My country, India, is a dizzying mix of opposites of every conceivable kind.

We have mega cities like Mumbai and remote villages where there's no electricity or piped water.
 We have billionaires and poverty stricken people who don't have one square meal a day.

We have cultured polished folks who listen to Beethoven and Bach and uncultured boors who belch and pick their noses in public.

We have  beaches and rivers and mountains and deserts, snow-capped mountains and hot humid tropical forests.

We have Hindus and Muslims and Christians (like me) and Jews and Buddhists and Zoroastrians and various other groups.

What was amazing was that till about twenty years ago, after we got independence from the British in 1947, this huge hodge-podge of religions and languages existed harmoniously with hardly a hiccup.


Sadly , now, things have changed ...very much for the worse.

Thanks to our rotten, corrupt, disgusting politicians we are now no longer one country. We have now been separated into Hindus and Muslims and Christians and Maharashtrians and Biharis and Gujaratis, etc.

The violence that has been unleashed against minority communities is horrific. Pandora's box has been opened and I don't think anyone will be able to rein in the evils that have been released.

For years, my brothers, one settled in the U.S. and the other in Canada, have been asking us to leave India and join them, but my husband and I did not really relish the thought of leaving our own country to live elsewhere as aliens.

Now however we have become aliens in our own land. Terrible things were done to Christians in many parts of the country though not where I live. If the situation gets worse, we may have to reconsider.

I worry about my children's future. If current trends continue, things will be very bad in another ten or twenty year's time.

I weep for the India that was...