Twenty years back, there used to be three places in Chennai where one can always spot long queues-the ration shop, cinema halls and the US consulate. Ten years back, the number shrunk to two-cinema halls and the US consulate; Today, there is only one- the US consulate.
No one buys anything from ration shops now as, even the reds would admit, people have grown wealthy over the years and the prospects of patronage for such ration shops looks bleak, unless they start selling Tasmac spirits. So is the case with picture halls, what with the yesteryear artificial scarcity of three shows per day giving way to thirty per diem, with the mushrooming of multiplexes.
The US consulate is entirely a different thing - where demand perpetually exceeds supply. The spectacle of queues one witnesses every morning outside a capitalist bastion ironically sports a communist colour - where even the high and mighty, the well-heeled and wealthy must also step out of their sedans, sweat it out in the heat, bear with a grin the ignominy of a thorough frisking and stand waiting on the platforms - sorry sidewalks! Next to death, it is the allure of the US visas which treats the princes and paupers alike. Sceptre & crown must tumble down and in the dust be equal made with the poor crooked scythe and spade - yes, as in death, so in the consulate queues!
There is a reason behind this. If we, for a moment, remove our cloak of hypocrisy, neatly fold it and banish it to the inside of the wardrobe and look within, the reason would emerge. No other nation has contributed to modern society as much as the US has done. About 80% of the modern scientific inventions are American. An overwhelming majority of the Nobel prizes have been won by Americans. No other country of the modern era has dominated a wide spectrum of sports like the US, consistently. Space advancements have almost been entirely American, despite occasional pretences from what once went by the name Soviet Union. Film industry worldwide has always owed its existence only to the Americans. (The sheer number of genius Hollywood has produced!) Their currency has consistently lorded over the world economy. But for their Zuckerbergs, the world now would be face-less. But for their Steve Jobs and their Newtons, the fallen Apple would have merely been consumed without a second thought, digested and excreted and the world would have been gravity-less! In short, but for the US twenty-first century might actually have not dawned at all! I know this is a bit 'konjam over' but you get my point all the same.
Brandname US is recalled for all the above reasons and also for many more. It is still only in the US where you get respected for what you do and how well you do things than for what you are and what lineage you descend from. It is still the only nation where there are no nationalities and folks from all nations seemlessly merge into one US nationality. Personal freedom, liberty and privacy, concepts much bandied about but least seen here in our India, are taken for granted in the US. Enterprise, hard work and caliber can take you places there. They also can, occasionally in India, provided they are accompanied by the right connections at the right places and a weighty caste certificate.
It is no one's case that the US is a land where milk and honey flows 24x7. US also has crimes, unemployment, hunger and poverty. It also has had its depressing lows along with the amazing highs, over the centuries. But how the lows are tackled in the US is what makes it command respect. Terrorism is countered by tightened vigil and not by secular blabber. Responses to natural calamities are characterised by speedy mobilisation of relief resources and not by doling out 5 lacs to the next of kin of the dead., forgetting about it instantly and waiting for the next calamity. Their law-making Senates witness debates, acrimonious for sure, but nothing of the tamasha and vulgarity we witness here in our 'largest democracy'. US is a highly litigous state where if you sneeze you are sued and if you yawn you are sued but their case-disposal record is awesome. Our courts can go, take a walk. Their telephone lines work, their trains run on time, their ambulances arrive before the accident victims transcend the earth and their police arrive within minutes of a crime scene. Here in India too things work, but sadly they make news if they do, unlike the US, where such mundane matters are not supposed to make news.
I am not a globe-trotter, not in my wildest dreams, and never will be. But I have seen a fair bit of India. Carping critics from all over India would devour me if I have anything kind to say about the States. The US, everyone loves to hate, specially in India. And the herd of US bashers in India straddles across a wide spectrum-the communists to the secularists, the 'India's National newspaper' to the nukkad 'Nakkeeran'. Everyone has a ball spewing venom on the US. Everyone likes to hate the US. Especially the political clan who would think nothing of flying to a US hospital with a large retinue of aides and family members for treatment of a flu at state expense but no sooner do they recover than they would launch a tirade on the 'imperialist forces' out to destabilise the country. It does not shame us (if we have any sense of such a commodity left) to take pride in launching into intellectual debates on 'US authoritarianism and hegemony' when our entire progeny is safely esconced in some Boston or Texas, pursuing the great American dream.(my Bengali friends are renowned for this double standards). We don't bat an eyelid while condemning the frisking our Khans have had to endure in their airports even as our own countrymen die in hordes in terrorist bombings.
Why, our 'democratic' society does not even lift a finger when the tyranny of our political class banishes even harmless cartoons that appeared some 50 years back in some nondescript publication! If ever, God forbid, such a circus happens in the US, I would then be convinced that doomsday has arrived on mankind - of the civilised variety that is!
