The future is largely Indian and to have a connection to this most culturally rich of civilisations is an awesome privilege
BY AMOL RAJAN
SOURCE: THE INDEPENDENT
Friday 28 December 2012
By the time you read this, I shall most likely be in Pune, the sprawling metropolis that is India’s ninth largest city and the birthplace of my mother.
This trip has a sharpness to it: I used to go back to India every couple of years until the age of 18 but haven’t been back in the decade since and am without my parents as my mother is unable to travel. When I booked the tickets earlier this year I had intended for it to be a kind of engagement tour. I would propose in front of the Taj Mahal, or in the hill station at Munnar, or in some back alley of Jaipur. But I got impatient and proposed in September. So now I’m seeing family, having fun, and thinking about the future.
That future is largely Indian. By that I don’t mean to say I’m moving back to the homeland, though I’m sure that would come as a relief to you; rather, that as I start thinking about having children myself, and the world they will grow up in, I realise that to have a connection to this most thrilling, blessed, and culturally rich of civilisations is an awesome privilege.
Most people know India is the most crazy and successful experiment in the history of democracy; fewer know that it is widely predicted to be the world’s biggest economy in under 40 years; and fewer still know its Constitution declares it to be a “sovereign, socialist, secular democratic Republic.”