The talkative Indian

If I have to describe life in Bangalore in three words, I would say - booming energetic anarchy! This I guess will represent the general state of the Indian mind in general, and of a booming creative city like Bangalore in particular.

To describe the energy of us Indians, take the example of a average conversation of the common man in any of Bangalore's darshinis. Firstly, we all have so much to talk! Whether it's the state of an unfinished flyover, or the water-logging in xyz colony, or the stock price of the reliance share and where the economy in general is headed. An average man is aware of his surroundings - of what's happening to the country, the economy and his job. One can judge this energy from the animated way of talking in coffee joints. There are so many business ideas floating in the air - it's this energy that's driving us currently.

Amartya Sen's new book, The Argumentative Indian,  must be a good read. I want to pick up and read it sometime soon. The french guy who interviewed Pooja asked what she thought of our argumentative nature - whether that causes a lot of delays. In my opinion, it's a historical and religious trait we have possessed since time immemorial. The great debates that happened in the courts of Krishna Devaraya or Akbar or the great religious debates by Vadiraja are all proof that our religion by origin and nature encourages us to debate. And I think, it is this trait that has been genetically preserved and progenated that makes us what we are today. We are ready for the Knowledge society precisely for this reason.

We are good readers in general. On any bus journey, whether it is through the traffic jammed roads of Bangalore or a train journey from Bangalore to Mysore or the bus journey from Madras to Pondicherry, I have observed that people like to read their books, magazines, politics and newspapers. Though I haven't really travelled a lot through any other country as much as I have through India, I'm generally happy to see that people read and are aware of things around them. This is particularly prominent if one drives through Kerala - I really admire the political awareness and societal consciousness of the average mallu.

History is one area we desperately need to improve on. We all love to talk how great our history was and so on. Our sense of history and pride needs to be improved a few thousand folds. Especially I guess in heartland of North India, unfortunately a lot of the cultural pillars and identities have been destroyed. And the punjabi society is doing itself any service further westernizing itself! A point of history is that we lack documentation as a culture. I was showing to my sweet heart a sculpture in Somnathapura. There was this carving of Vishnu holding the Earth in his hands as a Globe - an elongated sphere. Now, this is sculpture from the 11th century of the Hoysalas. It took the western world another 400 years to re-learn the same fact. And yet, from our textbooks, we have to learn that Copernicus/Magellan proved that the earth was spherical!

We also talk about the daily comparisons between China and India. There this mail going around about how Nandan got Bangalored in Beijing - the vast expansions in infrastructure. In contrast, we have to wait for Deve Gowda's death before Bangalore can go somewhere in term of infrastructure. But hey, hold on! Do we have to make a choice between infrastructure and democracy. Any day, I would prefer my freedom. I don't want to live in a country where the state controls what I think and what I write! Blogs are screened for words like democracy and freedom! Ideally, I want both my flyovers as well as my freedom. And I know that with time, I will get my flyovers. Delhi's showing us the way today. I don't want to lose my talkative Indian .. Never! It's just not us!