The PATRIOT and A BANANA - (An Indian who thinks differently)

You must be surprised when I say a banana inspired me to write this post. But yes, that is the fact, a banana, a fruit which we eat every other day inspired me to write this. How many of you observe the banana before you eat one? Not big number I can see. Well, let’s get into the incident.

Today I went to my dining room to drink the evening coffee n eat some snacks. But there weren’t any snacks, so I decided to settle on a couple of bananas. I took the fruit basket and looked inside, saw four humongous bananas. I wondered what variety they were. I got the answer soon. CAVENDISH! They were called Cavendish, I could see it from the tiny bar-coded sticker pasted on the peel. Wow! What a great name for a banana, I wondered whether there was any connection between them and the great scientist Henry Cavendish. Nah. Slim Chance. I ate one. At first bite I felt a familiarity, but it's not surprising that you eat a banana and you feel the taste already familiar. But this one was different. At the second bite I recognised the taste, like the ones I have eaten while I was abroad, like the ones coming from the west coast of Africa and the Caribbean islands.. Like the ones plucked way early before it's ripe, like the ones which were ripened by ammonia or some other chemicals after they come travelling in a refrigerator through the seas.

I suddenly felt sad, the 'rasakadhali' or the 'aethan'- the local varieties of banana, which I am used to eating everyday, which I take for granted each day was missing. Let me tell you, I used to boast to my friends abroad, that my house had different varieties of banana plants. In my house, we buy bananas only when there wasn't any available from those plants. But wait… Did we have to import bananas to feed our people? The horror which struck me at the thought of importing food from other countries for our people! How that will affect the more than 350 million which lives in near poverty? I remembered about the articles from newspapers that rainfall this year is being 20% lower than the long term average; which had affected the crops and the gross GDP as a whole. At that moment I could see the connection.. What a small change in weather can bring about!

Importing food for near-a-billion people? But the news channels didn’t show any of this. Or did they? And I missed it? I searched on google and found out, this Cavendish variety comes from either Vietnam or...  Lo! Surprise surprise! China! Aah! Now we have to import even the foodstuffs from China! Great! What were all the channels doing? Oh, yes, now I remember.. Celebrating Madhura Honey’s 30 minutes of fame!

I don’t care about the cheap political dramas Anna Hazare or anyone else play to get what they want, behind the veil of ‘A corruptionless India’. I am not a pseudo patriot who feels proud/ashamed of what a girl has done at the Olympics. What a raucous they made about that incident! All the channels were discussing/debating it and those dimwits watching it plotting 1001 ways to harass/torture/kill that girl. We can’t blame the channels, can we? The only thing they got to look at is the TRP rating. But what about you people? Don’t you have anything better to do instead of wasting your time on finding faults? Before you guys pounce on me I accept ‘What she did was wrong’ and deserves to be slapped. But that’s the end of it.

I am an Indian, who feels sad at little things like this.. who feels happy and celebrates when India gets a medal or the world cup... who feels ashamed seeing at Indian’s name being reported as the perpetrator of crimes. I am ashamed when I hear India is the largest importer of arms and armaments (even when we have the brightest brains of the world graduating in India); when I hear India is the largest buyer and hoarder of gold jewelleries; when I hear Indians have got the majority of the black money stored in the Swiss and German banks. I am an Indian who gets angry at the bird-brains who calls me a curry-muncher! I am one who is not proud of what SRK or KRK has achieved, but what Sachin has done! I am an Indian, a patriotic Indian.