He comes attired in a dhoti-kurta and a sandalwood tikka on his forehead. His wrists bear no rolex, his clothes are no Armani, his slippers are no Adidas, but when he arrives on the scene, he takes the whole world by storm.
The description sounds like that of an Indian, but before swelling with pride, recall the last time you dressed up not to look the best ? No ? Heck, your own mom has been trying to make you look fair right since the day you were born.
The Indian I'm talking about, my Punjabi [or non-Punjabi] friends, is the South Indian. I know I can hear many 'What the Hell's right now, but that, my friends, is the fact.
The South Indian is the guy who can make a Bangalore in India. The second Silicon Valley of the world. There's an all-India exam. Result : South Indians prevail. Now I'm in no way diminishing the achievements of the right, and successful Northereners out there, but maybe the common Northern masses could take a leaf out of their book.
Look inside yourselves, and you know that I'm right when I say that all Punjabis are capable of is saying 'Punjabiyan di shaan vakhri' and then running to Canada or Australia or US. Come summers and the state of power speaks volumes about the shaan of Punjabis. They, scratch that, we're the people who still need hand fans and candles in the era of iPods. WE are the people who call Gandhi our Father and fail to adhere to the principle he lived by all his life, the principle of Simple Living And High Thinking. And while Punjabi youth find it easier to leave a structure that could use their skills, power and capabilities to an already built structure, the Southerner is trying to make his home something he can be proud of. Not surprisingly, the word NRI is almost synonymous with the word Punjabi, and that Punjabis are known to offer toy-airplanes to Gods to grant them Visas.
When we find walls of your house cracking, needing repair, do we run off to neighbours house ? No, we repair it, we make it perfect, we look at it and we work at it until we can feel damn proud of what we've accomplished. Why not our city ? Why not the same with our state ? Why not the same with our country ?
Why are Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan the bottom three when it comes to Sex Ratios ? Funny how it works , here again, Southern States are at the top. Literacy ? Kerela's got 98%. Anything, you quote it, you gotta admit that the simple Southy who refuses to be a mannequin to the latest fashion trends is on the top. Rain water harvesting ? Heck, these guys have got the ocean all around them, and DESPITE THAT, Tamil Nadu is the first state to make rain-water harvesting mandatory.
Let's face it. We're still trapped within ourselves, we're too narrow-sighted to see beyond that, we've handed over the remote control of our lives to Badals and Amarinder Singh. We're being governed by an outdated government that does not really do anything. We plan on building new power plants when we're lacking 500MW of power. And it's still 'plan', mind you. No construction is anywhere in sight. We are an army of youth that is commanded by political parties, student parties and the only thing we know is how to burn buses and riot over the death of some person we don't have an idea about, all because he and we pray to the same God. We mourn deaths of great personas by declaring holidays and sitting at homes. When Jyoti Basu, primarily related to West Bengal died, apparently no other non-West Bengal state other than Punjab was greived enough to declare a holiday.
We're killing the native industry, we're shying powerful conglomerates away. That's Punjab for you. We bask in the deeds of our saints and feel happy about it. But a huge lot of work has to be done to change the situation. What the hell...why are we supposed to do all this work. Who'll call us 'vakhra' from Bangaloreans if we don't do what they did. The solution : let's catch a flight to Canada.
