It is an anomaly that probably doesn’t occur anywhere else in the world. The driest day in Kerala occurs not in summer, but actually during the retreating monsoon. October 2nd to be exact. The day is an especially sad day for Malayalees, because it is a dry day – the one day they can’t buy alcohol anywhere in India.

This October 2nd was, however, different because there were two other anomalies which were unusual.

• Anomaly #1: Rajnikanth hogged all the attention away from Gandhiji
• Anomaly #2: The same people who were ashamed that India was hosting CWG suddenly became proud after seeing a grand opening ceremony

Oct 2nd is supposed to be a national holiday, being the birthday of a certain someone called Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, or Mahatma Gandhi. But for the majority of the youngsters, it is one of the once-in-a-blue-moon days when they feel “proud to be Indian” in Facebook/Twitter (The others being the release of movies like “Rang De Basanti” and reading some news articles/stories about Captain Vikram Batra or Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan) This time even that traffic was down because people had time only to talk about a movie called Endhiran (Robot). I’m not complaining here. I’m just observing that if the people who usually “respect” Gandhiji on Oct 2nd didn’t feel so this year, this smells of something fundamentally wrong with their pride/patriotism and such other words they attribute to themselves.

Lets start by analyzing if the nationalist feeling of people is actually real. (I don’t mean to see if they are faking. I mean to see if they realize what nationalism really means) A nationalist is someone who loves and defends his country with unwavering faith. Not someone who criticizes that “CWG brings national shame to India”, and on the very next week comments “Proud to be an Indian” on Oct 2nd. People think that to be patriotic is to be proud about the good things and to criticize the bad things! Or in other words, show the world that you care. I digress on this matter. According to my opinion, one has to be a good citizen first. A good citizen who not only acknowledges the shortcomings in India, but also does something to remove those shortcomings, without expecting an immediate change. A good citizen who follows the grass root level rules – obey traffic rules, respect other people, be courteous, resist vices like giving/taking bribe. Who does that? If you don’t, you don’t deserve to be proud, because there is nothing for you to be proud. Lesson #1 for everyone is be patriotic to your own conscience, and not your Facebook friends.

The movie called “Lage Raho Munnabhai” reintroduced Indians to a concept called Gandhigiri. Lots of people apparently adopted Gandhigiri in real life, and even blogged about it. I don’t see any one talking about Gandhigiri these days. What happened? People just got bored of Gandhigiri, because it is a tough path to take? Ask yourself, what are the good things you are taking for yourself from these? What is the point in being proud of India if you can’t make India proud?

My Failow Indians..do whatever you want, criticize India, make jokes about corrupt politicians, but don’t make a joke of yourself by saying you are proud because CWG opening ceremony was grand, if you had no part to play in that. You are just being a hypocrite.

I like Facebook because a few people in Facebook are intellectuals and have an opinion on almost anything. But for the last couple of days I hated Facebook because the majority of the people were just robots who really don’t have a strong opinion for themselves. Well, at least Facebook provides a “Hide” feature which lets me remain oblivious to such bullshit.

Update: Patriotism and Nationalism are not exactly the same, as pointed out by Lakshmi. My bad… made necessary changes.