I am from Bhārat!

Today a friend of mine from my office mentioned that the Greek do not like when someone refers to their country as 'Greece' - this is the name given to their land by the Turks when they conquered them. They actually call their land, Elláda, officially known as the Hellenic Republic. And then I started telling them how off late I have been thinking that whenever someone asks me where am I from, I should say I am from Bhārat. And they said but no one would know where that is.

And then it actually took me some time, effort and backing from wikipedia to prove to them that Bhārat (or Bhārat Ganarājya) is the official name of India and shares equal status with the 'Republic of India'. They were finding it hard to believe that the official name in Hindi is phonetically so different from the one in English. And then I explained to them that India is derived from Indus which is the derived from the Persian word Hindu which is derived from the Hindi/Sanskrit word Sindhu. Likewise India was also called Hindustan by Persians and the Mughal rulers. Now that I think, since we did not give 'Hindustan' a official status, we should not even have given 'India' an official status. Hindustan and India are both names given to our land by other people. We should always call our country Bhārat, after the legendary Hindu king Bharat who united the whole country.

Our motto is in Sanksrit - 'Satyameva Jayate", national anthem is in Bangla - 'Jana Gana Mana' and national song is in Sanskrit - 'Vande Mataram', why should we call our motherland in a foreign language. So next time when someone asks you. where are you from, tell them, "I am from Bhārat ..." and you can add, "... also know as India in the english-speaking world"

Source:
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Courts Informatics Division, National Informatics Centre, Ministry of Comm. and Information Tech. http://indiacode.nic.in/coiweb/fullact1.asp?tfnm=00%201. Retrieved on 2007-08-08. -- "Name and territory of the Union - India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States."

Not twice ....

She was the sweetest thing I had seen. Cute, fair, down-to-earth, intelligent and more importantly, she liked talking to me. We would sit in lectures together, study in the library together and share lots of stories. When her father got hurt, she was sad and shared it with me. I would bring her chocolates to make her happy.

All this while, for two years I kept it to myself that I had a crush on her. And that the moments I used to share with her were the best thing happening to me. And then, one day through someone she learnt that I had a crush on some girl. Since then, she would ask me every single day about who it was. I never told her - because I knew that she would stop talking to me if she knew it was her. She kept pressing me and then one fine day, I told her. I have never talked to her since, its been six years now ...

I am writing this down because once more, I have fallen for someone ... big time ... hard core :) I cannot concentrate on work, the image revolves in my head all the time and I do not know what to do. What I do know is that if I reveal it, the person will stop talking to me and I might lose a very good friend. I will not make that mistake again, not twice ....