So anybody wanting to send me those emails and messages on 15th August proclaiming our country’s various achievements and telling me again that we invented the zero, I hereby save you a few keystrokes.
Don’t send it.
No, seriously.
It’s not worth it.
What I’m saying is, to all those people who become patriotic on 15th August, 26th January, and whenever we beat Pakistan in cricket. Thanks but no thanks. I ain’t a fan.
Nope. Not at all.
Yes. All those people who are finally able to fight their hangover and send across “We’re the best country in the world. Duh” messages which reek of delusional and schizophrenia, need to, well for want of a better word, chill.
Yes. Wake up and smell the cup of cutting chai. We’re not number 1. We’re far from it.
We need to lose our delusions of grandeur that we have. We need to stop acting like the oppressed. We got the British to leave 61 years ago. Shit happens. Get over it, bitch.
What we need is a reality check. Someone who doesn’t fall victim to our politicians pandering and refuses to drink our jingoistic national kool aid. Someone who helps us overcome our collective national addiction to whatever mixture of superiority/inferiority complex we have.
The first step is admitting it.
So we need to admit that inside our little Indian hearts, somewhere, we know the truth. We know that we’re really not better off than the Americans. Or the French. Maybe we’re better off than the Algerians. The Nepalese maybe. Though I think we're definitely better than those suckers in Georgia. Anyways, the point here is that, we need to stop rationalizing everything that happens in our country.
We also need to realize that, to quote one of my favorite comedians, that our country suffers from fuck up fatigue.
Yes. Things are so bad most of the time, that when another fucked up event happens, we go Yeah, what ya gonna do?
And that my friends is, well, fucked up.
We need to stop thinking that we are morally superior to the rest of the world. That our country has “values”. Yeah, following some traditions that were started in the 14th century does not equal having values. In our country, we don’t have “values”, we have suppression. We suppress our children and impose our code of conduct on them and call it values. It’s not values, its child abuse. Not letting young adults choose who they want to marry is suppression. Imposing and expecting children to adhere to everything their elders say is slavery.
We get all haughty and smug when a kid of Indian origin wins some godforsaken spelling bee contest in the US. Though our own kids can’t even spell ostentatious correctly . (Even I can’t spell it. Thank the lord for spell (spel? dunno..oops..) check. Yeah, baby.)
We make fun of people of all races, sometimes the humor bordering on mental harassment, yet we are scandalized when someone calls Shilpa Shetty “Poppadum”. Wtf, right?
All I’m sayin is that please spare me the histrionics. I got better things to do.
Like get drunk to celebrate muh freedom, mentally undress other people (trying to be ostentatious, y’all) and then text everyone I know that this is the besttest country in the whole wide world. Go India!!!
Uh-huh.
