insiders and outsiders

insiders and outsiders

I have always thought it was a major exaggeration when people said or wrote that they felt the ground under their feet shift leaving them stunned and shocked.
What could possibly happen to a person to create such an extreme reaction that you lose touch with your bearings and question the firmness on the earth you are standing on?
What could shake the foundations of your existence, and make you think that your whole perception of yourself so far is a lie and you are just an alien?
Happened to me when someone asked me if I was a kannadiga or an "outsider"in Bangalore. The categorisation seemed very clear. It did not matter that I had lived in this city for 26 years, considered it my home,spoke kannada better than some for whom it was the mother tongue and above all, loved the city. I own property and I have voting rights here. And yet,to be called an outsider in your home?! Now, that hurt, very very deeply. I did not know where I belonged anymore.
I completely understood what some of my friends who practice Islam had told me all along. How it felt to be treated like an outsider in your own home. Now I completely understand the alienation that the African Americans feel in the U.S.A. I can see why the suburbs of Paris are burning. This is where the seeds are sown.
What qualifies one to be an insider in any place?
When I salute the national flag or sing the national anthem or cheer the men in blue or say "vande mataram' from the pit of my stomach, and own an Indian passport, I feel that I belong here and that this IS my HOME - every inch of its territory. I refuse to be categorised as anything other than "Indian" despite the languages I know , where I live or what religion I practice. Bangalore, Mumbai or Kashmir is as much my home as anyone who has lived there for 500 years. My constitution guarantees me that and I refuse to let anyone take that away from me.
Next time someone asks me if I am an "outsider" I shall not dignify that with a reply or a reaction.
Vande Mataram!

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Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake

Rabindranath Tagore.

58 years...and yet we are far from there!!!Miles to go to be free gurudev!