Virtually There- V2

This article was originally posted here in ManipalBlog.

After VT-V1, I got some reviews saying that I brag a lot about Manipal. Well, I welcome healthy comments wholeheartedly, so in VT-V2, I’ll try to sneak Manipal feeling in, without mentioning Manipal anywhere( oops, did I mention Manipal again!)

Welcome to Virtually There (VT) – V2, version two, let’s try discovering our power!

Who hasn’t seen the Vodafone song video- “You and I, in this beautiful world”, little pug jumping around the boy, complimenting and playing with each other. Questions pop up; does “two” always make a perfect couple? Perfect couple are happy only when they are together? Being together make a happy couple? Does happy couple means empowering of two?

Did you get a hint that I’ll talk about old crap of love and relationships, definitely NO!

Let me tell you a story. It was a Thursday evening when I got off from the office shuttle, on the way back to my room. As usual, in the popular Bengaluru slow traffic, I managed to set my foot in the footpath. A grey innova car that was passing slowed down. Foreigner sitting in the backseat of the car immediately took out his camera and started clicking pictures. For a moment, I thought, had I become so popular with my first article in ManipalBlog!

I turned back to see what exactly he was trying to capture. It was a drunkard who had collapsed in the footpath. Foreigner looked around and started clicking in other direction. This time, group of men and woman waiting for their turn to fetch water from municipal water tap fascinated him. It literally made me look back and think, what is he trying to take back home, those stills from movie like “Slumdog Millionaire” that projected India as a poor, useless country?

It’s time that we brag about our country. When we two sit together next time, let’s talk about corruption, dirty politics, black money, violence, rape and murders, women molestation, hockey failures. Let’s not about how we have progressed, our economy’s constant GDP, our IT/industry sourcing, our military missile technology, innumerable PSLV launches, widening roads, connecting villages, Mary Kom’s bronze medal or anything that makes us proud!

We both are partner in the crime!

Because of us, today foreigner forgets to click the lady belonging to a different community dressing up a child as Krishna on an annual fancy dress competition. Because of us, he thinks that people are colourless here although we have a magnificent holi. Because of us, he thinks that we are in dark although we have diwali. Because of us, he thinks that we are in debt although we invented the zero that he counts daily!

Redefine INDEPENDENCE.