Thursday, October 3, 2013

Nina Davuluri: Indian Mettle Proven Again

It was one of the historical moments for the indians who live in America or aptly said as the american indians when Nina Davuluri won the most prestigious title, given for the ensemble of beauty and brains in America. It was indeed a phenomenal moment when two Asians got zeroed in for the final round of Miss America. Nina who earlier won Miss Sycrause and Miss NewYork was very skeptical of her win before the actual pageant as she knew that never ever any non resident indian have been privileged to such an extent in this concerned field but with her zealot and perseverance she has achieved what was long just an unspoken dream. The journey was not easy and it is never easy to snuggle your way out for an expatriate amongst the citizenry because the people though fraternise along well but on the fringes of their hearts deep down somewhere have a prejudice feeling for the migrants, inconsequential of the fact how long the person have been on their land bigotry prevails. Well, talking about Nina she was born and brought up on the US land itself, she belongs to a well learned family which immigrated to America around three decades ago. Her father is a gynaecologist, her mother is a computer specialist and her elder sister is a medical student, so seeing her elders excelling so well in academics she also decided to be amongst the cluster but she was destined for something different. She grew learning all the indian traditional values and teachings, she even got herself trained in many indian classical dance forms like Kuchipudi and Bharatnatyam which certainly shows her Indian-ness and she even showed her prowess in dance by performing a Bollywood dance item in one of the rounds of Miss America finale. She won many beauty crowns in the initial phases as well which provided her the driving force to step ahead and compete at the national level. All her dreams and aspirations finally materialised on September 15, 2013, the day when she was crowned as one of the most beautiful women living in the United States. She has definitely made her residing country and her root country proud but as we all know nowadays nothing comes for free and so is success, which came here with a price of controversy, these seem to be part and parcel of each other.
Miss America crown fetched along many criticisms and racial remarks which were really very heart wrenching, its like you are being punished for something which you are not even guilty of. The Almighty created this world with a simple formula of symbiosis but as the complexities increased human perspective also bore the brunt and became so alloyed that the principle of the omnipotent clamoured for attention and consequently lost its sheen. Well, in this unscrupulous world of today such events have got hackneyed, as nowadays people just do not give a damn to others unless they are  going to profit them in some sense or the other. Although, USA has been one of the world leaders and is so advanced in technologies and in providing other amenities but still the mindset of people there is highly contemptible. People are so bewitched by their country's reputation and power that they have failed to learn of the fact that now there are several other nations as well who are if not more but have at least touched the benchmarks set by them in every field. Such racial remarks made by them not only hurts the person whom they are directly referred to but they also affect the sentiments of the whole community at which these remarks are intended to. People simply forget the fact that if such communities would have not been living in their beloved homeland and would not have toiled hard then their would have been odds that their motherland would not have achieved such great heights which it has now. Its true that America has better opportunities, better living conditions than many other nations but it's highly unacceptable to get so blinded in your own hullabaloo that you loose respect for other co nations which are somewhere or the other responsible for your damn glorification. As soon as she won the crown whole twitter verse was full of racial remarks regarding her skin colour, her ethnic origin, her relations with Al Qaeda and many more, though, there were some people as well who applauded her on her historical win and even posted videos and comments supporting her and rejecting all the gibberish. Despite of all this mayhem, Nina handled the whole situation very well by saying that she wants to get over with this and rise above. Either Americans are so overweening with power or they are so terrified by the fact that Asians specially Indians are going to take their jobs away in every field and there nightmares will turn in reality, so instead of improving themselves they are being contentious about each and every thing which others are doing. Well, i would like to say that first they need to get their asses moving and start working and educating themselves because by just munching on fast food items and criticising other's things are not going to bring a change any time soon. By their critical remarks instead of affecting Nina they have affected themselves as they have become an object of mockery on the world stage as they don't even know where India is actually, they think its in Arab, there was a tweet reacting to one of the american remarks saying that"Every thing thats in your East is not in Arab". As any other country America is also a mixture of all types of people but the actions of the good ones usually get obscured by the follies of their other fellow countrymen. America is having an overall literacy rate of 99% which itself is axiomatic that how open minded people are there but then to such events make the whole picture a bit abstruse.
Well, whatever the case is i would definitely like to agree that America is a land of immigrants and by Nina winning this crown it has been ascertained that America celebrates diversity through cultural competency, in spite of all the controversy this has proven to be a silver lining in the cloud. Discrimination exists everywhere it's not just the case here for instance in India many people as well agreed that Nina shouldn't have won the title just because she is too dark in complexion. India is a fairness maniac society here people believe that whatever is fair looking is good instead of it's other side effects and it's very clearly visible by the sales of so many fairness creams available, so many skin lightening techniques teeming in the markets, it's a craze in both men and women to get themselves a tone lighter or two. We are Asians and specially we living in India are bound to be wheatish or brown skinned because of the tropical climatic conditions here but people are not in a mood to accept that, for Indians the proverb " All That Glitters Is Not Gold" should be a bit altered and it should be "All That Is Fair Is Not Good". Though we have an array of actors who are or were brown skinned and people admire them with open hands but when it comes to an individual then they prefer to be fairer themselves and even want a fair looking life partner as well. These all idiosyncratic activities have just done good to these cosmetic industries only and have exasperated the multitude's desire of looking one or two skin tones lighter. Again i would like to refer to one of the tweets which said that If Nina would have been living in India then she would have never won any beauty pageants as according to Indian thinking she is too dark to win. Indians associate beauty with skin colour which is highly bigoted, they get negligent about other credentials of the person if he/she dose not fulfil the prime criterion of being fair.
Well, all this mine scribbling has led me to infer that people living in any nation irrespective have been biased  to someone or the other without any rhyme or reason and this behaviour of them needs improvement as because of this all the good work done by their fellow citizens reduces to a trickle. People need to understand the true mettle of someone not by the place he/she belongs or by their skin colours they need to rise above these tawdry measures of judgement and show some true skills of being a human being who have been gifted with a brain which demands utilisation.
PS:- This video shows the crowning of Miss America a phenomenal event where Indians have proven their mettle once again despite all potshots.

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