Why are we so emotional by nature? Is it because our “EQ”, as it is referred to these days, is genetically in the lower strata or is it something else? God only knows! But every time we go for a movie and especially when it happens to be “Tare Zamin Par”, it is a rarity to find a single dry eyed person. Ladies of course take the cake here with unashamed tears rolling down; very often you can hear them sobbing even. In the sixties and seventies, a tear jerker was a surefire formula to get the ladies trooping in, especially in the matinee shows. Thankfully those days are long past!
But we Indians are governed by the heart, more than the mind; this is a universally accepted fact. Normally it is the feminine gender which is associated with sentimentality and the “the species from Mars” is supposed to be pragmatists with the mind ruling over the softer heart. But here these emotions can actually have rather exaggerated and disproportionate reactions, as was recently on display in the controversy “down under”. Yes we probably ended up on the wrong side of the stick; in fact some of it was quite blatant, but nationwide protests calling for the heads of all and sundry. From Kashmir to Kanyakumari, people cutting across political, regional, language divides were competing with one another in proving their brand of patriotism. Yes isn’t it a treat to see the likes of Arun Jaitley, Farooq Abdullah, Lalu Yadav and Sharad Pawar singing in the same breath, how I wish , the same could be true for something more meaningful such as the Nuclear Deal or may be even the reservation imbroglio.
But we haven’t really looked into our unreasonable emotional responses. There could be a number of issues, one of course comes from our colonial hangover, any discrimination brings out the satygrahi in each one of us. We feel victimized, sometime genuine sometimes just conjured up. Or it could be the stage of development of the society, the developing world perceived to be the underdogs and thus the charged environ.
But then we have always been proud of our rather rich spiritual legacy and we lose no opportunity to flaunt it in the face of the decadent and debauched west. If we are the true inheritors of that legacy, shouldn’t we be concentrating on larger issues rather than precipitating a crisis which was about to acquire diplomatic overtones. Protest yes, taking a stand by all means, but here the focus of the team should on its performance, the resolve should be to give it to them on the field in equal measure, which on paper we have always been capable.
Or maybe, we have suddenly become aware of our newly acquired financial muscle, we know can arm twist, brow beat the ICC into submission, secure in the knowledge that financial capital of world cricket is Mumbai.
I will leave the readers to guess and make up their minds, because obviously there are no right answers here!!
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