Wider horizons, narrower perceptions

While everyone is on the topic of racism - "are the attacks in Australia racist in nature or are the Indians asking for it?" "Indians are racist when it comes to foreigners and even their own people - why we consider all the south Indians to be madrasis and the northeast folk to be chinkis" - and so on and so forth. But in the midst of it all, there is another breed of Indians for whom their own country - India is a matter of disdain.

Take an uncle of mine into consideration. Within the family circles he is called Mad Max (Max not being his real name). Now, here was a man who had migrated to the U S of A years before he brought forth the next generation. Being a man of big heart, he always wanted to give back to his country and to his home town of Mangalore. So what did he do... in the early '90s, he used part of his home to set up a book library, a TV with cable connection and DVD player where he wanted to show the 'poor people' of Mangalore what a good book was and that the world now had an invention called TV. And when he spoke of the under-privileged, we his relatives as well fell in the same category. He would talk to us of great inventions such as electricity, piped water, cars on petrol, cell phones and internet, like he was from another planet.

When he was informed that we in Mangalore already owned the contraption and that we also owned cell phones and internet as well as cars and bikes, he was totally taken aback. He could not believe that India had reached such levels of progress. So much so that he continued with his 'give back to society projects'. Well atleast some of the American libraries have found a place to trash their rejects.

Another case to ponder. When I was doing my mass communication masters, we had students from several regions and countries as well. Several NRI kids were part of ours and the junior batch. One girl however caught everyone's eye. It was one thing that her blonde mane heralded her arrival two minutes before her, but it was her accent that had everyone snickering. It was a pseudo-American one, where the drawl was VERY apparent at some points and VERY Indian in the next. After a session of moonshine one evening, she got all nostalgic and said that our Manipal reminded her of the American suburbs. To which, a classmate of mine very innocently asked, which part of the States are you talking about? And the answer - "Oh, I couldn't say, I have never been to the States." !!!!???

Fake accents are part of the game. You will have a college-going student sprout an accent and when you ask her where she got it from, she will proudly say that she went to kindergarten in Libya and that's how she has an American accent. Wonder what geography they were taught there?

What do you say when you come across such people? Going abroad is supposed to widen your horizons. In these cases, it looks like once they touched the horizon, they closed their minds to all else. How much of the world you know comes from how you percieve it. If your mind remains closeted to the Western or rather foreign world, how do you hope to improve yourself or the lives of those around you.

Long ago, I heard a statement which went. Ask any child, which is the greatest country in the world and they will name their own. Ask an Indian child which is the greatest country in the world and 9/10 will say America. We percieve our own country in very low light... not that it does not deserve such ratings, but then its only when we percieve it in the right way can we make a go at improving its ratings.