One day punjabi will be world wide..

Answering Kane_29 and J@tti at www.lovechandigarh.com

Kane_29: "one day punjabi will be world wide..."
J@tti: "I know punjabis are all over the world.But we are not even 1% of the total population you are always cumin up wid absurd facts and By the way punjabi's always rock.. We are the rulers no matter where we are and in what propotion we are... "

I know Kane_29 always comes up with weird facts, but probably he himself doesn’t know that this time he seems to have come up with a good topic as well. At least I consider a good ‘n debatable topic.

Most of us here would want Punjabi Language to achieve better place in India ‘n elsewhere than it holds at the moment. But unfortunately, Punjabi is not making much progress as far as its expansion is concerned. Infact more ‘n more people are choosing Hindi ‘n in some cases even English as their first language. And here I’m talking about people still living in Punjab. I have nothing against Hindi, it’s our national language, but I think we’re simply showing disrespect towards our mother tongue by calling Hindi our first language or mother tongue.

I think it’s a shame the way Punjabi seems to be becoming the language of the Sikhs. This might sound weird, but this fact is growing so strong that people often confuse one’s being Sikh is his/her being Punjabi. I personally think that Punjabi is not the property of the Sikhs alone. It’s the mother tongue to all Punjabis and it deserve the same respect from all the Punjabis regardless of their religion.

Secondly, has anyone noticed the trend towards Hindi ‘n English among the youth these days? God to the urban areas in Punjab and the youth wouldn’t wanna talk to you in Punjabi. It is seen to be below their standard to talk in Punjabi. If you talk in Hindi, you’re seen to be a bit urbanised/modern/educated etc. If you happen to know English well enough, you’re bound to impress.

So if our own new generations seem to be losing the love of the language, how can we expect the new people to want to learn our beautiful language?

I could probably write a 10 page essay on this. But I guess I should wait for your comments and the rest of the essay can go into answering those comments :)
So I’ll finish off with Gurdas Maan’s words:

Arranged vs Love Marriage.. continued

One of the comments about my last collumn about Love vs. Arranged Marriages (and Arranged Love Marriages) was by Dhillon at lovechandigarh.com who said, "Sydneychamp what if the woman you marry stops or doesn’t want to practice Sikhism for what ever reason after marriage, what will you do then?"
My answer was too long to put it in the comments. So i'm making a new entry here. Please read the entry below and the comments if you don't know what I'm talking about here.

Fair enough Dhillon.. but you can't tell the future and can't control it either. What I can control is my present. If my partner doesn't want to practice Sikhism, that's a different story, but at least I wold've made my effort to find a partner who can understand where I'm coming from not only when I'm talking about religion but everything else too, coz as I said.. I am what I am partly coz of my religion.

It's like saying.. "all women become fat after marriage." But Dhillon, does that mean that you go and find the biggest woman you can find and marry her, just to minimise the risk of her getting fatter in the future? And worst still, when you look for a partner, you look for somene who meets the criteria of your 'perfect partner'. But people change. So your partner's personality may change over time and after marriage, you may not like the change. You can’t really control that change Dhillon. What you can do is to find the person that best fits your wish-list and then hope that you two only change for the better.

One of my reasons for wishing to marry only a Sikh girl was that she will understand me more than a non-Sikh simply coz she understands not only the theoretical aspects of the religion but also the unexplainable feelings behind the faith.
Another reason is that if I was to marry a girl from another faith, she would want to do her path-pooja according to her own faith which my religion may not approve. Although I respect everyone’s right to practice their own religion, I wouldn’t want such rituals to be carried out in my own house if my religion and I don’t approve them.

Now some people here would wanna crucify me over my comments about ‘fat women’. But I don’t mean to make fun of anyone here. Please don’t go after the words.. concentrate on the point I’m trying to make here.

Damn.. my answers always seem to get so long. Anyway.. I’ll cut it here. Hope I made some sense.

Waheguru Rakha

Love Marriage vs. Arranged Marriage..

Or Better Still... "Arranged Love Marriage"

The question was raised in a forum at http://lovechandigarh.com/
Would you let your parents find a life partner for you, someone of your caste, religion, status and every thing else.
Or
Marry someone you love and trust? [by Dhillon]

Here’s what I have to say about it..:
I won’t vote for either of them. Both have their own benefits and drawbacks. I would rather go for what I call “Arranged Love Marriage”. I don’t particularly support the idea of dating, having a g/f or b/f for months/years. The reason is simple.. 95% of these relationships don’t go even as far as the question of marriage. Majority of those who are serious relationships and do go that far are often based on pretence and unrealistic expectations. Both of these are dangerous for future married life.

An arranged marriage in the traditional sense is also a bit of a gamble. You might get the best partner you can ever find, or you might find the worst. It is however found in arranged marriages that if both the partners have agreed to the arranged marriage, then they tend to commit themselves to the relationship completely and try quite hard to make it work.

There are many other reasons for me to believe that both the systems are flawed. “Arranged Love Marriage” on the other hand can be a bliss if used sensibly. Wouldn’t it be better if we chose our life partner out of so many people we like in life, still keeping in mind the requirements of our family. The person of our likes (our love in other words) can then be accepted in our family and the marriage can be arranged by the family, leaving everyone happy. Some seem to stress over the issue way too much. I believe that there is no reason why you can’t find a good partner without stepping outside the limits set by your family such as religion.

As far as religion, caste and status etc. are concerned, I only stand for the religion. Caste is a curse on our society that opinion of mine is supported by my religion. That’s why my personal choice is a Sikh female who understands and respects the religion. My family may have minor problems with the cast factor, however it is manageable.

So there we go.. Mr. Dhillon, you might have to add “Arranged Love Marriage” to the list of options in the survey.

Waheguru Rakha
Balraj

Valentine Special:

Hi Navneet, as I said in my e-mail, you couldn't post comments about the "Valentine Day Special" post because it was an old post and is on my old blog where comments aren't supported. I have posted it here so that it can be read through the link above and comments can be posted. Hope it works here. I’ve already added your comments that you sent to me in the e-mail in the comments section. Hope you don’t mind me using your name here.

Valentine Special:
I have spent most of my day today arguing with many of my friends about how unnecessary it is to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on flower in one day... [read the post]
::

Comments to my posts.

Fellows.. you can now add comments to my posts even without being a memeber of this site. The comments will be open for everyone to read as well. You just need to click on "Comments" at the end of the post you wish to comment on. This will take you to the page with all the previous comments about that post. At the end of these comments click on "Post a Comment" to post a new comment.

Hope to hear from you all very soon. take care.