As Americans are waking up to the fact that India too has terrorism problems I had a discussion with an inquisitive American on the recent Mumbai blasts. Well every meeting I went to today had people questioning me on how are Indians taking it. I guess if it was America, atleast a dozen Pakistani cities would have been bombed by the time they saw the morning. Well, I had to explain them, its India and we've been facing this kind of things since two decades if not more.
The discussion went on long with my Indian colleagues pouring in their own ideas. We kind of flooded them with loads of data each one had but what he had to say was that in his talks with many Indians what he figures out is that Indians have lots of conflicting ideas or thoughts about any thing. Leave that what data he gets to hear from all of us is mostly different.
On that I think he was not all that wrong. At the same time each channel in India gives different number of blasts, different death toll and we are kind of used to that as we know anyhow the figures are more grim and plus or minus one anyhow does not make any difference. Truth about this, what I understand, is that truly we Indians are first of all not at all politics people. We generally don't care about politics of the country, 50% don't even vote and as the latest example we see here is that most Mumbaikars would be leading a normal life without even forcing their government to apologize for the security lapse.
And while all these things happen, at one of the million chai shops in UP we would be discussing gossips about India/Pakistan/Kashmir/Bollywood and what not without even caring of its accuracy.
That's India
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