Global Indian?

"Bobby Jindal wins the Governor's election in Louisiana becoming the first Indian American to lead an American state.."The moment the news broke on television channels, Jindal’s ancestral village in Kanpur erupted in celebrations, with relatives and friends distributing sweets and dancing bhangra..

India, on the road to being a global super power, seems to be suffering from this disease.. Any achiever whom we come across with the least connection to the motherland makes us feel better, bigger and truly global.. India may not have done anything much in harnessing their talents and helping them grow but we feel so good to associate ourselves with Indians who have achieved elsewhere..In the last couple of years, at regular intervals, the papers have been filled with reports about "Indians” such as Bobby Jindal, Norah Jones, Sunita Williams, etc who have all done the country proud in the USA or in space.

Indian school children light diyas, villages and towns in remote corners of India distribute sweets, dance in joy, and the cameras chase the drivers, aunties, uncles and village postmen for their views — all because the son or a daughter of a former resident who quit the country fifty years ago has achieved an iota of success thousands of kilometers away.

But at some point reality bites.. I get to read about people like Bobby Jindal who has never visited his ancestral home and doesn't have plans too.. Norah Jones Shankar, dropped her last name long back.. Yet we have this new found confidence in us.. For us, the grass is always greener outside India.. We have never acknowledged the achievements of people with greater abilities within our country.. We are a land of hypocrites.. Media has a big part to play in this.. giving hyper and excessive coverage for the smaller achievements and giving more importance to the lifestyle in the west..

Just hoping for a day when this state of our nation would change..