It is said that success comes only to those who are really passionate about their work, those who burn the midnight oil and have the desire to innovate and excel. Plagiarism has been existent in our world but everyone seems to be silent about it, perhaps the ones who plagiarize are more powerful than the meek and geeky inventors or perhaps, it goes in such a sublime manner that nobody sees any harm in it. This even includes getting inspired from others and  I’m not saying that I don’t do it, but I have a different point to make in this post.

This is going not only on a macro scale but also at individual level, I mean, now that we have facebook friends telling us what they “like” doing everyday, there is too much pressure on people to do what they should be doing to fit in !  It’s a human tendency to fit in the society, everybody wants to do what the majority of the people like doing, so that, the majority likes this new person too. Or sometimes, it is just the kool factor which comes into play. People want to do things what the kool people are doing, so that they can join their league and be kool themselves.

Somehow, over years with rising integration of world and now that people communicate with each other more and get to see what’s popular in the best regions of the world (read USA and Europe), every other country wants to act like them, like what they like and do what they do, so that this puts them in the same bracket in world rankings. People being thinking that now they are doing what the best people do and they feel happiness in this achievement, but they don’t stop to ponder upon the fact that they could achieved this happiness in doing anything they like, and this is the dis-advantage of this socially interacting world, instead of interacting i.e a 2 way flow ideas, it has reduced to unidirectional flow of ideas, from developed to developing nations. People in these new world countries have entered into a race to attain the level of sophistication of the developed countries  as soon as possible.

In this new age, in the new age countries, “yes, we can” really means “yes, even we can”

I can see this phenomenon all around me in India, people here are in a mad race to transform India into a carbon copy of the USA, we want to eat like them, talk like them, shop like them, play their sports, watch their movies, and now even marry their women, well that is more of a population issue but still it beefs up my point ! I can give a few examples if you don’t believe me.

I am a member of the formula race car team of BITS Pilani which goes by the name Inspired Karters, we participate in national event called SUPRA SAE modeled on the FSAE and FS events. Although, I’m very happy and proud to be a part of the team and feel glad when I see people from different colleges building and racing their vehicles, but it is no hidden fact that the organizers take the whole event to showcase to the world that even they can organize events like these in India, I see a lack of passion and this is the very fact that worries me, because the only reason why these events still exist in the parent countries is the passion to make cars, to make better technology and to excel in this field which certainly is missing in the Indian scenario. The same was applicable to the inaugural Indian Grand Prix, I felt it was more of an event to put India on the elite map than celebrating the greatest event of motor-sporting history. It was clearly a ” see, even we can” moment rather than a ” we love doing it ” moment.

Moreover the recent fiasco, the Metallica concert at Delhi, it was these “even we want to” fans of Metallica that vandalized the stage after it was postponed, true fans would never do that and they didn’t, they just stood back watching the shit happening in front of their eyes, but i was atleast happy that around 90% of the crowd was in the latter category. But still, why did people who weren’t even fans of Metallica come to the concert on the first place ?? most of them did just because it was “kool” to attend a Metallica concert, maybe they saw their friends liking the band on Facebook and they didn’t want to be left out.

Im not saying its not good that we have such events now, but im concerned about the intent, it should just not be that we too can do it, it should be it is so awesome and we love doing it, because this is the only intent that has kept these events alive in the west

Also, one more domain I would like to discuss is the music, I’m sick of the recent Hindi music that is being developed in India right now, people have lost their creativity and originality. There is just too much of influence from the west that it is overpowering the original content. There is mixing of too many genres of music and this results in something which nobody likes or remembers after a month. I love Folk Metal and Celtic Rock of the Scandinavian region because they introduced the heavy rock into their folk melodies without losing the latter’s essence but in India, mixing of bollywood music with almost everything known in the music industry is just too blatant and on top of that, unappealing and cheesy.

I know we are on the right track of development and progress but i hope this is just a temporary phase of becoming “one of them” instead of discovering “who we really are”