The true Indian culture

It's such a beautiful world. You give something only to get something more. You spread the warmth and it comes back to you in innumerable ways. More so from the people from the countryside. 

They are so humble, helpful, thankful, innocent and caring that they fail to be anywhere close to diplomacy. They give others selflessly and expect nothing at all in return. This of course, is a generalization of the majority of the people from such regions and excluding a rather savage people. The humanity in the urban locales is reducing as fast as the trees in these areas. On a lighter note - I feel the warmth of the people is directly proportional to the trees that survive in their area; although, no offense to people belonging to desert areas!

If you wish to see the real India, i would suggest you go to the interior rural areas. That's the true INDIAN culture. The culture that can now be seen in the urban counterparts is as fake as the makeup that the women in these regions are laden with. The hospitality that you'll find in any house in the rural areas is incomparable to any top tier hotel anywhere in the country. The basic difference lies in sharing your already minimal resources. Let me paint a brief picture - 4 people sit cramped up on the train seat meant for only 3(sometimes just 2) people. We, the urban people, call it insanity and stupidity or even tackiness, but they call it sharing. And the reason for the sharing is that each one of them cannot afford the seat for more reasons than one.

We usually call people before visiting (or what we call it as crashing into) their homes, but if you go to countryside, everyone's door is wide open. They welcome visitors who come uninformed and treat them well. And I think that's the true Indian culture and not the one that we try to imitate looking at westerners.

Luxury means different to different people. For some it is buying expensive toys which their kids hardly play with or buying expensive fancy foodstuff that their kids or themselves end up wasting more often. But for many in India luxury means buying a Rs. 5 vadapav for their kid or buying fancy, attractive and dirt cheap stuff in the train. 

It's about time we start preserving the true Indian culture, which is on the verge of extinction much like the 1400 and odd Indian tigers. The tigers' extinction can be debated as a natural step in ecological evolution but the extinction of our culture is a mere reflection of our naive attraction towards the relatively younger cultures. Instead of being proud of our achievements and our traditions and spreading them across the world, we are pacing towards being western (or as we call it - being "global").

Credibility - need of the hour!

In today's world, we think money is the ultimate superpower. But there is something else that each one of us unknowingly strives for continually - Credibility. We all think we want a good education, a good job in a good company or a good profit earning methodology to earn more money. But it's not really the monetary benefit that we are (or should be) hunting for, it’s the ultimate satisfaction of being believable. It's the feeling that our words and thoughts matter to other people. It's the trust our fellow citizens have in us that will get us the position and fame that we wish for, not just the money. Money can be earned in various ways, but if you are a person that someone can have a faith in, then the money will come and eventually will stay with you longer.

Credibility is, by all means, a mutual give and take of intangible assets. It's like the barter system in the olden days - you give some, you get some.

This phenomenon has numerous examples from all walks of life - 

• The intake of the major business schools around the world each year. These schools want to take individuals who can add value to these institutions and these students wish to join the top business schools to add a feather in their resume. The schools become famous because of its (ex)students and hence, more successful students want to join such schools.
• Your colleagues, your friends or your companions you choose for yourself. If eminent people know you well, you are deemed more valuable and trustworthy. Consequently, the people you know are considered reliable. 
• In business circle, if one of your friends is a successful businessman, your credibility points increase automatically.
• Globally, if a major developed nation supports your country, the trustworthiness of your country manifolds.
• In case of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), if an authentic website links back to your site, you earn brownie points. And hence the back and forward links prove to be major factors in deciding your online footprint.
• And so on…

It's this give and take of credibility that the renowned people work with. The more credible value you add to an organization or a relationship with another person, the more (in)credible you yourself become. That's how it works! 

As it's said - "A person is known by the company he/she keeps..."

India's growing population - asset/liability?

A year ago, i had the privilege of reading a book titled 'Imagining India'. I am not a voracious reader, and if i count the books i have read until now, perhaps the number might be lesser than my fingers (excluding those of my legs). But after reading the book i was sure of one thing - those were the best ~80 hours spent until now. Yes, i did take ~80 hours to read it, don't judge me on my speed; I told you I'm a rookie. 

The book was a breath of fresh air amidst all the criticism and pessimism that we are surrounded by in our country today. Most of us had(and still have) this notion that the root cause of all the problems in our country is our ever growing population. True that, but it's also true that it will be one of the mysterious weapons that will help us fulfill our dream of becoming the world super-power. If right now you're thinking I'm just a foolish optimist and if you don't trust me, grab hold of the book - Imagining India by Nandan Nilekani. I gladly endorse this book and if you're skeptical of our country's growth, it's a must read.

This book motivated me to go onto Google and search for current as well as future unemployment- and population-related statistics of India. To my astonishment, Nandan was right, and our government has realized the same potential in our youth, too. Let me jot down a handful of statistics that amazed me : (Click on Read More to read more...)

Life in Mumbai - Survival of the (Un)Fittest!

Firstly, most of us think the term 'Survival of the Fittest' is coined by Charles Darwin who authored the Theory of Evolution, but in reality it was Herbert Spencer, a British philosopher, who has coined this term.

I have been born and brought up in this blissful city (or that is what we want to flaunt it as) called Mumbai. The word Mumbai is derived from the words Mumba + Aai, which means mother Mumba (Koli goddess) in Marathi.

Mumbai has been the financial and entertainment capital of India since a long time and today contributes approximately 5% to the GDP of the country. It houses various important institutions such as Reserve Bank of India, Bombay Stock Exchange, and National Stock Exchange and is the hometown of the most famous institution in India - the Bollywood.

Now you must be wondering why am i giving you such information that you can also find on more authentic websites such as the Wikipedia and the like. The intention is not to provide information, but to show what people around the world perceive the city as. A person who stays in the city for a long time will know what the real shape of the city is.

I will try to describe a day in the life of an average middle-class person who stays in the city and wants to lead a decent livelihood. This description is not representative of the masses in the city as more than 60% of the people stay in slums. There are also around 8-10% of the people who lead a much prosperous life in the same city. This is an example of a day in the life of a person who is familiar to all the voices of the city. Also, i will refer to the below example as a person (she) but it doesn't necessarily mean it's an example of a woman's life because that's not the basic motive behind the exemplification; please don't read much into it.

The person wakes up at 6 in the morning in her not more than 500-600 square feet house. She drinks milk (tea/coffee) that is not according to the health standards followed in the rest of the world, but she doesn't care. Most of the houses do not have a 24x7 supply of water, so most of the people (as well as this person) bathe with the water stored in small containers. She gets ready and leaves home in a hurry (people in Mumbai are always in a hurry). She waits for an auto-rickshaw but none of the unengaged rickshaw drivers want to take her to her destination. With no choice left, she then waits for a public transport bus in a never-ending queue and after much effort gets into an overcrowded bus. The bus either takes her to her office or to the nearest railway station. During her journey, the bus is stuck numerous times in unimaginable traffic (you should see the traffic to know it). She then gets down from the bus and runs (literally) to board a public transport train. 

 The trains in Mumbai are so crowded that a cockroach might change its travel timings to avoid the rush. She gets into an overly crowded (which is an understatement actually) train and reaches her desired station soon. The trains in Mumbai carry more than 300-350 people in a single compartment, whose seating capacity will not be more than 60-70 persons (no kidding!). This happens although the difference between 2 trains at peak hours is not more than 2-3 minutes (on the clock). Conversations among people in Mumbai about the train often sound like - "Tomorrow I have to catch the 8.43 am Churchgate(a station) local." or "if i don't catch the 9.57 am CST(another station) i will miss my 10.28 am Borivali local."  

When she gets off the train, she smells like a pig who is back from its wonderful time at the nearby muck. No perfume or deodorant can sustain the test of Mumbai local trains (perhaps that's one marketing strategy that a perfume company can never use). If her office is near the railway station, life is heaven for her. If not, she has to repeat the auto-rickshaw and the bus cycle. She reaches her office in that messed up state at, let's say, 9.30 am. Let's not get into what happens at her office, because that is well-known to people across locations. During lunch she goes to her office canteen that serves abysmal routine food.

If she carries her own lunch and thinks she is eating healthy food, then she is living in a state of enigma. Because the food in our country does not pass any quality check before reaching the common people and much has been said and known about the quality of the food, i don't want to get into that.

She leaves her office to repeat the same commute cycle in the evening, just that now she is tired of working more than 9 hours in her office and is in a cranky mood (most of the people in Mumbai go through this cranky demeanor every day). She gets irritated with people pushing her around in the trains and buses and with small things that would otherwise have gone unnoticed. She transfers this frustration onto other people and the crankiness is highly contagious. The streets are now full of hawkers who want to sell all kinds of things from vegetables to cutlery, from toys to books, from street-side junk food to mobile phone accessories and list goes on and on. They yell at the top of their voice to publicize their products because that is the only mode of marketing they know of. Amidst all this craziness she reaches home and her spouse is equally frustrated of his day. Her kids are complaining, and so are her parents, her neighbors, her friends and even her dog. She eats her dinner watching the television, which shows her a parallel world that is filled with things that she wishes to have in her life. She complains about her pathetic life and blames everyone around her for the same. She waits and dreams for tomorrow when her life will take a 180 degree turn and she'll live her life happily ever after. But tomorrow never comes. The next morning she wakes up at 6, and the rest - you can guess it.

This cycle repeats every day in the life of more than 10 million people residing in this blissful city and they (whoever they are) call it the dream city. Wow, what a dream to have! I have mentioned a day in the life of an "average" person, so you can imagine the ones living below poverty line. Thus, I feel the fittest of the people live in this city and the ones, not-so-fit, are just surviving.