We all never miss opportunity to say that we are proud
Indians, do we? We are really proud of our culture, our way of living and how
we manage everything somehow despite all odds. Indian way of living has helped
each one of us one way or the other, in one situation or the other though we
might have never realized.
Now to start with most common thing, it is in Indian culture
to wake up early and there are many assumptions written about benefits of
waking up in Brahma-Muhurata ( 1.5 hrs. before Sun rise). I might not have read
what those documented benefits were but when I started applying it from my 11th
standard in college, I was thrilled to see change in myself. It helped me in
being energetic for whole day and also helped me in managing my studies much
better. The power of spending 15-20 mins in peace before sun rise with cool
breeze blowing is immense and it helps you to feel good about life and makes
you realize importance of being a human. Try it for one week whole heartily and
I can assure that you will start to feel changes in the way you think or the way live
your life. Since that day I didn’t have to wait for my parents to wake me up
forcibly in early morning as I was doing it myself for my own selfish reasons
explained above.
The next thing which I embedded into my daily routine was
prayers and chanting of few mantras. It came more or less from being from a Brahmin
family in North India but I didn’t start doing it just because I was a Brahmin,
I did it because I felt the magic of doing it. Chanting of "Om" every day 5 to 7 times made me
realize how relaxing feel it gives and since that day I never looked
back. I have been practicing it almost every day as part of my daily routine. I
am not a religious person but yes I think chanting of few mantras and praying
in peace for few minutes gives one immense calmness and time to realize about oneself.
I don’t do prayers to ask for something, I do it just to feel the peace within
myself in those few mins.
Benefit on the spot:
Now apart from these somewhat serious values of Indian
system there were many times when one belief system or the other helped me to
come out of a tough situation and trust me I am not making it out just for sake
of it. Here is one such incident which took place when I was travelling
from Allahabad to Delhi in night train to catch my early morning flight to
Bangalore and that was my first ever flight. It was winter time so heavy fog
caused trains to be late and though I had anticipated for 5-6 hours delay, it
turned out to bit more than that. I can’t recall the timings precisely but I guess
around 1 hour before flight departure time I was still in train somewhere in
outer part of Delhi. While I was in all this anxiety of losing my flight booking
money and wasting my day, I saw a beggar in the compartment and guess what?? I gave
him 10 Rs 😃.
This might sound normal but before that day I never gave money to beggars or never
even donated in any temple thinking that was waste of my hard earned money. Somehow
in few minutes train reached to station and then I started searching for my cab
driver as I was not much familiar with Delhi. After few mins of zigzag running I
found the driver waiting and he dropped me to the airport 30 mins before flight
departure time ignoring all the speed warning popping out in his cab speed
control system and then thanks to Airlines staff I managed to get the flight
just in time. All these things happened so suddenly that I didn’t get time to realize
what was happening and why. I had lost all hopes of getting flight when I was
in train and was trying to cancel the flight to save whatever bucks I could
save but as there is a phrase in Bollywood derived from Indian value system of compassion that “If you give 1 paisa, you will get
10 lakh back”. I believe this is exactly what happened with me that day and
saved not only my hard earned money but also my day getting wasted.
In our everyday life we follow values of our Indian belief
system, many times unknowingly. Indian culture is so vast with so many values
that it has answer for everything happening. Unfortunately when the West is
coming to understand and adopt some of the best values of our cultural system,
we are trying to ignore what is rightly ours. This TVC from Lufthansa says it so
beautifully that world is trying to replicate the way we live our life after
seeing the growth we as a country are making and they have realized that to win over us world has to be like #MoreIndianThanYouThink .
Be proud of our belief system doesn’t matter how old it is. If
it made sense thousands of years back, it makes sense today and it will make sense
in years to come.