Sour Grapes, Greener Grass... Whatever!

So well sometime back I was with this friend in the metro who was two years younger. So we had a pretty animated conversation on India, mentalities and it ended on guys.

Okay so it all started when she said she wants to go abroad for further studies because she is sick of India. And I am a whole-hearted patriot. Don’t get me wrong. I see all kinds of wrong things in India which are like in my face but then at the end of the day, it’s my country. So I told her to not get me started on it but she went on about how people think so conventionally and she just wants a group of friends that are similar to who she is and the kind of family background she comes from which is liberal. Even though I get where she’s coming from I failed to understand how India can be blamed for that.

At the age that we are broadly, every person starts getting enough individualistic perspective to be who they want to be and what their choices makes them. So, if the family background makes them who they are, she can very well go meet other people. There are tremendously varied kinds of people to get to know in our surroundings. She thinks India kicks in because of the fact that it is the typical Indian conservative mentality to hold her back. But I think that kind of phrase doesn’t hold value anymore because the phase we are in, we can’t be called specifically traditional or conservatist  or on the contrary, modernists. We are just a diverse lot with diverse mindsets. To each his own. She just has to find the right people. She doesn’t understand that she just wants a change of environment and not change of country. Or maybe it’s just her desire to travel.

Then she started talking about how the guys here are just huge perverts and think that a girl is asking for it if she is wearing hot pants or something. But what she’s forgetting is that this is not limited to Indians. It happens everywhere. I don’t know how she can think that it’s just Indians. To be clearer with this, the “slut walk” that happened in Delhi was a foreign idea adopted by an Indian girl. I understand how hard it can get to fight this mentality but you can’t quit thinking there’s a better alternative. Nothing like that exists.

And no, I’m not being complacent and nor am I playing the denial card here. I personally am in awe of this particular country and I would love to go and base myself there but that’s for entirely different reasons. India has a different characteristic about itself. Others love it. But it’s just human psyche that the grass always looks greener on the other side. You really have to set your reasons right and mostly, you have to stop lying to yourself. If you want a different kind of a culture, say it. If you want to live like the rest, say it. If you want to go to the UK or the US because it has always been your dream and it looks so fancy and the accents seem so attractive or whatever, say it! No matter what others think of your reasons, they are your reasons and you’re not lying to yourself. You’re not believing a lie and in turn expecting something which is so not what you wanted to expect in the first place. You want to have a life which is different than this and that’s it! Stop blaming India for being bad so that others look lucrative to you!

And if you really think something’s wrong with India, don’t go. Let the quiet riot simmer inside of you and make it contagious. Let all the Indians break free… with you!