Folkways

 Hello Readers

 Hope you are doing fine.

 I have the highest respect for the concept of 'Advait' - the oneness of all humans - that is central to Indian culture, thought, and religion.

-Rajkumar Hirani

 From planning weekend outings to settling at home is what we have settled in for.

 Well, time and situations change us.

 Wanted to write about culture today, well a simple thing to discuss yet is so vast and ancient.

 According to the oxford dictionary, the customs and beliefs, art, way of life, and social organization of a country or group is culture.

 Why should we even consider culture as an essential aspect of our life?

 We all would have realized by this time; we are the SumTotal of the environment we are born and brought up.

 There is no way to prove it; actually, it is habitual that we learn to live by imbibing how our surroundings treat us. We understand the mechanism of how it works!

 Indian Culture

 The Indian culture I feel is one of the unique cultures in the world.

 There is a misconception where we think culture is related to religions and rituals.

 Absolutely not it is a way of life.

 Culture is the etiquette which have flown to us from generations to generations, from a simple "Namaste" to not wearing footwear to certain places, to bowing to the sun each morning, treating trees and animals as divine all comes in our culture.

 There was a time before the Macaulay era when Indians were attending free schools called "Gurukuls"  the highest preference was given to values, Then to the education in various fields, well that changed into learning education which would help the invaders to get their job done.

 Yet our culture was not totally touched by them.

 Culture of a country is its heritage we can see that etched in stones in the famous temples, with the beautiful stone carvings, in our dance, art, our dressing sense, handicrafts, handlooms and so on.

 When we visit temples, maybe because we are in the schedule, we finish seeing the significant places in the temple and continue with our trip.

 But if we try to spend time in the temple, and observe the carvings,  what you actually see there is our culture, how they lead the life in that era, starting from agriculture, trade commerce, wars, literature and art, epics in simple words an encyclopedia of those times.

 Therefore, for the people who think culture is just rituals and is about religion, it is not appropriate to say that it is about mannerisms, etiquette, the societal behavior and our present-ability of families.

 The Depletion

No doubt we have all moved on from an elementary life to a modern living lifestyle.

 The Orthodontic influence on us is also pretty evident, which is inevitable I would say, history says it all, we were invaded we were transformed. Some part of that transformation was for good, so I am fine till there.

 But I have one question, If there is a rose plant, which grows naturally, then a gardener trims and shapes the plant and maybe adds  some good fertilizers, but the essential nature that it is a rose plant and it has thorns and it bears the flowers which we call roses don't change right?

 Whichever country you are living today wherever you go and do what you like, why don't we remember that our origin is from your homeland and you started the first lessons of your life here and keep our culture intact?

 Every country and its culture are precious to the people of that particular country.

 But the zillion dollar question is that are we proud about our culture.

 Are you ready to stand for it and , preserve and teach to your future generations, or you just want to mix yourself like chemicals changing colours when some external indicators  are added to it and become something entirely different which you are not?

 Please sit for a while and think over, we ought to preserve the precious Indian culture, and our future generations should carry this lamp.

 

Courtesy google images

 

The Vedas, the Natyashastra (the art of dancing), Arthashastra (economic theories), Ayurveda (natural medicine), Vastushastra (the science of architecture), I mean the list endless.

 I leave you with these thoughts, please retrospect.

 Thanks for your time. Have a great week ahead.

 Helios.