Ahh. Colonialism… the historical harbinger of the plague to most 3^rd world countries. People seizing things and places, because… well…. They liked it and HAD to own it! …It was their version of online shopping. Where shipping took 200-300 days. If you were a good navigator.

It is the reason we have a separate country to our northwest, they are the neighbours we dislike and blame for all our shortcomings and direct all our petty irritations towards.

India almost ties with Malaysia for the number of years colonized by the British. Special shout out to Thailand for never being colonized (and for having the best cuisine in southeast Asia, hands down). [1]

It creates the perfect circumstances for conflict that made our country’s men(and women) fight for what we believe in. It created the perfect platter for the ‘dish’ to be made. Since they invaded us for the spices. Get it. Ok I will stop with spice puns.

It set the mise-en-scene for the lessons to be learnt. For patriotism to thrive. For the motherland to rise. Even if that motherland left some of it’s citizens malnourished and poor. A motherland that is now trying to find balance between technology and over population. Between science and tradition.

They say it was because they lacked ‘spice’ in their lives (last spice pun, I promise) and that humanity has an innate need to explore more. Humans will always keep pushing boundaries and breaking glass ceilings. Going further, doing more achieving more.

So did the south Asians never have the need to explore too? Or did the colour of our skin not make them smart enough to do so?

We learnt to bow our heads for 200 odd years because another monarch did a few things right in terms of manipulation. We came across as a submissive population, whose initial niceness was mistaken for naivety. Classic narcissistic symptoms were potrayed by the west towards the humble and grounded east.

But hey, if it wasn’t for all this, we wouldn’t have the endless fodder needed to make oodles of patriotic movies and songs that are still played on loop today. Some one’s trauma is someone else’s treasure, right?

Trade was the ploy that chaperoned them across the sea, and their superior technology of ship building amplified it. The early Indians had boats too… but what they didn’t do with the said boats is go to distant lands and say, “Okay this is ours now!”  which becomes a tad bit of a problem when there are other humans involved.

Not only did this create great strife and conflict between the colonizers and the colonizee-s but created competition with other countries that wished to colonize different lands as well.

Case and point, the Far West (the USA). Simply put, it was colonizers from one country fighting colonizers from another country over land they colonized, which has now grown into a great big powerful nation who still hold on to archaic laws from the times of the colonies.

 Most importantly it created this great big divide between our forefathers and someone else’s forefathers that set the ball rolling for how we operate now. In retrospect at least we got some interesting architecture out of it.

[1] Seasia Stats, Facebook