Bridging the Gap

Tonight, I will be milking the cow with the biggest bosoms ever, this article is about cultural differences that Indians may or may not feel, I say this, because I haven’t been anywhere outside India other than Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, and even there, I didn’t do much to experience their culture, in other words, I didn’t speak to anybody who wasn’t brown and didn’t have big noses and regular eyes. So yes, this is going to be another one of the many blog entries that people make about things that they don’t really know much about, simply because it’s a lot of fun knowing that people will read whatever they have to say. It’s the same reason why debating initially appealed to me, people just have to shut up and listen to all the things you have to say, even if it is a narcissistic drone like this article. Secondly, what I know about American culture is simply what I’ve seen in movies or read in books. Since I haven’t lived there, you may say that I have no idea, and as I have said, and I will not hold anything against you if you do.

OK, so here I am in my room, typing this from a country that is supposed to be one of the most culturally rich countries, a country to which people from all over the world come to “discover” themselves, sadly though, it seems like they are the only ones who are doing any soul searching or whatever, because, if you wiki India and read the article, the other name that India has is Hindustan, yes boys and girls, it is one of those countries in which a large portion of the population is deeply, profoundly, and, in many cases, falsely religious. In fact, One popular priest who has his own sparkly TV show even suggested that Sri Lanka was NOT the place referred to in Ramayana as ‘Lanka’, but that it was actually Australia, yes, this happened, you can’t make this stuff up. Don’t get me wrong, there are many pious people who are earnest, honest, principled and genuine, but, it is undeniable that there is a large generation gap between these earnest folk and the people who are in their pre mid-life now. Again, there are many people of this age group who are genuinely very religious in an honest way, but really, as far as I know, none of the people I have had the pleasure of meeting are religious people, hell, I bet there are some people who are unaware about many things that is common knowledge, like where the war in Maha-Bharatha took place.

Now, I have established (very weakly) that the current bar-hopping, clubbing, girlfriend having,  ganja-smoking (well, this can’t really be called non-religious, legend says that, when Amrutha was being churned, a drop of it fell on the ground and it grew into marijuana, and it is also written in many scriptures that Shiva, the God of death, smoked a lot of marijuana), cigarette smoking, causeless generation have become the way that they are simply because of the advent of mass communication, because of the fusion of so many cultures, of which, the western culture stands tall.

This can be viewed as being a positive or a negative thing. The main negative reasons being that, slowly, the original culture of people seems to be vanishing, and everybody is slowly, but surely progressing to a common state, which is far from how the world was when people whose teachings the previous generation and those before them are/were so religiously following. And the main positive reason is latter half of the negative one. While it is very important to hold on to our own culture and our principles in a world where originality is becoming extremely scarce, one thing we must realize is that when the principles that people follow were propounded, people were absolutely unaware of any region that is beyond the ocean, and even if they did, there is no possible way anybody can logically conclude that one day, a bunch of people with funny accents and fair skin would colonize their land. We must realize that eventually, there is only one way we can truly classify people, which is, being morally good or bad. It is as simple as that. For example, a guy who drinks socially cannot be viewed as a blasphemer if he is the head of a charity organization. We must also realize that crossing the ocean is not really that big a deal now, well, maybe George Bush will refute this, because he thought that oceans could protect the US from terrorists. Since it isn't difficult to cross them anymore, it becomes pretty hard to say that the whole planet is becoming a single entity. It is obvious that there are many differences of opinion when it comes to people of different cultures, and that there will always be a small amount people who will be against globalization, but there is also so much friendship, admiration and also, many common objectives and thoughts.

So, in essence, what I am saying is that we, as people who live on planet earth, have to work past the cultural differences simply because it is inevitable, and it’s hard to imagine life without heavy metal or football and that it is also of paramount importance to cling to the culture that we were brought up in.  So, if you live abroad, go and eat some local cuisine, drink some of the local hooch and mingle.

PS.  Some people maintain that I have a stunted sense of sarcasm, but I don’t think that’s the case, so if any parts of this post seems obscene, you can just go ahead and assume that it’s because of my poor understanding of sarcasm and subtlety.