I am obsessed about this country. I love it to the point of hating it and then tumbling back into loving it all over again. I hate the callousness. The chuck-a-plastic-wrapper-outta-the-window attitude. I hate people spitting all over the place. Wonder if they would spit on their dining table. I hate the chalta-hai (anything goes) attitude too. Everybody is so ready to adjust that beyond a point, they are tolerating things they should never have been caught dead tolerating.

Nobody takes responsibility for the environment, the politics of the nation, the crime rates, the situation of women and children, the particularly bad attitude towards alternative cultures. I hate the way people run away from the nation to other prettier, greener places and refuse to come back, and when they do, they carry around a bottle of mineral water, just in case they contract somehting ugly from the water and food that their cells are made of. And I love it that some of them come back and change a small part of the world for better.

I love it that when I was about to slip under the train and lose a limb, a hand pulled me back into the train. I love it that an old uncle sits and chats with me and tells me that life is so short, you hardly realise when you turn 60 and you have wrinkles so I should be having a lot more fun than I already do. I love it that people still feed cows and stray dogs and adopt little kittens.

I love it that people celebrate festivals and draw rangolis, make amazing festival food and give it to their neighbours. I love it that husbands secretly tell their wives that despite what the mother in law says, it is okay for her to wear jeans. Its good on her. Its stunningly awesome that mother in laws tell you to ‘keep cooking easy and not sweat it out so much over food, there is so much more to do in life’.

I love it that a son still wants his parents to stay with him, long after he has his job, his woman, his children and so much more. Its beautiful that children can stay with their parents as long as they want – even at 40. Everything is so contradictory that it makes perfect sense. There is so much chaos that you are bound to give it all up one day to just sit back and let things unfold so you can focus on being happy and taking care of the world you live in. If surrender in the spiritual sense of the word is enlightening, this is it. In India. Here. Now. What a breathtakingly insane and beautiful country.

Reema Prasanna is a Search Engine Marketing expert, Xoogler, baking expert and blogger. More about her here http://about.me/reema.prasanna