

Please note if India has produced so many PhD’s. It is not because we are a country of creative geniuses. It is because we as a country have learnt the easiest and best way to produce PhD’s. Please note again, the student doesn’t have to solve an important problem that will help society in anyway. He doesn’t even have to do most of the creative things himself. All he has to do is find a problem (no matter how obscure it is) and figure out where he can get information about it. He can score any number of libraries and now the internet to find papers that are similar and add or delete from them to get this obscure problem solved. At the end of the day, it does not solve any pressing problem in society anyway it is just another paper that another aspiring PhD can use for his own thesis at a later time.

So we will only be scarcely able to show a PhD in India that has done genuine research in any area where creativity and some thinking is required and involved. Most of the time, the thesis would be rehash of someone else’s thinking and a pretence that it was a product of a genius mind. I am generalizing here but it is not at all difficult to see that the majority of PhD’s could fall into this category.

Again this is not a criticism on PhDs, nor any other person who is genuinely trying to do something in the most appropriate manner. It is a criticism of a system that produced the Lost Indian. An Indian movie that was released recently tried to address the problem our failing educational system that produces these lost Indians.. It was called the 3 idiots,

Why can’t we as individuals, look at all the options available to one in one’s situation and fix things where they are not up to the mark? Thus maintaining a sense of one’s identity and culture in one’s personality? After all we have so much to fall back on. We come from a country that is known for its ancient culture that was once called the Crown Jewel that had produced stalwarts in all walks of life over the millennia. Where are those people anymore? What we have in their place is this “Lost Indian”
I think in the rat race of getting somewhere and in the mode of slavishly aping the west, we have forgotten what it means to be a true Indian and have become a lost Indian.

Let us go back and figure out what is it that is so beautiful and lasting in our Indian way of life that allowed the culture to exist for more than 5000 years. What is it we lost over the last century or actually last few centuries since we were colonized by the British. They, the British, taught us to hate or look demeaningly at our own heritage and culture and which got so imbibed in our psyche that we now don’t need anyone to tell us to demean our culture anymore. We can do it freely and on our own accord. We sneer at old traditions, we don’t remember anything about our scriptures, if someone talks about them we call him an old foggy, we only talk about the Vedas with absolutely no clue about what they are. We quote the Upanishads and the Bhagavat Gita as if we are experts at it when we have not imbibed a single ounce of knowledge into our daily lives. We think if we have access to all Electronic gadgets and know how to use them, we have become great, when the true inventors of these things are never us, we only know how to use them, and are clueless about what makes them run. But we have to have them to show how cool we are.

We read about murders, killings and rape in our country and just think it is a statistic that someone will worry about. We don’t have time for that. We don’t care that corruption is rampant in India we are willing to do our part in helping the corruption grow. After all we did not create this situation we are only learning to live with it.

We believe that as Indians we are entitled to an image of a very culturally advanced civilization that is 5000 years old. We talk about the Ramayana and Mahabharata,(our answer to the Iliad and Odyssey from the ancient Greek civilization) we know all the names of the characters in the Ramayana and Mahabharata and the more you know about them and can talk about them , the holier than thou we become .

Where is the substance of these great books in our day to day life? For example, Rama in the Ramayana was this exemplary character that lived a life of “Maryada” or righteousness. Everything he said and did was based on a moral code of right and wrong, and no matter what the temptation, he stuck with the path of always doing the right thing. Try that on an Indian and he will tell you, that there is no such thing as a right and wrong, just a lot of grey and everything has some right in it and some wrong in it. This is the bane of an Indian’s view point. Don’t ever say something is wrong (when deep down you know it is really wrong) least someone finds you doing it and is living such a life. We Indians get shallower by the minute because we always talk about things that should be done right but the very first step we take is a compromise or something we know will be the path of least resistance, since we cannot ruffle feathers. That would be utter foolishness and must never be done.

And there goes our attempt to try and emulate some of the greatest people that we know once existed in India. We will build temples and talk hours on end about what Rama did or what Hanuman did or what Vibhishana did. We can have a healthy debate on whether they were always right or sometimes wrong, but we forget that the essential nature of these people was to find the path of truth and stick with it. Show me an Indian that lives by this code of conduct? No that is too impractical and not at all a street smart thing to do.

So we continue living, this way, the way of the lost Indian, lost to everything except to himself and his immediate family

When will we wake up and realize that life is passing us by, and we are not only loosing time for ourselves but are also making our next generation wallow in the same cesspool we find ourselves in?

All I can say is “Come on, wake up and find your way back”. Look for what is right not just for you but for the human race. Mold your life towards achieving that goal. Look for examples from the past and try to emulate that in your day to day life. And you will see that over time, you will no longer be Lost but would have found a path for yourself and for humanity.