I love Bangalore and Varapuzha. Bangalore is where I was born. I did my college there and worked there for around eight years. Varapuzha is the place where I spent my schooling days. I am nostalgic about these places and at the same time these two places are in total contrast to each other. One striking contrast is – In Bangalore people love fun, and you can see lot of fun and laughter around you, where as @ Varapuzha all you see is grim faces, or people who smile at you to get something from you. As per the conventional thinking, people say that in cities people are very self centric. From my experience it is totally different. At Varapuzha, people are more self centric than Bangalore. People are very narrow minded, and behave more like frogs in a well.
I see lack of role models as one of the major causes for this kind of behavior. In cities, youngsters are very ambitious and for them there is no dearth of role models. In the villages of Kerala, you have only one Mohanlal and Mammootty, and most of their movies are filled with violence. There are lot of achievers in these villages, but they dont get the visibility, these negative heroes enjoy.
Recently, my brother in law Mr.Paul, who is settled in the US for more than three decades was sharing his experience in Kerala with me. Paul, called his uncle over the phone just say ‘Hello’ to him and to just talk to him for a while. He greeted his uncle, and chatted with him for some time. Then he said bye. At that point his uncle asked him ‘Now come to the point, why did you call me?’. Normally people call him, only when they need something from him. Here is an American settled Indian, just calling his uncle out of love and care, which his uncle is not used to, as per the culture here.
May be, for a change, let us smile more…. it will definitely look better than the grim faces…
