“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” – Barack Obama.

“More than you know it I’m aware,
Of this connection that we share.
I know it seems like sometimes I don’t care,
But you are the colors that I wear” – “3 AM”, Poets of the Fall.

“I’m proud to be an Indian ” – Twitterer, January 26th, 2010.

“You were an Indian in America, and now you’re an American in India. Always confused.” – Neo’s Uncle Abhay on Neo, January 26th 2010.

“What time is Lost?” – Neo, moments ago.

*

On Republic Day, Uncle Abhay kept trying to get Neo to enjoy the parade, but Neo was more interested in spending quality time with his Google Reader, podcasts and wine – only two things were “dry” on Republic Day at Neoville: the municipal water supply, and Abhay’s throat because he couldn’t stop talking.

Uncle Abhay finally gave up: “Are you even an Indian? What the hell are you doing in India? Why did you come here? Aren’t you proud of being an Indian?”.

No.

Neo has plenty of time to listen to Raga Marwa, or wait for his turn at the traffic light, but he has no time to waste watching parades, waving the flag of any country, chanting slogans or reading @nevervotes92’s tweets on how he’s proud of being an Indian. Saying that you are proud of being an Indian isn’t much different than saying you’re proud to be born on a Monday – being an Indian is just a fact, not an achievement to be proud of. Would you be less proud if you were born Romanian, or on a Tuesday ? You could say you’re lucky to be an Indian – millions of Bangladeshis would agree.

The ridiculously sloganeered and caricatured shows of patriotism that occur in India (and every other country) on “national holidays” are an insult to the intelligence of its citizens. What happened to the thoughtful, deep India ? When did we choose gaudy weddings over happy marriages, not-stalgia and past glory over reality, rutty careers over our real aspirations, pretentious religious ceremonies over what they actually mean, deep-fried over grilled, elder-worship over thinking for ourselves, the display of money over tastefulness and rote-memorized slogans over an intuitive understanding of civic duty ? You can get a kid to recite “Mera Bharat Mahan” or the sugary-sweet “All Indians are my brother and sisters” until his face is blue, but he’s still not going to stop throwing his fucking candy wrapper on the road until a parent teaches him to.

And have you noticed ? Around the world, the more pathetic the condition of its citizens, the grander and more pretentious are the patriotic celebrations and the forced, fake statements of pride. If the Martians were watching the parades on TV, they’d think North Korea was the leader of the world. The lipstick on a prostitute gets more garishly red as dawn approaches, or as the drugs wear off.

A few of Neo’s family members and friends serve (proudly) in the Indian armed forces. None of them are impressed by the Facebook status updates, tweets and blog posts proclaiming pride for India on national holidays or disasters. This Republic day, Neo’s friend said “We serve in the army so the rest of you motherfuckers can be safe and change India, not so you can sit around forwarding patriotic songs and feel happy.”

How about we replace all the parades, speeches and sloganeering with a simple ceremony that honors the men and women who would run towards a gunshot rather than away from it ? The ceremony can end in a simple wish – “we honor the Indians who died for our country this year, and we hope our enemies will soon have the opportunity to die in very large numbers for their country.”

Hello, and welcome to Neo’s blog. He is Indian, and he’s proud of many things. But he’s not proud to be an Indian. He just is an Indian.

*

PS: You still like parades ? Here’s a parade that will make you proud, or maybe, if you’re like Neo, laugh uncontrollably and then collapse with sadness:

PS2: Are you proud of this blog post? If you are, you shouldn’t be. You didn’t write it.

Last week Neo finally reconciled with the friend who convinced him that it is considered romantic to propose to South Indian girls with a rava idli instead of a ring. The only reason why Mrs. Neo accepted the proposal was because she probably didn’t know any better (plus there was the slight matter of Neo being the perfect guy, and the even slighter matter of Mrs. Neo being drunk). Besides, Mrs. Neo gave Neo bonus points for even finding a rava idli in Vegas.

Exactly a year later, the Neos were married in Chennai by a priest who had the sort of authoritative voice that could successfully hail a Chennai auto driver from 100 feet away. Neo’s aunt helped translate the priestly instructions from Tamil to English, with helpful value-added interjections like “You didn’t have to scratch your belly, Neo. When the priest said “repeat after me”, he didn’t mean it that literally” and “Stay away from that fire, or you’re going to set your dhoti on fire again.”

There is immense business potential in Indian weddings – Neo pitched his startup idea to Mrs. Neo’s rich uncle (before the stock market crashed) during one of Mrs. Neo’s 193 saree changes.

Neo calls it the “WTFGO LCD overhead display system”:

Problem statement: At any given time, about 80% of the wedding guests and approximately 100% of those getting married don’t know “WTF is going on”.

Solution: The WTFGO system is a wall-mounted LCD display that helps people understand “WTF is going on”. Example messages on this display would be:

1. “This part of the ceremony has no cosmic significance – we’re just standing around waiting because the priest had to take yet another bathroom break.”
2. “The rumors of bacterial infection in the Kheer rice pudding are entirely unfounded. Though it could use more sugar.”
3. “We have missed this mahurat because of the physical altercation between the bride’s niece and the bride’s BFF over which mascara color the bride should wear, but DO NOT PANIC – there will be another auspicious moment in just five more hours.”
4. “As a safety measure, please continue to let your kids run unsupervised while you eat and lament the death of Indian culture.”
5. “The awesome honey-sweet milk that is being used for this wedding is graciously provided by Aarey Milk – Got (Vedic) Milk?”
6. “If you haven’t eaten in the past 2 minutes and are feeling weak, please notify some sufficiently subservient-looking family member from the bride’s family and they will get you a plate full of carbs food from the buffet line.”
7. (White folks in the audience can pay to subscribe to the official Twitter feed, which features retweet-friendly, grammar-free Deepak-Chopra-esque lines like: “Seventh Step is for Sakha – friendship – to be dependable and faithful to each other and life long companionship.”.)

The best part of the Neo wedding ceremony was the wedding night – sweet, blissful sleep for 9 hours. Yes, all the Neos did on their wedding night was sleep – judge all you like, but lets just say it was not easy for Neo to stay “up” after being holed up for 20 hours in a claustrophobic room filled mostly with 80 year-old kids.

But the elders would be proud, because the Neos consummated their wedding on a highly auspicious day – it’s just that the auspicious day turned out to be an exact year before their wedding date. That was fate. After all, who are we mortals to judge the intentions of God ?

As Deepak Chopra says, “The atoms of the universe are the thoughts of the mind, the food we eat are made of the stars of Gods creation, and the love we make is the Universe smiling at itself.”

(Actually Neo just made that line up, but he feels one with Deepak Chopra so it’s all good).

The rava idlis for breakfast the next morning were delicious.

PS: A shout out for gay marriage rights. After all, why should only straight people suffer ? Here’s your moment of zen:

PS2: In case you haven’t guessed by now, Neo is no expert on Indian philosophy, but from what he’s gathered from his family, the Indian position on sex is (no, not missionary, get your mind out of the gutter, and your sex life out of the rut) – “Sex is a dirty thing, so you should only do it to the people you love the most.”

PS3: Actually, Neo prefers the Wii.

“Do you feel safer outside a bar or outside a temple?” – a close “moderate” friend triumphantly asked Neo, while making the ok-maybe-its-not-entirely-true-but-its-still-useful case for religion.

Well, certainly Neo can concede that there are some temples that are safer than some bars – but (as anyone who’s visited the Kali temple in Kolkata knows), there are some temples that are actually more dangerous than many bars!

Speaking of things that are safer than bars, is Neo’s favorite cake shop in Bangalore divine too? The evidence is more compelling than it seems – on his last visit to “the Cake shop of the Taj”, Neo observed a lady who, after taking the first bite from her (accurately labeled) “death by chocolate” cake, exclaimed “oh God! oh God!”.

Of course the “but its better than going to a bar” argument is a  bit of a straw-man argument. Surely there are stronger cases for being religious (although Neo hasn’t heard any yet).

But what Neo told his friend surprised him: “religious moderates are the problem, since they create the cake on which the fungus of extremism could potentially grow”.

Ok, the cake analogy is getting stale already, so let’s switch to alcohol: Just like every alcoholic was a “social drinker” once, every extremist was once a moderate.

(Neo had an excellent sex analogy too, but he wants to stick to the “stuff-that’s-bad-for-you” theme. (And yes, all software guys love brackets within brackets!)).

Drinking is not bad for a society because moderate drinking is bad, but because moderate drinking significantly increases the risk of becoming an alcoholic.

“Extreme moderates”, i.e. those who believe in “moderation in everything” should consider that in many cases, moderation is an oxymoron (“moderately virgin”) or evil (“moderate supporter of terrorism”). But in other cases it has so much potential of turning bad, that you’re almost surely better off without it – “moderate drinker”, “moderate lover of chocolate cake” and “moderately religious”.

So did Neo moderate his “extremely moderate” religious friend with the above argument ? No – but Neo led by example. Neo showed his “moderate atheism” (another oxymoron) by pointing out one of the major drawbacks of being an atheist – atheists don’t really know what to say instead of “oh God” while having sex!