The Pond of Traditions

Then suddenly the Argentinian guy asked us, "What is the best and the worst thing about your country?".

---

Hola amigo! Como Estas? This pretty much sums up my Spanish vocabulary and I told him the same. He was one of my roommates at the hostel where I was staying in Mcleodganj. I was travelling with a college friend and that evening we three were having a great conversation about a plethora of random topics. Then suddenly the Argentinian guy asked us, "What is the best and the worst thing about your country?". It might sound like an extremely generic question to you but think a little more and some weird questions might start popping in your head.

"Woah! I clearly know the best facts but what should I say for the worst? Would I be able to put the negatives of my nation modestly in front of him? Should I? Should I go for the worst of the worst or the average shit would do?". It was difficult for me. I am not certain if you would have had the same questions in your mind or not but what I was thinking was point-blank contrary to what mentioned above.

It was not so easy for me to come up with the best fact about India but I managed to say, "We are forgiving and we know how to love and maintain our bonds better than anyone."

For the negative part, I said, "I feel my country is pretentious. We say that our traditions teach us to respect women but the same traditions are now used to suppress their voices and whatnot. We say that we follow the caste system in order to maintain a well-defined structure in our society but we use it as a means of discrimination. We say we are Indians but we demean the states we don't belong to."

Imagine it this way. We are encircling a huge pond named 'The Pond of Traditions'. 'The Pond of Traditions' is filled with a limited number of fishes. We all walk together from one point to another on the shore in search of a good fishing spot. When we find one, we sit there for decades. Without paying heed to the fact that the fishes are limited and the problems with all the people fishing in one place are huge. Behaving like dumb driven cattle we follow the others. We follow the traditions in the name of societal, spiritual and sometimes scientific benefits. Then some of us twist and turn these traditions in order to get their buckets filled the most and the others follow them. The minuscule number of people who stand to look around the pond finds that there is extremely fertile land surrounding the shore. One can go there and build farms, harvest crops and fruits. They can build a unique living system for themselves and still not lose touch with the community.

In my opinion, heading away from the pond isn't the same as leaving our traditions behind. The farms we would live around, the plantations we would establish, the vegetation that we would harvest will always be harmoniously drawing their water from 'The Pond of Traditions'.

What's your answer?