India will not fit in a picture

A lot of people have become "fans" of India on a *ahem* popular social networking site *ahem*. The news feed had a picture. And that picture set the ball rolling for this:

I dunno if i'll ever be able to reconcile myself to a picture with the caption: "India". It is just one of those things that is least capture-able while still doing justice to everything that this country has been through and everything that it aspires towards being.

Capturing India is not about the flag and it's not about the people. Let me clarify: it's not just about the flag and it's not just about the people. This country is more than just "Unity in Diversity" and it's more than "Secularism". Put up a picture of a skyline and it's not India because each skyline is all about a different theme, a different mode, a different India. Each city throbs with a different beat: it is the beat of the same India that we revere. Each beat entwined with each other, like each road is linked to the other, makes the tone of India.

There is no universal Indian-ness to attach to the entire country. There is no definition of love that can be captured that makes the India we all cherish the substance of a picture. That is the only common thread (and i do not include the people that hate this country...they are bound to it in ways that are unpleasant and they do not fall under the purview of this opinion) that makes us all Indian. It is not language and it is not culture. None of that is truly common and none of that can truly tell the story of a nation that is caught between humility and an innate pride.

Generous, though i am and i will not deny that people are more than allowed to have their own image of this country. They have their reasons and they have their inspiration. They have the right to make India look the way they want to. They could make her look poor and they could paint her in the affluent colours of wealth. They could, very well, take a picture of the parched earth and call that India and challenge the forests to retort with a worthy response.

The India of a photograph is as elusive as a dream in the morning. It is a feeling left behind after achievement and it is the bittersweet sadness of growing older. The picture of India is a resonating reflection of all the vivacious, insolent and abject realities that make this country one entity, however arguably, but one nonetheless.