Indian.

As anyone who knows me knows only too well, I am incurably lazy. I have firm opinions on some things, and none on others, and I never defend them. I have them, and that is all anyone needs to know. I also do not believe in expending energy in getting people to agree with me. Mere numbers neither validate nor strengthen a viewpoint.

Sometimes, however, I am forced out of passivity and provoked to express my opinion. This is one of those times.
One of my friends who moved to Singapore for higher education, recently began dating an American, and had him Skype with me for a little while. He was intelligent and articulate and we were settling into happy-powwow mode discussing Lolita, when he said "Damn, you're a pretty good bargain for an Indian!"

End of bonhomie.

After explaining to him clearly and slowly, the full extent of his repulsive racist self, and asking him to kindly insert his head up his anal orifice so that no one would be disturbed by him even if he felt like talking, I hung up. I was slightly distraught.

I love being Indian, and I love Indians. I love our food and festivals, and I love my family. I know there's much scope for improvement and I am the first to admit it. But I love us fiercely, for and yet inspite of all our idiosyncrasies. I love our stereotypes and those who pretend to be above them, yet revert to them secretly in the privacy of their homes. I delight in the way we brutally dissect our politicians and yet leave them in office. I love the way we hold Are Indian Women Truly Emancipated? chatshows on Women's Day every year, and reach the same conclusions (No) every year, and wait for next year's debate with the same sense of expectation. I love our creaking, whining, beat-up, almost human public transport, and the evil, evil auto drivers ("Metre-aa?" *shakes head negatively"). I love how we have a festival only for squirting coloured water on each other and getting high.
I love our showbusiness for being flamboyantly, unashamedly unreal, and our parallel cinema for being alternatively hilariously pretentious and shockingly thoughtprovoking. I love the fact that we dress up a bunch of advertising models as a cricket team, and manage to sell the idea to the country. I love how Shahnaz Hussain can put her face on her beauty products and still manage to convince people that they work. I love how we take our Gods off their pedestals, forcefeed them milk, put mobile phones in their hands and iPhones in their fannypacks and then drown them.

I love how exceedingly alive we are, and I love it all.

To anyone who doesnt like Indians: You all, as do everyone, have the right to an opinion. Just don't stick it in my face.