Sunday, September 26, 2010

The free world

I don't mean to write about Pakistan terrorists or any mullahs who hold the world at ransom by their random acts of stupidity. I am talking about how much the mindset of India as a collective unit worked. Now, the 'patriotic' creatures settle down. I am not against the country. I am in favor of Democracy and the Democracy in itself is a sham; it is like defining 'goodness' - you have 1001 random acts that can get classified. I am certainly not going there.

What I am rather going to speak out is how India remains in it's own sense without knowing the demands or what happens outside the spectra. I mean since time immemorial India has always been callous in it's behavior. Perhaps it would be rude to say callous, let's say indifferent thought as it never fell in the scheme of things.

Sample this, any country pillaged 11 times or so back to back - that is indifference, well you can say we were separated them happy in provinces rather than the country as a whole. But that is the indifference I am talking about. Since then till now nothing much has changed but for the late awakening but are we late to wake up or did we wake up at the right time or are we scrambling around?

India for time immemorial has been an agricultural land. Quality rice produced here is not for the Indians now, the best of the breed has "Basmati" but India went without an international stamp or approval. India never approved of any standard sitting else where to approve of the use. Some country, US I think, patented this and the product of India was never for use in India. It was a classic case of not having a vision, perhaps India was never led by a good leader. Someone back in the times suggested to rule a country you don't need educated person to lead you from the front. Perhaps the times then required someone, anyone like that to lead but we have lost more because of such actions. Obviously, that is for the next time not in this moment.

Our inspiration has always been from the west for everything. In the modern age, we have always looked at buying arms from the west, and they usually hand over the old, outdated stuff and the military spending on this runs into several billions. That aside, if you look at Yoga as a practice, today most around the world look for this from a therapeutic value. It started way back then in the land of "snake charmers", yet we did not take it quite seriously as a possession that is worth all pride. But now India woke up to the grim realities when some Chinese firm was going towards patenting some of the methods. India filed for "Original" creators tag. In a competitive world we seem to live in we continue to abdicate the real reason for methods that will help you own the heritage. We have lost many and yet we seem to have learnt only few. Perhaps it is the attention to detail that seems to miss.

Subsequent to this, the Ayurvedic healing which is also called the non-medicine healing, the massages that encompasses this as a package, seems to have lot enough attention. Picture this when you hear Martial arts you don't associate Sri Lanka or London to it. Why? Not to say China practiced any successful methods to preserve it but what they did was they chose to market it well . They used movies as a method and at that time no one ever sold an art as well as they did. Even now. We talk about Kung Fu and you have a Chinese sitting in our head instructing how this is to do done. You talk Yoga and who do you get in your head? You talk Ayurveda (call it in a different way), we don't have India alone coming into the head. We have lot of monks too so it is getting crowded. That unique identity of self preservation is lost. We somehow don't seem to like the idea of owning something that started here. We don't somehow to protect what belongs to us. Even till date, we have not patented the breads (like your naan and whatever) but now it is out of control or rather too late to react to them being called Indian.

But in this era, we have learnt a lesson or two from the west, particularly, from the US. Now look at this we had to go westwards to find a name for cinema in one state. And it works too coz that is the only thing India is famous for right now because the marketing that goes into the product. Nothing sells bigger and larger than this. Everything indigenous produce of the country gets noticed only when you market it good and with marketing the product, comes the responsibility about owing it and marking a territory on it. That is where we as a collective soul have not been able to own the produce of the country to sell it good. Also, when the Rupees representation was not owned we had 6 countries sell their produce using the same representation. It took India 60 years to identify how to put the country's currency apart from the crowd. This product owning is the biggest problem with India so far.

So what are we doing wrong going into the Sixty years of independence, failure to Market and knowing what to sell as a produce and how to collectively own the produce. With time India seems to slowly change the mindset and behavior patterns on what they own. Time will tell.

Thursday, September 09, 2010

I am back.

Guess what, I am back in this world and I am going to write back again. Why was I away? Well, usually when people hit a milestone they go and rest. And it happened to me also. No, I did not get married or whatever, I hit a milestone of 200 posts last year in October and that put me to rest for almost a year. Many things changed and lot of positives and few negatives. Life is good.