The Three Stones – Part 2

I know, I know! It’s been a really really long time since I blogged. What can I say? I had a writers block. Just couldn’t make myself sit down and write a half decent post. I did write a few...what it is called...preliminaries to work up into blogs.  So, watch for many new posts in the following months.

The following post has been in my minds garage for many months now. It’s way too cluttered so, once is misplaced it  took me so long a time to retrieve it.

A few days after I wrote “The Three Stones” one my friends (a girl and No, she is not one of my sisters) called me and said my post was so timely. I asked why. She told me that one of her relatives had died recently and she had gone through some of the silly things. She pointed out three things that she had encountered that I had missed. I promised her that I would definitely post them on my blog.

 

1.      You should not laugh till the last rites are performed:

A few days before the funeral, some cousins of my friend had come to visit her. Being young people, the talk naturally turned to lighter issues and they all started laughing. Soon, one of her aunts came and giving them a stare, scolded them for laughing. Her aunt actually scolded them for being happy.

I think ours is the only country that actually scolds people for having a fun time. I mean, what’s the point here? Sure, a person is dead, but does that mean that one has to stop living? No, you get scolded for being sad also, believe I have seen it.

Well, anyways back to the “No Laughing” rule. I don’t see the connection. Are they trying to say that by laughing we are disrespecting the dead individual?

 

2.      Women should not wear bindhi till the last rites are performed:

What kind of rule is that? Why shouldn’t women keep bindhi if someone dies? What’s the connection between a person’s death and his/her relatives keeping bindhi? The most irritating part, my friend says is that: Her people chide her when she doesn’t keep bindhi on other occasions, saying it will bring bad luck and such crap. But after the death, when my friend questioned why she shouldn’t keep bindhi, they chided for asking the question….

One more instance of a "gap" is all that i am going to venture here. I am not going add anything else. I will let the above passage speak for itself. 

  

3.      That because a bad incident happened, it should be followed by a good incident:

My friend really is pissed of at this “rule”, because they have made her the victim. She is fed up at this “good should follow bad” thing that everyone seems to be harping about. Guess what the good incident is?? It is supposed to be my friends wedding. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

Sounds like the Yin-Yang thing. But, if you point out that this and ask why Indians are following an essentially Chinese principle, I am sure; you’ll get lots of interesting answers. My friend says that she is quite sure they invented this thing to make her agree for marriage.

I think, I’ll go with her here. Indians have a quite a knack of inventing things for occasions and calling them tradition & culture.

Why am I so critical about Indian culture? Because, I was born and brought up in it. I am more familiar with it than with any culture and thus I can point out what I would call flaws in this culture.

All that I am saying is that culture should be able to absorb the good things from other cultures and adapt to the changing needs of the society or it is doomed to fail.

Culture

Culture means the complete lifestyle of a person, including but not limited to occupation, types of food consumed, how the food is cooked, language, dress style, laws, values, beliefs, religion, travel, construction methods, the materials used in the construction and so on.

The above definition encompasses all the various definitions that there are on culture.

Why am I stressing on the definition of culture? Because, so many people seem to use this word without knowing what the word stands for.

Especially, Indians seem to use this word more than the people from any other nationalities. They use it to raise a hue and cry about the changing dressing styles, the changing values, and generally for everything which is not to their taste. [I have used the word they when referring to Indians, even though I am a naturalized citizen of India because: I being the Emperor of the Universe, am a citizen of the Universe at large and cannot be categorized as a citizen of any one particular region.]

When someone wears jeans, people say it is not Indian culture to wear jeans. My question is what is Indian culture? Which point in India’s history, would you use as the benchmark for defining “Indian Culture”? Culture changes with time. The practices and beliefs practices today were not followed hundred years ago. And the practices that were followed a hundred years ago were not followed three hundred years ago and it goes on. So, which would be “Indian Culture”? The practices followed today? Or the one’s practiced hundred years ago?

The answer, I mostly get is that we are following the same practices that were followed a hundred years ago. Really? You didn’t have IT companies back then. So, working in an IT company is against “Indian Culture”. We didn’t have automobiles back then or cell phones, or television, or credit cards… and the list is endless. All these things are against the “Indian Culture”. Yet how many people do you see protesting against these? Not a single person!!!! Yet, you have people protesting that English should not be used in official documents, food chains should not open, and some stuff like that.

I was watching a program were two group of people were debating over whether not wearing dhoti is against “Indian Culture”. The whole thing left a bad taste in mouth. Little did the Pro-dhoti group or for that matter anyone else did not notice was that the medium (television) through which they were airing their views by itself is not “Indian Culture”.

Democracy as practiced now is also not an “Indian Culture” (The idea of democracy is from the Ancient Rome.). India since it’s inception by the great Chandragupta Maurya with the assistance of the even greater Chanakya (Who’s idea it was to create a large empire in the subcontinent.) was always ruled by a king in its long history until British Raj and became a true democracy only after the independence (In some ways, India is still not a democracy.). Yet, Indians never tire of shouting their throats hoarse that India is the largest democracy.

Show some consistency people!!!!!!!!

I end by saying that Culture is not permanent. It is unfixed, and ever-changing. It must change with time or will stagnate, decay and decompose everything that it touches. Culture absorbs new things, both modifying itself and that which it absorbs into a new entity constantly.

The idea of this post is not to say that you have to accept everything that is new and reject everything that is old. The idea is learn to accept change and do not stand in the way of progress saying something is not culture just because it is not to your taste.