Austra-leah Mate!

I thought i was just missing from the bloggin scene, but when i checked by in...much to my dismay, i couldnt remember the link nor that i had last written here almost half an year ago! SO yeah..about time to be back!!...reasons for being missing from the scene : 1 part laziness + 1 part busy planning for Australeah + 1 part nothing motivating enough to write now...

The second reason is over as am back to Nihon-land. The first...thats perennial...but sometimes manage to dust it off (like today) and the third....happens to be Australeah...

When i visited this continent country a fortnight ago, there were so many wonderful things about the trip that I thought i would share with my friends...but then one fortnight later, the tube has been beaming horrific tales of the land down under!! There are some disturbing things that I see...hence the write-up.

The biggest glare: Read up the "Australian" or any print media worth the repute in AUS...They are now reporting how the Indian media is running this issue minute by minute. However, the actual attacks did not even be any newsworthy news...This tells you something. 1. Either our media is making the incidents bigger than size OR 2. These ppl are still not considered mainstream enough to be newsworthy. Either way, HOUSTON, we have a problem!!

The problem with no. 1 above is well known to Indians in a different bottle. Lets just change some actors...the victim is a lower caste (read D-A-L-I-T or its modern avataar, the B-A-H-U-J-A-N), coming to maximum city for railway entrance exams. The bullies are the local political party goons, looking to assuage their egos. The newpapers in Hindiland would then be screaming discrimination....This would then be the same!!

The problen with no. 2 is the classic Indian identity problem. Unarguably, we are the worlds biggest and most powerful consumer group. We export 94,000 students; the largest anywhere, every year, to AUS. Yet, we are denied the attention? When can we command it? BigB, way to go. We have the muscle, its time we flaunted it. Yes, we are a developing country...but some parts of it are very well developed (in the true sense of the word). Its time we started behaving it. Some things need to be done, not for their practicality, but for the need to establish Brand India. The message that needs to go out loud and clear is...we are the world's friendliest country, BUT, do NOT rub us the wrong way. You will pay a heavy price. We need to assert our presence, what some call "nuisance value"!!

Lastly, i will conclude with my basic diktat: Humans anywhere on this planet are the same everywhere apart for the epidermal differences. We are driven by the same forces of greed, money, lust, fear, ambition, love, hatred.... Equal number of non-Indians get raped, hacked to death in India as in Aus...so lets start standing up for humans and humanity. Let not the divisions of race, caste, creed, nation, gender hold us from performing our best...