Proud to be Indians??

We Indians excel in a lot of things. One of them, (and one in which few other countries even come close) is the art of self deprecation.. Not only do we love everything western/phoren/firang, we also love to hate everything (well...almost!) Indian.

When Hollywood celebrities love to visit India for all its 'Indianness' and charm (Madonna), get married here (read Katy Perry), shoot here (Angelina Jolie- who even contemplated adopting an Indian child) and even name their kids after it (I don't recall who but some Hollywood star has a daughter named "India"), we Indians love to run to distant shores at the drop of a hat. And no...that doesn't mean we have already seen all places there are to see in India. Most of us still haven't. And we take all chances we get to complain about the traffic, the slums and the poor infrastructure in the country.

You still don't believe in the self-deprecation bit, do you?

Well. Take the Commonwealth Games for instance. While the whole world got to see pictures of soiled bed linen and dirty washrooms in the games village apartments, few of us got to see the pictures of the clean and well kept stadiums and the venues. And every country around the world knew exactly how many ceilings had collapsed in the run-up to the Games. Thanks to the Indian press. Why, in the words of my third year MFM teacher, the 'step motherly' treatment to the "We are proud to be Indians" side of the coin?

Take movies. While on average, H'wood movies are better produced than B'wood ones, we are no longer as bad as we believe and H'wood also has its fair share of shoddy movies. Lately, I have seen three English movies and they were very' storyless', to say the least. I saw 'Closer' (shudder!), 'New York I Love You' (shudder shudder!) and the much hyped 'Before Sunrise' (excessively slow and bland..). But we never talk about these movies. And we love to compare sub standard Indian movies to H'wood blockbusters.

That is the way we are. And that is how we will continue to be (hopefully not). It is, I guess, a part and parcel of being an Indian...

And the best part is, we never fail love to stand tall on every patriotic occasion in the calendar and sing the national anthem. We even do that on KBC.