THE PATRIOT

A couple of days ago I was witness to the flag lowering ceremony at the Wagah-Hussainwalla border between India and Pakistan.

I could see the blood boil among the old and young alike in the crowd because of the slogans shouted. The slogans were not at all of any nature which could demean the other country, they were the ones in which you praise your motherland.

All around me, everyone was shouting at the top of their voices, including my friends. Some even broke into a jig or two at the ‘Patriotic’ songs dished out from the blurting speakers.

A ‘Hair-raising’ experience said many.

I overheard one of them saying later that “It felt as if, the very next moment, if a ‘Pakistani’ came in front of me, I would cut him into two.”

So much for patriotism!

“Didn’t this ‘show’ promote pseudo-patriotism?”, I asked my friends.

Both countries dishing out songs praising themselves, and the crowds on the either side of the “no-man’s land” shouting at the top of their voices to prove their might.

I got various answers.

One said “The whole process was just to encourage the army personnel to go and fight on the border, so they can forget the humanitarian reasons, while shooting down each other.”

Another friend of mine said that it didn’t appear as pseudo patriotism to her, it just appeared as if children from grade II were fighting with each other. Nothing to be thought about, as such.

Ironically though, after becoming “true patriots”, we head for a place, 20 miles away, which was the centre of a separatist movement hardly 20 years ago, “The Golden Temple”.

Just as I sat down in the train for the return journey, I overheard someone say, how “peaceful” it was in the Gurudwara!!

And all agreed, including me.

But just as I said sat down in the train, I remembered a few more instances.

One that of a Tibetan refugee selling some goods in Dharamshala, the seat of the Dalai Lama, and a place oft visited by foreign tourists.

Just as we looked through some things which he had to sell, and asked the prices, we got a shock, we tried to bargain, but to no avail. So we chucked the idea of buying the show piece and walked ahead, and then he murmured “Indians never buy anything!!”

One of my friends, retorted, albeit amongst us, “How can he say that, he lives in India, and abuses Indians?”

Then it suddenly struck me that these were ‘refugees’ in India, who had put up many ‘Anti-Chinese’ slogans and posters all over Dharamshala.

And suddenly my mind came back to the Wagah-Hussainwala border again. Just as the flags were being brought down at sunset with much hullabaloo in the background of human voices, two birds were flying in the sky ignorant of the fact that they had just crossed over from Pakistan to India!

Secular!

While in the train, coming back from a so called educational tour, one of my friends sang a telegu song, she herself not being one. One of her friends tried to pull her leg, saying that not even, I, a south Indian, couldn’t understand the song!

To which I scathingly remarked, I am not a “Gultee”!!

She said “Oh I forgot, you were a Tamilian!”

To which, I didn’t respond, a lost cause, I thought…

Another friend added on, “You South-Indians all look similar, speak similar, there simply isn’t any difference!”

I resigned for sure now!

It seems as if all “small-eyed” creatures looked same, whether they be Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian!

But later I thought, why did I get irritated by the fact?

Am I not supposed to be secular in nature?

Where I can be called whatever,

I am an Indian, or in a larger context am a world citizen!

Throughout my life, my surname has been wrongly spelt, MEMON Vimal it reads, instead of MENON Vimal, including a month ago when I was paying the fees at the institute. And every time I correct them with a frowning face!

Was this an example of religious intolerance?

Although I go gaga over the secularism in India, whose Prime Minister is a Sikh, after a Roman Catholic declined the post, whose President is a Muslim, and over eighty percent of whose population consists of Hindus, and I myself am intolerant of this?

After prodding over it for a few minutes, I found out that more than religious intolerance, it was more a case of mistaken identity, or lost identity!

A scene from last year’s Oscar winner “Crash” came to my mind, where an American guy gets a call from his mother, and he tells her that he is with his Mexican Girl-Friend, to which the Girl-Friend snaps at him, saying she is half Puerto Rican and half Nicaraguan, and where can he find a Mexico in it?

A case of lost identity for sure I’d say!

The fact that some teachers remembered me in my school days through my roll no. too irritated me; I was given a name by my parents for god’s sake!

But then, the flip side of the coin is revealed by the fact that, how comfortable you might be in an alien culture?

Although being secular is one part, and being in your own comfort zone is another!

When I took the admission to the hostel four years ago, a strict directive was issue by the authorities, no associations, based on cast, creed, religion or language.

But I myself am a part of the KSA, or the Kerala Students Association, which consists of a group of students from the state of Kerala. And the best of my friends are within the so called association. It has more to do with your comfort zone, I guess!

Although, that doesn’t mean that I don’t have friends from outside the “association”. But the “rapport building exercise” was faster, I’d say!

I could make some good friends almost at the end of the four years of college life!

So I will hold the “Comfort zone” theory responsible for the mildly insecular nature!