Say something in Indian!

            If  you can possibly discount the politics and poverty of India, you would think this country is absolutely the most beautiful place under the Sun. But, who am I kidding, how do you discount the corruption of the political world  and the ignore the starving elephant in the room. So as you add these 2 to the mix, then appears the land of contrasts. On one side live the poorest of the poor and on the other side live the insanely rich, neither can quite explain how they came to be where they are now. The first can't come up with an answer and the other better not come up with the answer.

           But as you scratch the surface of what meets the eye, lies a greater something  that is masked by the 2 already mentioned giants of the nation. I'd call it sheer beauty. Beauty in its art, music, literature, diversity of religions, tolerance to the diversity of religions and respect to this tolerance, in the most part. Then, there is beauty in the landscape. Ranging from the snow capped Kashmir to the intolerable scorching heat of the small towns to the mesmerizing greenery to the long winding rivers that are looked upon as the source of life. Beauty in the art of driving without traffic lights or driving with no lights at all.

            Beauty in being content.

            Beauty in disregarding the greedy. Beauty in the jostling crowds that move at their own pace. Beauty in the different languages they speak in every state. Pride in owning their language with its own poetry and literature indigenous to that land. Beauty in broken English when you can't speak the language. Beauty in Bollywood, Kollywood, Tollywood and Mollywood. Beauty in its spicy food and spicier TV masala.

            Beauty in trying to explain this awesome country to an American friend who says, "Say something in Indian".  Beauty as you bite your tongue because I want to say," we speak a million languages in India. Not one of them is called Indian."