India, June 20 -- There are certain things that feel distinctly Indian.

The way we weave through traffic as pedestrians. Nod our heads and jog our shoulders to indicate yes, no and who knows? Leap effortlessly from one language to another and another, often in a single day, sometimes in a single sentence.

Within our spectacular diversity, these are the kinds of things that unite us.

Let's stay with that last one. A land of this many tongues (about 19,000, including dialects), could have been riven by the variations.

Instead, we learnt long ago to share.

Most of us have, at some point, read at least a bit of Sant Tukaram and Maithilisharan Gupt, Premchand and Amrita Pritam, Faiz Ahmad Faiz and Perumal Murugan.

We have at some point b...