Discover the different worlds - make friends, for friendship knows no bars

'Queen' - Wonderful movie, loved to watch this!  Specially the way the four roommates turned friends on a vacation, that too from different nationality, different language and different ethnicity.  How they connected to each other touched me to the core.  

Life has several things to offer to us.  Visiting different corners of the world is one of them.  Under our budgets and limits, we must try to visit newer places and learn the experiences of different worlds.  This not only widens our perspective towards others, but it also gives us an opportunity to let others know and change their perceptions towards us.  Life is a journey, whether you live it or not, it will end the day its time is over.  

Knowing someone from different culture, making friendship with them and having fun together is altogether a different experience.  Persons from different culture, ethnicity or language may become good friends, this movie has tried to convey this to us.  In all corners of the world people are there who are friendly having good hearts, good sense of humor, demeanor and respect.  Sometimes I feel India is such a big country with such a big population that many tourists get attracted to it by this very thought - it makes India unique. They want to see Indian culture, the diversity that we have.  They want to see our life style, they want to taste our foods.  They want to see our beautiful mountains, beaches, forests and historical monuments.  But when they reach here; they find beggars, vagabonds, brokers, cheats and bluff masters.  From Rickshaw-pullers to guides, from street hawkers to priests - all seem to be after them just to make money by crooked ways.  

Recently I was on an official  tour to Delhi and so I stayed there in a hotel.  The hotel was full of foreign tourists.  I found at the reception hall that there was a counter for guiding the tourists staying there.  The person guiding them was an Indian gentleman quite professional in his job; he was speaking in fluent american English and telling each one of them to be watchful from the prying eyes of the cheaters, specially the Auto Rickshaw drivers, the agents and brokers roaming on the streets.  He also told them not to frequent much with the strangers in the wake of recent rape and assault cases and not to venture at desolate places.  He was right in his job to guide the tourists about the real danger they may face when they step outside the hotel.  To an Indian listening these things about us as a general remark will look quite insulting, but whatever he was telling was a true assessment of the facts.

Friends, let us put ourselves in the shoes of those foreign tourists who come to India with so much of affection and enthusiasm and then they are told to be watchful, not to frequent with an ordinary Indian.  Isn't it really shameful for us?  Due to some wrong people, all Indians are infamous. Let's change the way we think about foreigners. For many countries, the tourism is one of the biggest contributors of their GDP though they are much smaller countries than India and also they are not so much blessed by mother nature as India has been.  The income from tourism sector to them is hundreds of times more than India. We can imagine how much we lose due to such an image that Indians have got world over.  Their missionaries issue advisories to their citizens visiting India cautioning them against all the bad practices including cheating and physical abuses prevalent in India.

When we go to their countries to visit, do they treat us like this?, probably no.  Let's learn from them.  They come to India to know Indian culture, to know how an ordinary Indian despite so much of poverty tales, enjoy his life; how he remains happy in his limited resources.  But these tourists hardly find any scope to mix with us. They have the desire, but we let them have the fear of the untoward in their minds.  Recent incidents have propelled this notion in them towards us.  That's pity, really pity for all of us. 

Well, it's morning 4.15.  I don't know whether now I would be able to sleep or not.  But whenever I wake up late at night and have something brewing in my mind, I try to give it a shape in my writing.  I tried the same now; and now I would be relieved a lot that the itching that I felt for last few days to write something got completed in the wee hours tonight. 

Thanks my lovely readers and friends!  Keep living.. keep smiling.. keep loving.  Respect and preserve your fellow beings.. this planet is ours as well as theirs.

================================================================== ====== मित्रों यदि मेरा यह पोस्ट आपके दिल को जरा भी छू कर गुजरा हो तो मुझे विश्वास है कि आप मेरे इस प्रयास को लाइक दे कर मुझे और भी अच्छा लिखने की प्रेरणा, स्नेह और आशीर्वाद देंगे। आप अगर मुझे मेरे फेसबुक प्रोफाइल पर फॉलो करते हैं तो आपको मेरे शेयर किये सारे पोस्ट्स आपके नोटिफिकेशन्स में मिलते रहेंगे।