a must read

this is a mail i got from lynate...it's pretty cool...

"I came across this article in the magazine Outlook.......But I thought this
article is so good that everyone on MS should read this. It is written
by Madhu Trehan. She writes regularly for Outlook and in this she is
replying to a letter by a reader. Both the letter have been written.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi Madhu

I have read your articles ever since I was a kid and you were at India
Today. You have often come across as a balanced person not prone to
Gandhi nonsense, until now.

I live in a White Nation (the US) and have never felt like a second
class citizen. Only a blind and a deaf person can compare the pride of a
US citizen with the indignity of being an Indian. A US citizen trusts his
government, knows his/her death will never go unpunished, while an
Indian solider is there to die.

Elite is a bad word in India because 95% of our country lives in abject
poverty. Next time ask the waiter in Taj who served you the Rs 400
drink, how much he makes in a month. I bet his monthly salary will be around
your dinner bill. Shame on you and journalists like you who have failed
India in the past with coloured reporting and are doing so now. They
should feel ashamed. Rather than calling bush names, maybe we should
hang our heads in shame on PMs like Vajpayee who is too old to walk,
too much of a coward to protect his people.

Maybe, just maybe, the day people like us (the English educated hence
smarter) start feeling ashamed enough we will start making changes in
India rather than just exploiting our servants and labour class. It
anguishes me to read this national character articles. A nation that
cannot feed its people (a la Orrisa) has no character, a nation whose
children move around naked (Mumbai) has no reason to feel proud, a
nation whose elected reps call religious riots opposite reaction has
no future.

Once again, shame on you and all of India. I am ashamed to be an Indian
and shame on you for suggesting anything else.

Chet
(Chaitanya)

Her response was.....

Hello Chet,
I will answer your letter point by point.
O Your name. You can be Chet or Jet, stay away from the sun, fake an
American accent, but you will never be able to run away from Chaitanya.
He will always be there even though you hate him today.

O Gandhi, whom you hold in such contempt, despite all his controversial
behavior, is largely responsible for the fact that there is no white
boot on a part of your anatomy today.

O You live in a white nation but you are not white and never will be.
You can fool yourself to believe that you are not treated as a second
class citizen. You choose to forget the Dot Busters, the Sikh who was
killed because he looked foreign and rampant racism. How many times a
week do you have to explain where you are from and spend your time
EXPLAINING India to Americans? I cringe to think what you say to them
about India. We do not need spokesman such as you. You will never be
able to share a good desi joke with any of your new friends. If you
cant laugh together, you cannot understand each other. You will always
be an alien.

O Yes, we are economically poor compared to US but we do not have to
suffer the highest rate of teenage pregnancies, kids coming into schools
and killing students and teachers, the highest rate of suicide among
college students, alienated parents and children, lonely old people
dumped into old age homes, drugs being offered to eight year olds (as my
daughter was when she was in the UN school in New York), serial
marriages and divorces. The US had a president who was senile and deaf
(Reagan), one who turned out to be a serial sex offender (Clinton), and
now you have one who didnt know the heads of state of major countries
and ignored warnings of a terrorist attack months before it took place.
The US is responsible for massacres in Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, Chile
and the list goes on. The rest of the world does not view America with
the rose-coloured glasses you have been brainwashed by the US media to
see thorough. And, how much does a waiter in Jean Georges restaurant in
Trump International Hotel in New York make compared to the price of the
drink he is serving? The labour class in exploited all over the world.

O You seem to very upset that I am pointing out we have a national
character to be ashamed of and we should do something about it. Your
insistence that we stay ashamed and do nothing about it is perhaps to
make it easier for you to live in a country where the only religion is
to hang out at malls and accumulate consumer items you dont really need
but have been diktated by advertising to buy that, to keep the US
economy going. It is not by accident that Americans are flocking to yoga
and meditation classes to buy happiness.

O You have done well to leave a country you are ashamed of. Call
yourself an American but sooner or later your disguise and American
Halloween costume will frighten you enough to get rid of it.

O I love America's energy and have good friends there. New York is a
centre for an enormous outpouring of creativity and imaginative
thinking. Every country has its own problems. It is for the people who
belong there to take responsibility for change.

O If you are so far removed from India, ask yourself why you are so
anguished with my article. Chaitanya is raising his head, Chet is in
trouble.

Regards,
Madhu Trehan"