What is a country? What is India?

What is India? How do we define it? Who is an Indian? Amitabh (Mitu) asked me these questions about 2 years back when I was at SIDH. The larger question was how do we define a nation, and more specifically how to define India? India still can be defined to an extent, but how to define Hindustan or Bharat? These questions have been bothering me for sometime now.

I thought of number of possible parameters that can be used to define a nation. The parameters of culture, language, geographical boundaries, religion, the way people look etc. But they all seem to fail when it comes to defining Bharat. The culture at a level changes every 10 miles in any direction one travels. Yet at the same point the deeper culture remains same here, in Pakistan, Bangladesh or any country in this region. The same is the case with language. Geographical boundaries are also no barriers. Be it the mountains or the seas, Bharat extends beyond them. Religion is again that changes from neighbors to regions. So how do we define our country? Where do we draw the borders on the map. Interestingly the borders of present day India were not drawn by any Indian. Our borders were drawn by British officers. The validity of parameters based on which they drew the line is for us to decide individually.

I read a blog recently which was written on the Tibet issue. The writer of the blog wondered why India is failing to take a stand on Tibet? What stand should India take, I thought. The Chinese have reasons of their own to believe Tibet to be part of them. The Tibetans have reasons to have a free nation. How would a third party like India decide whose reasons are more genuine?Will the parameters we choose to take sides, remain the same when it comes to some other country or even within India?

From an individual perspective the question is where do we relate ourselves and where we do not? We relate to any reported incident in a village in Punjab, but going further west a few miles there might be another village in Punjab (Pakistan) for which we may not feel concerned. How did we draw this line in our minds? Tomorrow if another division happens in the country, will we stop relating to another set of people?

So why does an individual like me worry about all these questions? Why don't I leave this for the politicians or bureaucrats? At an individual level I think it's a matter of my identity. It's how I identify myself. The answers to these questions may not effect my salary or my grades in anyway, but it is true I can't let them remain answered. All my fight for grades and packages is for my identity, and this is one of the fundamental issue relating to what I am.

The questions still remain. What is India? Where does it start and where does it end? Who is an Indian? Who am I?

Death of Mahashay Sadaram Arya

It was september 1997. One month had passed since my father passed away. I was 15 years old then. School had started again and I was trying to get back into normal life. My friends at school were proving to be a great support. Incidently two of them had also been in the situation I was in now. Their father had also passed away in the last few years. Their support in the class was proving invaluable to me. On the other hand I was acting the brave boy. I would smile at anyone who would stop and talk to me. Before they could ask about my well being, I would promptly ask about theirs.

One month had passed. It was a hot september afternoon. I had just returned from school. My mom was at work. She had prepared lunch for me in the morning itself and left for work. I only had to take shower and then eat the lunch. This had been our usual schedule in the afternoon. I had just entered my home, was just surfing the TV channels when the door bell rang. I wasn't expecting anyone. As I opened the door I saw Mahashay Sadaram Arya standing there. He was an old man from Haryana. Mahashay is the title used in the state of Haryana and West U.P which signifies 'respected gentleman'. This title is usually used for an elderly person in the village who commands respect. Somebody people look upto for advice in village matters or even personal matters.

For people like him nothing more is more important than defending the integrity of this title. No amount of money or any other incentive would prove effective when it comes to influencing their descision in village matters. In a village, such people will hold lot more integrity than the local judge or lawyer.

Sadaram ji had great respect for my father. He considered him like his son. He would often visit our home and have long discussions on the present state of the country, the youth and the possible solutions. In Jeevan Vidya he saw the potential to give right understanding to the youth. His biggest worry was the disorientation of the village youth towards their village, their culture and unusual fascination towards city life. He called it the 'trouser culture'. The steady decline in the interest in farming was something that really worried him. In discussions with my father he saw some kind of hope for future. And so Mahashay Sadaram Arya was very fond of my dad. He was fond of me too. But I disliked him. I disliked him, because he was a typical village elder and I was growing into a modern boy. His expectations bothered me and my freedom worried him. While he expected a young boy like me should learn and appreciate the art of touching feet of elders, to me that looked an act of curbing my freedom. So while everytime I touched his feet the way my father wanted but in me I always felt uncomfortable. The act of bending down in front of someone and touching his feet seemed an interferance in my freedom.

Anyways, so this man was standing out at the door happy to see me. I too smiled back at him (with a little sense of discomfort in me). This time there was no dad who would ask me to touch his feet. Therefore the responsibility fell on me. I bent down and touched his feet. He gave me his blessings. I led him inside our house into the drawing room. It was a hot day and his face was red. I offered him some water and then sat on the sofa in front of him. We were both sitting quietly waiting for the other to start a conversation. He broke the silence by asking how my school was and how my studies were going. I had the usual readymade replies for such questions. I answered them promptly with an artificial smile. There was again a period of silence.

I was expecting him to mention a word about my father. Something of a sort that how bad he felt to hear the news of his demise. But he wasn't saying a word. I thought maybe he gathering some courage to speak to me about him. He then spoke." Please call your father and inform him about me. Please ask him if he could come a little early from office. I want to discuss something important with him".

I didn't know what to say. This man had come to meet my father. He had no clue that he had passed away just a month back. We had sent a letter to everyone informing about the demise, but I guess the letter never reached his village. The Indian postal system cannot be fully trusted when it comes to delivering important letters.
This situation was new to me. I had to inform somebody in person about my father's death. I just didn't know what to say, what words to speak. I kept quiet for what could have been the longest one minute in my life. I was looking at him and he was looking at me. He was probably wondering why I am not picking the phone and calling my father.

I then spoke."Don't you know? Did you not recieve the post card? My father died last month".

There was complete silence in the room. I could hear the sound of fan. This old man had completely gone quiet. His face got more red. He just sat there without making any sound. His eyes were wide open. He was looking at something, not me.

I slowly started feeling bad. It felt as if I gave this man a shock of his life. A shock he was not prepared for. We just sat there quietly facing each other. No one said anything. He then got up. "I should leave now", he said. He then moved towards the door. He stopped, turned back and put his hand on my head. It was a gesture of giving me good wishes. He then went away, went back to his village in Haryana from where he had come.

I was wondering what was going inside him. He must have had lots of plans for his village, all of which must have come crashing down. The problem of disoriented youth all of sudden must have become huge. When he would reach back home in the evening people would ask about the meeting. What will he tell them?? I kept thinking on all that the whole day. That was probably the first time I cursed the postal department. Why did the post card not reach him??

Few days past by since that day. One day I recieved a post card. It said, " With great greif we inform you about the sad demise of Mahashay Sadaram Arya". The old man had died within a month of that incident. The postal department did not miss the letter this time thankfully. I had tears in my eyes.

It's been more than 10 years now since this incident happened. Mahashay Sadaram Arya's face is still clear to me. I still remember the details of that day.

The Blue Tooth way of touching feet

I was at home last week. It was good to be back with the family after a long time. The entire family was there over the dinner on 29th March. Usually it's unlikely in our family for everyone to be present together at the same time in the house and have dinner. So this was one such not so often occasion. And boy we did have fun. Lots of chit chatting, lots of leg pulling and lots of jokes.

Amongst all those funny conversation, one such conversation tinkled a bell in me which I thought is worth sharing on this platform. It was about the Blue tooth technology. For those who may not be aware of what Blue tooth refers to, let me just mention a line for it. Blue tooth is a technology, where two electronic devices can interact with each other, without any physical contact between them. This technology is commonly used in mobile phones these days. If two phones are in vicinity of each other, then using Blue tooth they can exchange data from one another. And for this purpose physical contact is not necessary.

Anyways, coming back to our family talk, my brother tried to show the extension of this technology in our relations. He described, what he termed "The blue tooth way of touching feet".
It's a common practice in Indian families to touch the feet of any elderly person one meets. The method of touching feet has however changed over the years. The original method was to bend fully and massage both the legs of the elderly. This massage giving would last for half a minute to one minute. The elderly person meanwhile showers the youngsters with all the best wishes he can think of. This method over the years 'evolved' into a method where the youngster bends down fully and touches both the feet with both hands. The time reduced from half a minute to about 10 seconds. And in these few seconds, the elderly would shower whatever best wishes he can think of. The massaging of feet vanished. Further 'evolution' meant, the youngsters now would bend and touch any one foot with any one hand. The time of the process further decreased. Moving further into time, the youngsters would now just half bend, and touch the knees of the elderly with one hand, instead of the feet. The time taken would be in order of couple of seconds. And now the latest thing is to touch the feet using Blue tooth. The youngster just pretends to bend, with one hand pointing towards the feet of elderly. There would be no physical contact. The hand and the feet would be in vicinity of each other. Similarly the elderly would just keep his hand over the youngster's head and not touch it. My brother termed this as 'The Blue tooth way of touching feet'.

My Nani (grandmother) had a great laugh over this. She is the only one in the family who has witnessed the massaging method of feet touching. My brothers and I only know the latest two forms described.