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.
8 comments:
This is really the reality. But I don't agree with the NRi fact. There are manyyyyyy south Indians too that prefer going to foreign land. The only difference being that n-Indians apply for PR, the south Indians, being good in academics, get jobs there. But moral of the story, ratio of people going outside is almost equal. But anyway, it's a great observation!
I love the way you are criticzing home. Most of the people look at others and try to locate faults in them, but there are very few people, rather I should say handful, who look at themselves and say that's what's wrong. Yes, we punjabis are wrong in running off to the countries where most of the population doesn't even understand half of their own culture, and yet make fun of ours. We, punjabis, I must say change ourselves completely in a way that we are still intact to our roots and yet modernizing at the same time. I like the point you made which states that we are outdated in every aspect. yes, finally! someone actually took the pains to realize that candles and the government is same in Punjab. People are sick of politics but they don't do anything about it. I think it's time for our generation to realize that Punjab doesn't necessarily need engineers and doctors.
Thanks guys, for the comments. But a South Indian goes offshore when he's already secured a $20,000+ salary from a MNC in campus recruitment or something like that. Ha ha, we're commenting on each other's blogs so that we ensure a comment on ours when we post something.
That's not true I read your blog regularly.
Lol, there aren't any new posts to read regularly. I'm using the blog as a personal diary now, writing stuff and saving it in the drafts. You can check it out if you want, but it's just crap.
And why on the earth did you decide to reply to a 'basi' comment after, like, 4 months ?
Hey ankush..
the wayu put up facts is great. But u are tooled enough to criticise punjab only because its your home state and you know about its flaws purely based on experience.
you keep rambling about Punjabis running away from India, but sir these people are the one's to bring in the highest capital investment from foreign. Chandigarh is the union territory next to Kerala in terms of Human Development index ranking and Punjab is above any other southern state except Kerala.
The life expectancy of an person in Punjab is 69 years highest in the whole of India.
And the south India u've been worshipping has come to become the World Capital in Suicides.Pondicherry tops the list while kerala stands third and to your surprise punjab is among the last few names there.
have a look :-
http://maithrikochi.org/india_suicide_statistics.htm
Its not about how developed a state is its about how happy the people living there are. And all the three statistics I have put forward are the clear indication that PUNJAB is a HAPPY PLACE.
@Vibhav having lived in Hyderabad for some time, my opinions have certainly changed.
What I'd say after 5 months in Hyderabad is, while Punjabis could learn some things about development from the South, the South could learn quite a bit about fun from Punjabis. Again, that could be a biased opinion, people from around here certainly seem to be fun when they're from around here. Maybe there's too much of difference between North and South, and a fair comparison would require a lot of rethinking on my part.
I totally agree about your opinion about me knowing Punjab's flaws in too much detail, as compared to the southern states.
*people from around here certainly seem to be fun when they're from around here - didn't make any sense. What I meant was that a lot of locals here feel happy around locals. But then, that probably holds true for every region in the world.
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