Sympathy of Brigade Roaders

The row on culture seems to have sparked quite a controversy. To the extent that the length of the comments exceed that of the blogs. They appear like sub blogs within my blogs.

Such is the effect of the term 'culture' that I wanted to avoid. People are quite sensitive and sentimental about this term. There are so many things in my blog that could have attracted controversy and it happened to be the thing that I wanted to avoid! This perhaps can get into the comedy of ironies list.

Well, without going into the details, (which as I'd mentioned earlier that I wanted to avoid) I'll say that we are all quite passionate about our culture and heritage. That's in a way a good thing.

A friend of mine recently commented that people in IT are BJP friendly. I couldn't quite understand his reasoning but in my own logic, it seemed right. I interact with mostly people from IT and they all seemed to directly or indirectly support BJP and were quite cut up when we didn't wage war against Pakistan post Parliament Attack. I know this line of mine is going to spark off another controversy, and to preempt that let me state that Swati is not going to agree to this.

That apart, the support to BJP arises from viewing them as the saviors of our culture and heritage, rightfully or not. The need to save also, understandably, arises from the idea of losing the identity. You want to protect something only when you think you are losing it.

The people in IT perhaps have that idea of losing the Indian identity. I can subscribe to this because, in IT, you are selling your values and ideas to buy food. There isn't an idea of contributing something productively to your community. You are actually enabling something for someone 20,000 kilometeres away so that you can afford your multiple credit cards, get irritated about the 'buy my loan' spam calls, and search desperately for what Chidambaram has in store for you in excemptions.

Believe me, that's a very good state to be in. You are a tax assessee, are working for some of the finest multinationals, process oriented, hard-working, thinking of a 25-lakh flat in some hottest locations and you're deeply, passionately concerned about our Indian identity. And additionally, you're quite proud about the Brigade Roads, MG Roads, ECRs, IMAXes, the multiplex Forum in Koramangala, and hence you really don't think a war on Pakistan isn't going to cost much. After all, didn't we see during Kargil that while the war was on, our Sensex remained stable?

At least, it doesn't cost much to discuss about our proud heritage, our Tagores, our Ayurvedas and pitifully talk about starvation deaths during a drinking session only return to office next morning in a hurry to attend a conference call.

If you have answers and want to contribute, please use the Comment feature in the blog. If you have a dynamite to throw at me, call me for a coffee.

Before someone pounce on me, let me release the disclaimer. I don't intend to abuse the dwellers of the IT-dom. I'm quite curious about what makes up an Indian IT-psyche. I'm saying this because I have been watching these people and wondering. I'm saying this because I know that the IT-dom is a separate universe within the various Indian communities. I'm saying this because I can see a clear difference in the behavioral attributes of them.

More importantly because I'm one of them.