Gotham,

You have captured India, its goodness, travails and attitude wonderfully in these few paragraphs. Just ride it keeping in mind that the horse will change moods from moment to moment; docile, frisky, loveable, mean and skittish all in a matter of minutes. If nothing else it will be the experience of a lifetime.

Just keep your good humopur ready at hand you will so desperately need it only too often. The one thing you should know about us, work gets done but everything has a time frame. If the book says this may take upto 3 months to get done, even when you know it should be 2 days, bear it. It would be against everyone's belief and faith to not prove the book right.

Yes India is overwhelming Gotham and so is life over here!! Philosophy comes naturally to this country and its inhabitants, purely because of the denial of so many good things that come so easily to the western counterpart. Death surely takes a back seat in a mind which is so used to letting go and "Tyaag". It is by default that people here turn to God and spirituality.

V S Naipaul described India as a big open latrine where anyone has a right to defecate anywhere. Osho Rajneesh said that you could smell spirituality in the air in India because of millions of man-hours that have been put into meditation in this country by various seers and sages over the centuries.

India indeed is a land of contradictions, a land of extremes. You have million dollar sky scrapers overlooking a million-populated slum. You come out of a swanky gym after a workout to be tugged at your sleeve by an emaciated urchin importuning you for alms. You see a Rolls Royce meander its way past a cow that sits in the middle of the road munching merrily.

India is a land of potholes as well as promises. Winston Churchill said that India wasn’t a country anymore than the Equator is. It’s really amazing how we’ve managed not to break apart. Such diversity; 14 officially recognized languages (denomination of a currency note is printed in all the official languages on every Indian currency note); about 1000 dialects; people of divergent cultures, religious beliefs and races.

I think at a deeper level the Indian lethargy has something to do with the Hindus’ belief in reincarnation. There are millions of lives—84 million to be precise--so what’s the hurry? A population of 1 billion, and counting. Every year, we add a new Australia to our population. But the good news is that the GDP is growing faster than the population. India’s GDP is ranked 12th in the world at the moment.

Whatever is India’s strength is also its weakness. Democracy, for instance. India prides itself on being the world’s largest democracy. But democracy has become, at least in the short-term, the biggest hurdle to India’s progress. This is especially true when you compare India with China. China is a one-party monocracy. Decisions there are taken and implemented real time, thanks to a complete absence of an “opposition”.

A hung parliament has become the norm in India. It’s been years since a single party got an absolute majority in general elections. A coalition government, whose existence depends on the support of the communists, treads carefully lest it be pulled down.

Much as Dr Manmohan Singh would like to, he can’t disinvest government’s stake in large loss-making public sector companies. Because that would mean redundant workers being fired once the companies go into private hands, and the communists have their vote-banks in those very workers.

And to think that this country was called a “golden sparrow” once!! The golden wings of that sparrow have been mercilessly plucked by all sorts of plunderers—the British, the Portuguese, the Moguls, et al. The colonizers siphoned off all of India’s wealth and feathered their own hearths at our expense.

But the most wonderful thing is that India has survived despite the forebodings of the prophets of doom. A day will come, hopefully within our lifetimes, when India will regain its lost glory!

Sanjeev

Hi Gotham,

Are you still in delhi? You can check my site : www.DelhiEvents.com & it will also be nice to meet you if possible.

Cheers, Rohit

Gotham,

As a child of both east and the west, you have a unique perspective on the world. Keep on writing...this is one of the most profoundly interesting viewpoints posted.

Peace,
Scott.

I second, Scott's observations, Gotham!! Well-written piece; written with absolute clarity!!

What I would like to ask you Gotham; is that you say it will be a challenge to succeed there... in your humble opinion.. "Besides the obvious, what is the unexpected challenge you found?"

North

Life - Death - Rebirth is something that is ingrained into our culture, we grow up with it so death as an even is commonplace, however the loss associated with it is always difficult. I have always been intrigued by the fact that death of an old person is actually celebrated in northern India - which makes a lot of sense, as the person has left his non functional or diseased or pained body and gained freedom.

Yes, I agree with Scott too. I love it when you all travel there and reflect what is happening in that part of the world.

The first hand words are priceless.....

As far as the life/death thing....enjoy your grandparents. I wish I had more time in this life to know them as an adult. They all have passed, so I only have childhood memories. But I feel their prescence and it is filled with love and wonderful memories.

joanie

"India is a LOT of EVERYTHING"

Dear GC,
That pretty much sums it up.

Dear Sanjeev (Klumsyklutz),
I liked your post. Just wanted to correct a couple of factual errors in your #4. According to Hindu belief, there aren't 84 million lives (as you've written) but 84 lakh lives. I'm sure you must have heard the term, "chaurasi lakh yoniyan" (84 lakh yonis). One million = 10 lakhs.

Secondly, your quote, "Much as Dr Manmohan Singh would like to, he can’t disinvest government’s stake in large loss-making public sector companies", is very debatable. There are a lot of vested interests involved in the disinvestment process of Indian govt. owned companies. On the one hand various ministers do not want to lose control over companies which they virtually consider as their fiefdom, and on the other hand, private parties are waiting like vultures to gobble up national treasures at throw away prices (in connivance with the govt. in power). On the face of it, it sounds very logical for the govt. to divest its stake in chronically loss making companies (note that the key word here is "chronically"), but what about the cases where profit making companies are being deliberately turned into loss making companies so that they can be sold off to waiting vultures.

There are also issues of National Security involved in selling huge Oil companies like BPCL and HPCL. Plus, don't forget that India is a mixed economy and not purely a capitalist one. There is a lot of importance given to social welfare in our constitution which will be negated if all govt. owned companies were sold off in a basket sale. In nutshell, all I want to say is that disinvestment is a tricky issue which cannot be decided without a serious and healthy debate about all the pros and cons attached with it.

Cheers!
Navin

What is true of India - the Exact Opposite is Equally True!

- India has one of the highest illiterate population, yet one in every Engineers in the world is an Indian.
- The oldest civilization in the world, yet it is arguably at the cutting edge of the technology front.
- People in Indian cities 4000 years back had probably one of the best drainage system in any urban settlement, yet the current bustling metropolis dont even have the basic sewer system!
- The first dentistry intervention in the world has been traced to Indian civilization 9000 years back, yet the modern day Indians do not have even basic health care in place!
- You can have a bullock cart block the way of a Mercedes on a Delhi road!

.... and many more.

Hello Gotham and Everyone,

It is pretty hard for me to leave my battlefield, but I am going to try harder to comment on other posts..Here goes,

India sounds fascinating, magical, mundane, and profound. I love that the funeral processions and wedding processions are side by side. Look forward to reading more..peace ruth

In India, death is the ultimate equalizer. It doesn't matter what caste you are, where you come from, or what you do.

Indeed,

here my,
Polish tales,
damn, dude, I'm telling you, forget about about it!
Public transportation! that where the magic..they should charge guys,
for all that polish pie, that's travelling around,
seriously!

Love, Passion!

dear Gotham

a wonderful, organic post. hope to read more.

dear marek

in life, death is the great equalizer.

Gotham, sounds like a most worthy challenge.
SK, can we count you in?

Hi Navin,

Thanks for the correction. I should have said "8.4 million" instead of 84 million.

Sanjeev

Gotham, I agree with what you have written about death, in the blogpost. When I call my mother, she often gives me news of some one's death, a relative, or an aquaintance.

In my opinion death should be celebrated. This Earth, is unenlightened, it is one of the most negative planets in the universe. When good souls come to this planet, and live a life span, learning in this Earth school whatever they came to learn, and are able to graduate and return home to the other side, with out resorting to suicide, and soul bruising, it is a tremendous achievement. For that reason I believe death should be celebrated.

Have you ever wondered why babies cry when they are born?? As soon as babies realise they are on Earth in physical form, they think," Oh no not this place again", and they cry, wail, weep.They miss the calm, serene, beautiful, joyous, perfect otherside. We can't blame them. Can we??

Thank you Gotham, and God bless.

Thanks Gotham its really nice post to read.
Even though I have not much perspective vision but after living 27 years and moved to US 3 months ago i feel to write or post comment to this post.
Till now to whomsoever American people i have discussed they still feel India is an outsourcing destination(considering such a GDP growth).Sometime i feel In some aspect it is true even though we have big shopping centers and all sorts of modern cars, there are more people don't have cloths and shelter. In fact the outsourcing is diving Indain middle class youth into various categories. One with upwardly mobile and live a modern American life , one get nice salary and still connected with roots and the one who are filling the gaps. The youths who are filling the gaps are living in a modern society where as in home they are still very connected to their root. The culture and value system are only puling them to connect to the basics and be an true Indian.

Very well put. Today (7/8/2006), a family of five was slitted to death by somebody. I didn't bother to read the details.

I stay in Delhi too and the power situation being what it is, I keep wondering how we can even think of India as the next superpower.

You have a great credit monitoring system in the US. Here the small businessman is constantly worried of his payments getting aborted for no fault of his. All the big talks in Davos are like building castles in the air.

Even in the local club, people of your Grandfather's age indulge in shameful politics completely against what your father teaches as a result of which me and my son suffers.

This is the spiritual legacy of our country- a country with a lot of spiritual knowledge but dubious implementation.

One NRI put it succintly "India is a land of the future and shall always remain a land of the future".

My heart wants to disagree but unfortunately my mind agrees with that.