Dear Author Impersonating A Spanish Tomato,

(in response to A Letter to All Indians from a Spanish Tomato & Second Letter to All Indians from a Spanish Tomato)

Please do not assume that you know what India and what every Indian is about. We are well aware of our situation regarding poverty, starvation, farmer suicides and the scores of problems that plague our nation and our people.

From your letter, it seems that you might be in dire need of a lesson or two when it comes to politeness. Your letter addresses an entire nation. Do show some respect. Writing as a 'mere tomato' is no excuse for being impolite and disrespectful to a people you barely know. A few Indians may be hell-bent on aping the west to jump onto the supposedly “cool” bandwagon, but don’t toss us all in with a few bad apples. Don’t you think you’ve crossed a line by questioning each and every Indian’s sanity, other than yourself (if you are an Indian, as I dared assume from some of your previous posts)?

Is it illegal for “us Indians” as you address us, to show any interest in Spain or do you consider Spain unworthy of any other nation’s interest, unless there are some “deals” involved. I’m sure most of Spain would beg to differ. Just so you know, Bollywood has shot movies in Greece, Australia, America and London too, without being accused of any underlying political deals.

“Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara” is just one movie. Rather, it is an extremely long Spanish tourism commercial, as some would say. Many, however, have looked down upon the “La Tomatina” and the “bull run” scenes. Yes, some of “us Indians” have a problem with the bull-run too. Who’d have thought?

I don’t see what shopping malls and beggars have to do with the festival. Sure poverty is a problem, but that doesn’t mean that the “rich” have to forgo every pleasure until every Indian is in a position to celebrate to his heart’s content or sleep with a content belly. That day will never come, not for India, nor any other country. It’s plain, simple logic. Everyone has to make sacrifices to manage to live within their means.

It may come to you as a great surprise, but “quite a few” Indians are rich and we can afford to shop at malls. Yes, it’s true. The people who beg along the streets don’t hold it against the mall-goers, why do you? Frankly, you have no right to judge where the people of Bangalore, Delhi or any other Indian city, shop.

Do you know why Anna Hazare was fasting? Do you know how many hundreds, no not hundreds, thousands of Indians supported him? To make one point extremely clear, Anna Hazare was not fasting to drill sense into us. He did not need to drill sense into us. He led a movement against the government which conveniently turned a blind eye towards rampant corruption. He fasted so that a strong bill could be passed in the parliament that would help curb corruption all over the country. “We Indians” supported him wholeheartedly, including movie stars, some politicians (who might have had questionable agendas), activists and scores of regular people.

Your second letter takes the cake. First you insult Indians, later you congratulate the same Indians and then you insult us some more. You asked us why this idea interested us at all in the first place. It’s probably because “some” (please pay special attention to the word “some” as you tend to assume all Indians are crazy) wannabes thought it would be a good idea, just as “some” people in Spain thought that (quoting you) “throwing food at each other” is a fun idea.

I’m quite surprised that you have managed to come to a conclusion about an entire nation’s food wastage situation by attending a certain number of social gatherings. People who heap their plates with the sole intention of wasting the food that they have served themselves are mentally sick. Although, I doubt the ladies in question attended the wedding with such evil intentions, I can’t say anything for sure since you were the one present there, closely monitoring what they ate and what they didn’t, eavesdropping on their conversations, I’m sure, for research purposes.

We don’t have food to waste at festivals, lunches and dinners. I'm fortunate enough to have family, relatives, friends and neighbors who are as sensitive to the food wastage situation as any other responsible Indian citizen. We’re regular citizens of India, referred to as ‘the middle class’, ‘the lower middle class’ and ‘the poor’, who put together, form more than 70% of this nation. I can think of three reasons why you wouldn’t know this, about "us Indians" –

1.       You have bothered to interact only with a rare brand of pigheaded rich folk who seem to perform food wastage as a regular ritual,

2.       Your only experience with any Indian celebration has been the big, fat wedding that you have mentioned in your letter,

3.       You have the misfortune of having encountered only the negative side of India, which seems quite impossible.

You have a problem with us boycotting a “branded food fight festival” because we haven’t been able to solve the problem of food wastage in other situations. Are we not allowed to nip a problem in the bud before solving other related problems? Is there a particular chronological order in which the problems of a nation must be solved?

Activists do as much as they can. They may take up the issue about food wastage at weddings, or they may not. They may take up the issue regarding food being left to rot in government warehouses, or they may not. They may fight for the cause of our farmers, or they may not. None of them are answerable to you. They are doing enough for their country. You on the other hand, are busy pointing fingers at what they have not achieved. Isn’t that convenient!

You have the audacity to call us hypocrites. Not just a handful of Indians that you claim to know, nor a particular community that you have had a bad experience with, no - you have assumed that each and every Indian is a hypocrite, based on your in-depth research. It isn’t part of our culture to waste food. Just because some Indians are guilty of such an unforgivable crime, it doesn’t mean that it changes what we have been taught, what we believe in and what has been engraved into the very foundation of our culture you question. To the rest of “us Indians”, wastage of food is as big a crime as it might be to you, or even bigger. Indians who are eager enough to participate in the La Tomatina Festival will flock to Spain. There is no stopping them. Every Indian is not rushing to the airport as you pass judgment and hurl accusations.

I haven’t heard of any activist asking that the La Tomatina festival be banned over women running around in hot pants. We have water parks and beaches in India where women are free to walk around in bikinis. You can see a number of women going to discotheques and parties in much shorter and skimpier clothes than what Katrina Kaif wore in Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. India will always suffer from a small bunch of lunatics who take moral policing into their own hands. I don’t see how that makes all of us hypocrites.

You have labeled an entire nation crazy and called every Indian a hypocrite based on a part of India that you have interacted with, before jumping to an extremely hurtful conclusion. We have successfully banned the La Tomatina festival in Delhi, Mysore, Bangalore and hopefully, in Mumbai too. Spain still celebrates the La Tomatina festival. We do not approve of it but we don’t judge Spain either.

An entire nation should not be judged based on the actions of a few, just as a blogger should not be judged by two unreasonable, impolite posts addressed to an entire nation, more than half of which the blogger has yet to meet.

- From,
Your Average Indian Citizen