The exchange
students in my college last semester complained about how everything in India
happens “tomorrow.” I chuckled like I always do when I hear jokes
that I don’t believe are at my expense. “Oh how Indian!” I thought to myself. What
I’ve come to realise lately is that I’m more Indian than I think I am. I have
been meaning to study “tomorrow” for the last 15 years and I’m yet to get
around to it of my own accord. What’s a 2-month delay in installing an internet
connection compared to that? I also unnecessarily add “only” at the end of each
sentence, as if my conversations are really chequebooks. I use present
continuous tense where simple present would suffice. I have no notion of
punctuality.
I remember
having watched one of Russell Peters’ shows where he said that Indians probably
don’t find jokes with the Indian accent offensive because they don’t think they
have it. “They think there’s one guy in the country with that accent!” I think
that logic can be extended for most Indian stereotypes. We are a part of the
crowds we so detest. We’re exasperated that nobody stands in line although we
always break it. I think we consider it okay to break the rules. We complain
because everyone else breaks them at the same time and that inconveniences us. It’s
as if we think we’ve landed up, quite by accident, in a place that’s so full of
people who don’t behave as we would like them to. That we’re one of them is
immaterial.
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