Behold the modern pilgrim: the Indian-origin investor, returning from the ancestral sprawl of the subcontinent with the wide-eyed, nauseating wonder of a man who has just discovered that electricity and indoor plumbing are, in fact, quite neat tricks. Bhavdip Sanghvi, a man whose primary contribution to the global discourse appears to be the digital equivalent of a ‘Live, Laugh, Love’ sign hung over the entire Australian continent, has managed to set the internet ablaze. How? By stating the blindingly obvious with the tone of a messiah delivering a sermon to the unwashed masses. He called Australia a ‘gift.’ He praised its safety, its freedom, and its opportunities. It is the kind of mid-tier LinkedIn philosophy that usually dies in the vacuum of corporate sycophancy, yet here we are, dissecting it because humanity has lost the ability to ignore a platitude.

Sanghvi’s post is a masterclass in the ‘grass is greener’ syndrome, specifically the version where the grass is watered by the tears of a generation that can’t afford to buy a house on it. To Sanghvi, Australia is a sanctuary of order. To anyone actually living in the real Australia—the one that doesn’t exist solely in investor pitch decks—it is a giant quarry with a beach attached, currently undergoing a housing crisis so acute that the ‘freedom’ he cherishes is increasingly the freedom to live in a tent in a public park. But our intrepid investor doesn’t see the queues for rental inspections that stretch around three city blocks. He sees a ‘gift.’ It’s a remarkable cognitive dissonance, the kind only achievable by someone who views a country as a portfolio rather than a community.

Then, of course, comes the inevitable backlash from the offended nationalists of India. These are the people whose egos are apparently so brittle that any suggestion that a foreign land might be marginally more organized than a Mumbai traffic jam is taken as a declaration of war. To these critics, Sanghvi isn’t just an observer; he is a traitor to the motherland, a man who has traded his heritage for a flat white and a functioning postal service. The fragility is staggering. They scream about the ‘demeaning’ nature of his remarks, as if pointing out that Australia has less smog than Delhi is a slur against the very foundations of Indian civilization. It’s a performative outrage that serves only to highlight the deep-seated insecurities of a population that demands global respect while refusing to acknowledge that their infrastructure is held together by sheer willpower and cosmic luck.

But let us not ignore the Australians who joined the fray. Their brand of stupidity is uniquely homegrown. They aren't angry at Sanghvi for insulting India; they’re angry at him for telling them they should be grateful. In a world where the cost of living has become a predatory beast, being told you live in a ‘gift’ by a wealthy investor is like being told to enjoy the view while you’re being evicted from it. The Australian dream has been packaged, commodified, and sold back to the highest bidder, and here comes Sanghvi to remind everyone that they should be thankful for the privilege of being exploited in a country where the sun shines slightly brighter than in London.

This entire ‘debate’ is a perfect microcosm of our current intellectual bankruptcy. On one side, we have the investor class, which views nations as products to be rated on a five-star scale based on how little they inconvenience the wealthy. On the other, we have the nationalists, who view any objective criticism as a psychic wound. And in the middle, the struggling proletariat, who are so exhausted by the grind of existence that they find the mere suggestion of ‘gratitude’ to be an act of aggression.

Sanghvi’s call for citizens to ‘appreciate’ their benefits is the ultimate tool of the status quo. If you’re busy being grateful for not being in a worse place, you’ll never find the energy to demand that your current place stop being so aggressively mediocre. Australia is not a gift; it is a nation-state with a massive wealth gap and a penchant for ignoring its own systemic failures. India is not a sacred cow beyond reproach; it is a complex, struggling giant. By framing the discussion as a binary choice between ‘gratitude’ and ‘insult,’ we ignore the reality that both places are failing the people who actually build them. But please, by all means, let us continue to argue on X about the opinions of a man who likely hasn't stepped foot in a supermarket in five years. It’s the only ‘freedom’ we have left: the freedom to scream into the void while the investors decide which ‘gift’ to unwrap next.