Pat came the Reply- Diplomacy Row- India and US

This is my second blog of the day and admittedly it is a bit too much. But the evening went in sitting in front of the idiot box, with the News channels clamoring about the issue about the second Pat on another UN permanent representative of India with diplomatic cover, a week after the one on Saree clad, Indian Ambassador, Ms. Meera Shankar. Though it is amusing for something like this to have happened, when the noise about Obama's song and dance ending with deals worth ten billions USD signed off has not totally died down, I would still stick out my neck to say that I do not share the anger and disgust generally being expressed by our News Anchors. There could be many reasons for that, primary one being I am not for a moment believer of the unfounded exuberance on arrival of India on global scenario through the glories brought about initially by the success of IT with Infosys' Narayanmurthy and his friends and the success in Beauty with Sushmita Sen and her friends and two, for a nation which could not advocate the case of even its elected chief minister being denied the visa by the land of the Free on account of political differences is nothing mode than empty posturing (what the land of not so Free in East does with our highest ranking Military official is another matter), though how free land of free in the wake of Wikileaks activities is another debate.

So I was as disinterested as I was about Harbhajan Singh's fight with the Australian Cricket Board, as if it were a matter of great patriotic significance which could multiply the current single digit number of homes for homeless in Delhi into multiples of five, and wanted to keep the thoughts to myself. Why should I bloody feel incensed about a procedural matter in some other country when girls are abducted and raped in my own country on a weekly basis, and the great detective Digvijay Singh, who had pushed his own state to a roadless society in the midst of the cacophony of rhetoric making it to news headline every other day, filling the space left vacant by his ailing guru, Arjun Singh (I suppose, This man also ought to be restricted to Adult hours on the Television). But then I came across a statement of Ayn Rand, whose writings, I have always treated as a panacea to all ills of my life. "If you know a man’s convictions, you can predict his actions. If you understand the dominant philosophy of a society, you can predict its course." Says Ms. Rand. And that set me thinking, to take note of the pat, first and second and to get enraged on it is a straight forward response, too straightforward to be correct. There is more to be seen in the sense of outrage being expressed by the Indian media, which feels people to be stupid enough to share its pretentious disgust. This is an Independent sovereign nation which is so conscious of its own interest that it does not care to bother if in the process of guarding its self-interests if ruffles some feathers or bomb some nations. I for one, respect the US for that. That is the right way for any self-respecting nation to be. Nations are set of people living together, who came to live together primarily so that their collective strength could take care of their individual aspirations. Any nation, which fails to uphold this basic right is merely a caricature of a nation. In anger, people are suggesting that we should start frisking US diplomats and dignitaries in the same manner. We must by all means do that, and while doing that we must thank US for showing us the way, where there is no space for "Do you know who I am" which is probably the left-over memory from the Raj era, which never quite went out of India, as had been predicted by great freedom fighter, Bhagat Singh, only the brown sahibs replaced the white ones. Let it not be a knee jerk revenge, but a dawning of truth that we as nation ought to be committed to saving the lives and honor of our people, even if it infuriates even the most populous nation on the Earth and even if our economic well-being might depend on that nation. In the backdrop of the Richard Headley episode and the unrestrained love of Ms. Clinton for the nation in the west which fits so darn well in the Af-Pak policy of the Cliche-heavy new president of Change of the country of the Free currently busy in pursuing Assange, apart from patting people, of course.