International blogging

It is a complete wonder to me when I stumble upon an interesting blog and then find out it is being written by someone in a country thousands of miles away, by someone who is NOT English born, has a completely different religious/political base than I and yet has such an astute view of the world. It makes me feel small, very small in this “small world”.
I speak of a pocket of blogs written by young people in India. They all write in English.
They review movies some of which I have seen and some not. They review books, talk about doing their taxes, get excited about “raining sales” and the urge to go out and buy new sweaters for the winter.
A few of the colloquial terms may seem odd to me, but other than that, their English is very good. But why would they blog in English? Are they comfortable thinking and typing in English? Is it because in their “day jobs” they have to speak in English so it is second nature? Do they think their blogs are being read by those in English speaking nations? I doubt this, since 99% of the comments left on the blogs are by other Indians and are written in English.



There was one particular blog from a young lady who was dreading having to go visit a certain aunt. It was an hour long train ride from Bangalore and then a drive. The family was pressuring her to go visit. And once she got back she blogged about how she should not have dreaded it. She realized the time with this fun and spiritual Aunt was refreshing to her and she would put it in her mind to visit her more often even if only for the memories of delicious food.

There are one or two blogs that get political and I use these to learn and compare. For as forward thinking as India is about the Internet and technology, they are still far behind in infrastructure (roads, sewage, power). Least we forget they also are still caught in many struggles with neighboring powers (Pakistan, Sri Lanka) and strong intolerance to many races and religions.
As much as Jerry likes to make crude jokes about the “Help Desks” based in India that we have all had to contend with. . . .we should still keep in mind India is a growing nation, not from the population stand point, but also in learning how to work together in a common goal. They only won their independence 60 years ago.
It took the US a quite a while (100+ years) to finally gain respect from our allies and the world. And now look what we did with it.
On my Dream list is a trip to India. I have become a E-Penpal of sorts with the young lady mentioned above, she lives in Bangalore. It would be quite the adventure to visit her city and this country made up of so many cultures.