I am slightly aggresive when it comes to India and people bad mouthing India... not when there is a genuine reason to put down India but when the person making the statement is just reflecting what the white man would have said a century ago or making statements which clearly reflect a lack of sensitivity or worse thought....

so right now I have discovered someone who is even more gungho about India and ready to wage a war.. my boss! He is in London at the moment and I have met him in NY as well for an India related conference... and everytime he is here he speaks about India with such pride... he is proud of our heritage, our maturity, our politics, our legal system and our ability to convert our destiny... he quoted from Nehru who had mentioned in 1947 that freedom was India's tyrst with destiny... and he was proudly relating the Economist story that said that India will overtake China in 5 years...

Finally I see someone who is as gungho about India as me...and having no shame about it... who believes in the India story...

This is an argument I have with all my friends who dont live in India anymore... in my view many people still imagine India to be what it was 10 years and bring a viewpoint which is clearly outdated.... but somewhere people like me having lived through India, having seen the tremendous progress made and the potential for further progress cannot help but feel elated at being given this opportunity for growth... they say the best time is when you are at your lowest because we can only go up from there... and it is about time that India goes up... and riding the crest is always much better than wading in the pool.....

and it turns out that I am not the only one who feels protective or aggressive about their place of birth... in one of those innocuous conversations when I mentioned that Washington has a lot of history, the person jumped at me and said 'what ??? Washington has history compared to London? or even India??'... I had to clarify, I am not comparing the two, it is just my perception of Washington that I am relating... and to me it was very very nice to be at the centre of what I considered to be one of the best functioning governments... ofcourse they have their problems...but who doesnt....

while I found this a bit irritating since I was not allowed to complete my train of talk but still I somehow understood where the person was coming from...