To choose or not to choose is not even a question

I had got out of blogging for quite some time; when I was looking for reasons I found that lethargy was 50% responsible & instant gratification thanks to the other Social Media tools took care of the other 50%.

So why then did I start a post again? Probably because I get blog updates of a blogger whom I followed back then when blogging was still cool and when writing down thoughts helped in more ways than one, the last update made me think how much a journal helped. Also a HR agency consulting with my workplace after doing a high priced assessment of the team had mentioned in its recommendations for me that maintaining a journal would be beneficial so here is my attempt in writing again.

Have you noticed attempts around you to conform to the idea of someone else who wishes to make a homogeneous nation with oneness in everything?

Today people are being asked to prove and flaunt in public those things which often are intensely personal and private choices. What is worse is that real choice is thrown out of the window by those who do not have the means or the capacity to provide their choice if it is not your own. So you cannot have your choice and you will probably not get their choice too.

One sure pointer why this lack of choice is a silly idea in India can be easily understood by the popularity of multicuisine restaurants that abound in most cities of the country. You will see a brave entrepreneur come up with a niche restaurant that caters to a specific group and as time passes this restaurant slowly metamorphosises into a restaurant that will please all. Why does this happen? Because in a Sarvan Bhavan you will find a person asking for Schezwan Noodles (obviously vegetarian) and in Anjappar you will have a person asking for Panneer butter masala. If the entrepreneur cannot cater to this requirement he will lose out and in this competitve world will go out of business soon.

We are wired that way here and we unabashedly celebrate this weirdness. I know someone who ate jam with rasam rice. If he cooked the rasam and bought the jam of his own money, what business do I have with it?

Have you noticed the shelves of a shopping market soaps alone have many racks to cater to many so called  skin type when they actually have little to differntiate between one another. Yet they all have people who choose to buy. Choices abound in everything, everywhere.

We always had choices in everything except our parents and possibly our names (which we can change with a gazette notification), it will be tough to come up with many others where we do not have a choice. Nationality is a choice (just ask those who are overseas because it was greener than here and now proclaim their love for home) and so are faith, food, clothes, newspaper, car, bike, school, college, job,  hair style, shampoo, condoms, adoption, spouse, marriage, sexual orientation, friends, leaders, parties, poison, enemies etc

Why do we have choices in our country? Because the fathers of the nation decided that we should. Freedom of choice and to respect the freedom of those who choose to choose are what defined being a citizen of this country. We have enough lessons from history where uniformity and ideas superiority of races led to fascism and the pains that followed.

Let us choose to live and choose to let live.

P.S. You can read this post and choose to comment or not comment, you are free to do both. Cheers!