Proud to be an Indian !!

You dont know what you have till its gone !

I dont know which great guy phrased this line but it is an amazingly true fact of life. Although I have always been a person who loved my country and like most, felt it to be the best in the world, I have never felt more proud to be an Indian when I travel abroad.

It is a stale fact that India is fast becoming an economic super power. In all other fields as well India is rising and shining.

In sports, for example, the Indian Premier League (IPL) turned out to be entertainement par excellence. It attracted the very best talent from all over the world. In fact some players were ditching their National team to be a part of this event. There were spectators in the stadiums from all over the world as well. Ofcourse most matches were greeted with packed houses. A prominant cricketer also commented that Cricket was an Indian game accidently discovered by the British. In contrast to the Indian Premier League, the American baseball league has a tournament which has only domestic players and yet they call it 'World Series' ! We have world class sportsmen and women in cricket, hockey, Tennis, Chess, etc.

The Indian film industry is the biggest in the world and is attracting big production houses from the US to not only distribute but also produce Indian films. Shah Rukh Khan was honoured with the 'Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters' (Officer dans l'Ordre des Aris et des Lettres) title by the French Government for his contribution to Hindi cinema. The Big B and SRK are known the world over. Superstar Rajanikant is a huge hit in east Asia upto Japan. Recently Akshay Kumar was in Toronto to unveil a huge hoarding of his new flick - 'Singh is King'. This was a proud moment for the Indian film industry as for the first time there was such a thing being done for an Indian movie.

Indian doctors, engineers, scientists are making their presence felt in all spheres all over the world. Our fellow citizens have won the nobel prize in various fields. The illiterate 'Dabba wallahs' of Mumbai teach professors and students from leading management institutes in America and the UK about management skills. Our airlines treat us like kings in comparison with any foreign airline. We are treated to a welcome drink, news paper and a royal meal even in an hours flight. Compare this to a packet of pretzel / peanut (less than the size of your palm) and a small glass of coke that we get on even a 5 hour flight in the US. Our airlines still deliver much better corporate results than the ones in America. We wait at a baggage claim a little more some day and crib about it, I have personally lost my bag on almost every trip of mine to the US for a day or more.

We stand out as a shining example in a divided world. World leaders understand and appreciate the wonderful and peaceful co-existance of people of all communities, languages and regions. But we do lack where it is most important, within India. We are obviously not a perfect nation. As people we fail. We literally hate each other. We dont respect life here. We dont have respect for a person doing a supposedly low kind of a job. We dont loose a second to hurl abuses at one another especially in trafic. We all love to thrust our beliefs on others. We dont respect other's way of life. If we need to improve as a nation, we first need to change ourselves. We need to love each other. We need to respect everybody, whether the person is a chairman of a big company or a waiter at a restaurant. We need to treat everyone as an equal.

We love our country but forget to love our fellow citizens who make up the country. Lets change that, lets help one another to make our country the envy of the world. Jai Hind !