My cousin and I were having a meal and the India versus Sri Lanka test match was on. He told me that the Indians had scored an incredible over five hundred runs for the loss of only four wickets. Fantastic! I thought. But then after chewing on another mouthful quite literally and figuratively I asked him, "Dude, does anyone really watch test matches?" He laughed and replied, "Bro my mother does." We laughed aloud.

The next day brought in the same discussion but with another group of people on the sets of my film "Shaapit". Does any one watch test cricket really? Is it just a waste of time and money? Is it just for the record books? “It’s for the sake of tradition”, said one of them. “Damn tradition”, was the other chaps reply to that. Damn tradition? Can we? Should we?

In the film, Fiddler on the Roof, Chaim Topol starts the film off by singing in a song on tradition. The Fiddler on the Roof was a tradition and without tradition no one is really anything.

Do we think that is true?

The world is filled with traditions of all kinds and there are beer drinking traditions, to crazy bulls running down the street filled with people, there is a tradition to go trick or treating on Halloween and there is a tradition to play the Ras Garba on Navratri in India. Yet only a mere few traditions in a world filled with traditions.

So a talking point would be how important are traditions? Can we do away with the ones that don't matter anymore or interest us anymore like test cricket for example?

It’s a complex problem and not one that can easily be answered I think. But let's do the one thing that can derail this discussion and that is to separate all religious traditions from other tradition. Religion is about your belief in God and to do what you feel appeases your God; this might be a tradition. We can argue these as well but these would require a completely different parameter and what might be right for one religion might be wrong for another. It’s too subjective and almost very difficult to argue.

So, tradition minus the religion or the pressures of religion is the point of our discussion. Tradition can easily be confused with religious ritualistic traditions and that is not our discussion. Test cricket being an example in that vein, nothing religious about it. But there are other traditions that border on being confused with religion and that would require more careful scrutiny. Let's take Navratri for example. The tradition is to sing the praise of the Maa and the Aarti. What is the tradition of the rain dandia and the disco dandia to the beat of the latest bollywood hit? Is this tradition? I don't think so! Enjoyment, yes, fun, yes; A party for the orthodox more surely but tradition it isn’t, no way jose!

There are traditions in our country that have forced people to go bankrupt. For instance, the traditions of expensive marriages and the more macabre traditions that one has to follow after a death. The dowry trouble is nothing but a tradition gone wrong.

Traditions can harm us and manipulate us but then let's pause. Do traditions really define who we are?

If we take Diwali crackers and the card games away, if we take the Ras Garba and the breaking of the dahi handi away and if we take the kite flying and the baisakhi melas away are we doing the right thing? Would we stop being Indians?

Do traditions define us as people?

Yes, they most definitely do.

Without our traditions, we are people who believe in something but do nothing about it. Like a group confined to a certain name but without any rule book.

Then what is it about traditions that make me angry? If I think a society cannot exist in the absence of tradition then why the need to do away with it?

Then it came to me as I decided to write this piece. No tradition can exist if it does not work as social cement and no tradition which can drive a person to the edge of desperation can be allowed to exist. Tradition cannot be a compulsion or it will eventually perish. Tradition has to be free of money and only about social oneness.

I would like to make talking point into a talking and would love to invite your views on this issue. I am still trying to put together a certain list of Indian traditions that need to be thrown out. Can you help me? Can we agree and disagree and argue? Can this be a talking point?