a critical exposition on the indian public

Indians in general are a group of people with more self-respect than their achievements would warrant, and an ego that would give one the impression that they belong to a race of super-powerful, godly beings who have every right to look down upon the rest of the world and expect the best of the best, even if they haven’t done anything to deserve it. They are, ironically, a very sycophantic people who flatter people from other countries until they’re told that they’re annoying, and curse them behind their backs afterward out of sheer envy for their supposedly superior birth. They criticize people from every other country, blame them for everything bad that goes on in the world (at the same time promoting the notion that their own conduct is unimpeachable), have a particularly bad grudge against the United States (which they believe is the source of all evil), deride every other country when the faintest opportunity to do so pokes its head around a distant corner, and ironically dream of going abroad at the same time.

Indians have a tendency to live in the past, to exalt their country’s ostensibly rich culture, and compare the antiquity of their civilization to those of much younger countries (the United States comes in here again), and conclude that India is the best country that ever was. If one reflects on the matter, it becomes pretty apparent that India is put in a very embarrassing position if the developmental gap between it and countries of Europe and the Americas and other countries is taken into consideration. So what has India’s ‘rich cultural heritage’ brought it? Nothing. Except perhaps traders turned plunderers in the Middle Ages, but that’s another story. The obvious conclusion here is that blathering endlessly on what India used to be centuries ago has little or no relevance where India’s position in the world now is concerned. What happened to that supposedly glorious past? Where did all of those exalted qualities that differentiated the Indians from barbarians go?

Where hypocrisy is concerned, there’s no rivaling Indians. Indians are the biggest group of hypocrites one could ever come across. I already mentioned one point, that Indians sycophantically flatter foreigners and then curse them behind their backs. I’m going to elaborate on this, because it’s not just foreigners, but Indians who’ve lived in a foreign country and have a foreign accent and all who fall in this category. I happen to be one such Indian. In school and places, the majority of the people who talk to me put on a laughably lame imitation of an American accent, to what end, I don’t know. It’s unnerving, and a few times I’ve even said so, but the obvious conclusion (I’m going to be using this phrase a lot) is that they try to suck up to me, possibly hoping that I, whom they take to be a narrow-minded chauvinist, would immediately take a liking to them and stuff. I’ve met more people like this than I can keep track of, and seriously, if you’re Indian and reading this, the next time you meet an American or an NRI from America, don’t try and imitate their accent. It’s insulting. There are other instances where Indians exhibit blatant hypocrisy, so I’ll leave it to you to do the homework.

Self-respect. If you’re Indian, then you’re doubtless familiar with the word. Like I said in the first sentence, Indians have more self-respect than their achievements would warrant. They have no semblance of humility, reek of an ego gone bad, are loath to help people, and at the same time criticize people from other nations for being indifferent to others’ plights (another example of hypocrisy). What an Indian would call patriotism, I call ego. Where an Indian would put up his nose and walk away, pretending never to have seen what they saw, an American would voluntarily step up and say, “Would you like me to help you?” I’m talking from experience.

Indians can’t take a joke. Their sense of humor borders on nonexistent, and in the few instances where an Indian is seized by a comical afflatus, the joke comes out so badly that the audience begins to wonder if there was ever any joke at all. There are of course, exceptions (Russell Peters, for one, but he was born and brought up in Canada), but this is a critical exposition, so I’m not about to contradict myself. Like I was saying, some of the jokes I’ve heard are so corny, so nonsensical that they’ve made me want to throw up my insides. And Indians hate it when people make fun of them, even it’s the faintest allusion to pointing out something humorous like, say, their hilarious accent. Let’s take Russell Peters’ jokes for example. The object of his jokes are usually stereotypes associated with Asians, and primarily Indians. And of course every other country. But do you see Americans going, “Oh my gosh! He just made fun of my country! Damn him!”? Because Indians get all inflamed whenever he pokes a little fun at their manifestly funny idiosyncrasies. Just today there was an article in the newspaper regarding Russell Peters and his supposedly racist jokes. Whoever the writer of the article was, they most probably lack the faintest hopes of ever being in possession of something that used to be a brain. The article ended with, “The joke’s on us.” How deep. The joke’s on us? Why the heck didn’t I think of that? Russell Peters said, “An Indian guy…” And I thought he was talking about a Mexican! Sheesh! If they’re so offended by his innocuous jokes (when they should actually be learning from them and striving to fix their faults), they should bury themselves underground where nobody can poke fun at them and where the world doesn’t have to be bothered by their continual complaining.

Here’s a question. What is Bollywood? If you’ve heard of India, then you’ve probably heard the word ‘Bollywood’ in the same sentence. Why? Because almost every Indian is obsessed with it to the point of completely changing their way of living and dressing to imitate those shown in the movies. I’ve watched several Bollywood movies, and some of them are good, but that isn’t to say that Bollywood is Heaven or something like that. The majority of the movies are corny, devoid of anything resembling a plot, overly sentimental to the point of ludicrousness, and plain lame. Indians are obsessed with them anyway. Russell Peters once visited India and was being interviewed by this weirdo anchor of some weirdo channel (whom I, for whatever reason, dislike greatly), and one of the questions he asked was, “Do you watch any Bollywood movies?” He could have concealed his hungry eagerness to hear his answer, but whatever. It could still qualify for a normal, casual question. Russell Peters says No, and describes the usual cliché, which I have no patience to repeat. But the anchor, dropping all pretence, presses him twice, thrice with the same goddamn question. So what if he doesn’t watch Bollywood movies? So what if he thinks they suck? It’s not like the ugly interviewer ever starred in any of the movies or anything, right?

I would write about a general endeavor by the youth of India to imitate the manner of the Americans, but since this is prevalent world over, I would rather pass on this one, lest this entry become too long.

Moving on from the psychology of the Indians, we reach their societal behavior. Indians may boast of how well-maintained their homes are, how punctiliously clean and organized their furniture is, how much they love cleanliness, and all this could be true, since self-centeredness is an inevitable adjunct to the Indians’ humungous egos. But the moment you step out into the streets, you’re greeted by every unpleasant thing conceivable. The roads are littered with age-old garbage, with passersby augmenting the junk in the pitifully overflowing dumpsters, and those too lazy to walk all the way up to said dumpsters throwing their trash on the road. People urinate on the side of the roads despite the quasi-pleading messages that read, “Don’t pass urine here.” Red streaks of spit (a result of chewing a species of leaf called paan) can be seen on every wall on the roadside. Advertisement bills are stuck by the hundreds on a single wall, most of the time overnight, and even on a newly painted or newly constructed wall or bridge.

Indians know no rules, a fact that becomes manifest if you’re a newcomer to the country and are optimistically driving your new car out into the road. Motorbikes and scooters and autorickshaws are all over the streets like pests, their fickle-minded drivers going from one side of the road to the other and back and forth like that until they crash into something. Nobody sticks to their lane, and there are few drivers who don’t straddle lanes while driving. Large buses stop in the middle of the road for indefinite periods of time (sometimes) to pick up passengers or let them get off. Car-drivers take a right turn from the left lane at the crossroads. People honk for no reason, probably because they get sexually excited by the irritatingly loud sound. They don’t stop when the stoplights turn red, and start moving before they turn green. There can be no debating the fact that Indian roads are the worst in the world, and that 99% of Indian drivers don’t even deserve a tiny corner of a fake driver’s license. I’m of the opinion that, judging by the behavior of Indians today, they deserved every moment of the torture (as they like to call it) that they got at the hands of the British when their reign was still going on.

Mr. Narayana Murthy, the founder of Infosys, in one chapter of his book A Better India: A Better World, has pretty much encompassed everything I’ve said here or would have liked to say, in a much milder way, of course. Minus a few points, which, I think we can all agree, are better left unmentioned.

There’s no denying the fact that I’m Indian, even though I was born in the United States and would prefer it over India any day, hence my views as expressed here could be perceived as opprobrious. I did take on a critical, disparaging tone while writing this, although I tried my best to write from the standpoint of a non-Indian, or an Indian who’s disgusted by the state of his country. One needs to understand that I’m talking about Indians in general and not the Indian population in its entirety. The upper-classes, I must say, are quite civilized and sensible more often than not. Anyone offended by this entry needs to look into the mirror to find all their answers. On this note, I’m signing off.