Honnasiri's Catch

Let me open with: Between the two—being Indian or being from your home town, what are you (if one had to be right and the other wrong)? The catch: One is true, automatically making the other one false. In my case, it will be Am I Indian, or am I Bengalurian ? Chances are that the one that's true will have to be  I am Bengalurian . Being Bengalurian first makes me Indian as much as being from Dusseldorf or Reykjavik doesn't, and being from Pune, Delhi, or any place in today's India makes someone else Indian. If you're still confused, get your probability calculators out and figure that one out.  That the case, being Indian has to, therefore, be a sum total of being a Bengalurian, Dilliwalla, Kolkatan, <every single Indian place with people>...n.  This exhaustive list incorporates every element of life including food, lifestyle, religion, social values etc. that each of these people live by, even those that don't make the common majority o...

Growing up, if more than two of us wanted to do some thing and we're divided, we just take what the majority of the group wants, determined by the easiest form of voice vote, and do that... and the semi-teasing in-your-face statement we make to someone who wanted otherwise is, "majority wins". When we said it then, and as we look back at it now, it was a cute memory of growing up. Unfortunately, all cute memories from when we were were growing up become stale and corny if we use them in the exact same way in responsible, adult situations, like nation, for example.  India is a parliamentary democracy, though mass voter sentiment is that of a presidential democratic process. A good contemporary example of this when everyone is "voting for Modi" when Modi himself is contesting from one constituency, and not all 543. Every BJP supporter in 540 constituencies doesn't have the privilege of Modi being their constituency's BJP candidate - as ...

We've established that a country is to its citizens what the home is to the family . *Any* rule and principle applied there also applies to your relationship with country - however complicated. Any idea about it that defeats this idea is eccentric to start with. That being established, let's move on to the next core truth about states and nations. Any country in the modern era - unless you're a tribe that fought off the influence of the modern world - is an intentional economic concept. If they're successful at it, they end up happy and sufficient. If they aren't, and they make that colossal mistake, they are doomed. The key is in their economics. If they can balance their needs and strengths to be a happy, sufficient society, they got it right. If they did that with head-over-heels ideas about cultural, historical, political and social identity issues, they failed to prioritize sensibly. Identity at the cost of balanced economics, even the most basic, is a slippe...

Nationalism is irrationalizable, undebatable and sacred even if lacking at times. It's a whole religion by itself. Unlike working up to it, with reasons why it must exist, it is blindly assumed and then dictates how you behave towards it. See, I get it. This is nationalism - nation, people, country, culture, roots and those who protect it and ensure it stays intact. There's a sort of a natal attachment to it which even the most reasoning naysayers can't deny. But, can it really allowed to flourish, as freely as it does? Are all the ideas it entails paying the right homage, even if not reasonable or completely open-eyed, to the core concept? When you're trying to explain something for better clarity, it's normal to take an example outside of the argument's purview to make your point, it being a comparison. Sometimes you hit a roadblock when someone tells you that"'it's not like that. You won't understand", which defeats the whol...

Culture and traditions don't come in 200 ml bottle sizes with suggestions of what they go best with, leaving the mixing and matching to us. They come in whole specific-brand supermarkets, where it's kept all in the same family. It's a whole Universes that's all contained in and you have everything you're supposed to need, if you follow the rule book to the tee. Anything else is treachery, that we spare no expense crying about. We chastise, traumatize and cull anything else—what we otherwise call moral policing.  The treachery is inevitable when old ideas meet different ones. Unless we're busy getting enraged about it and screaming treason, cultural interaction is an ongoing experiment in which the older habits die hard, if we let them. Over time, our ways solidify and become tradition which becomes our ways which becomes our culture. It is a spectrum that goes from mild to hard core, with the hard core se...

Sabarimala burns, metaphorically of course, as nation and court decides. While we fight over it, we need to talk about the deeper issue of how we treat God and his business, and how we should.  God is everyone's favourite strawman, and Superman too—both at the same time. The faithful and the faithless hold him in high stead. Those who don't believe in him don't dismiss but criticize him equally for not being super enough. He's the guy we either shoot at or pray to when we can't explain the world (or anything else) to ourselves. He's everything and all in one for everyone at all times, regardless of whether he claims to be so. We think he automatically becomes public property and slack is the least he gets from us. Surprisingly, it's an extremely good cover up that works. We can embrace our imperfection while thrashing his. What makes this idea possible is the fact that he ...

What's synonymous across people and cultures is that everyone always honours their tradition i.e. how they grew up. It's, after all, first response. The mistake in doing that is when it goes unchecked to become big norm. See, all our traditions may not be good, healthy or positive. Some cultures and values are steeped in things that humanity and society need not bring itself to, the first things we need to clean up if we ever start. Majority traditional Indian culture isn't an exception. It has evolved into a very serious problem: a leftover one. And our response: we happen to handle it just like we handle our garbage in real life i.e. conveniently ignore it. Find the closest obscure spot on a main road and shamelessly dump it there, as it rots and stinks in front of us as we normalise ourselves to it.  It becomes the potbelly we drum on and never care to healthily address. Since we all pus...