Culture

In the past few days I have been doing some thinking (!!?!?) :-) Yes, apart from playing hours of chess on yahoo or reading Wall Street or better (worse..?) watching some lame Hindi movie, I do like to contemplate on bizarre issues..My most meditative time is during showers, I am not sure why and how..But I do get a string of thoughts - a chain, which could win me an essay contest. On one of these moments I was trying defining culture. There is a lot of hype about how great Indian culture is... If you stay in Indian community and try to so something different but pragmatic you will often hear "he is getting influenced by American culture". For most of the Indians, American culture is a collection of nudity, sex, eating junk, getting divorce and marrying more than once!
Whenever it comes to obedience, elderly respect, wrapping in miles of clothing...saree whateva..No matter how hot summer is, it's all the nice nice Indian culture. BS!
Hearing the trumpets of "Rich and Varied Heritage" often and again, gets into your head. But within heart you still have that "emptiness".

First of all, it's sad to see people use the term "culture" so loosely. They often mistake culture for tradition. How can any culture be mediocre? A particular tradition may be ugly, accepted. May be a couple of traditions are irrational in a particular civilization, but culture as a whole can never be lowly.

Traditions of Sati, dowry, make-dominance, killing females on birth are all horrendous. Does this make Indian culture barbaric? Traditions are set by common people to either get their jobs done or make lives simpler. Traditions have nothing to do with culture. People have their motives fulfilled when they create and follow traditions.

So what is culture? I see culture as a strong belief, conviction, an act of internal voice. Culture is within, its sublime, it is a fact. Cultures could be weak but never lousy. The weakness of Indian culture is in its hypocrisy. Indians just don't like to accept what they are. All their lives they pretend to "live" but never actually live their own life. Most of the times its whether society and relatives will like it or not. I agree, we got to live within societal and legal rules, but we got to live our own lives and not someone else's.

Oh well, looks like I opened a can of worms. :-)

-Pankya