These Romans are Crazy!
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
To the rest of the world, its tough to figure India out. As the cliche goes, no other place on the planet is as diverse, discordant, contradictory, surprising and complex a canvas as this. Most of the world, for all its diversity and multi-ethnicity, is quite vanilla if you think about it. All cities look the same, the countryside's the same, all airports look the same, the roads, the restaurants and bars, the apparel, human attitudes,behaviour and mindset; most things that come to mind are essentially homogenous (regardess superficial notions of colour, race, language, cuisine, religion).
The idea of India, for most people outside it, is therefore prone to stereotyping that borders on the extreme. From the Discovery Channel doing a feature on Kerala proclaiming, "Elephants are very important to the Indian people" to news articles describing India as a nation of knowledge workers, to people who think India is a mystic land of palaces and Maharajas to international think tanks describing India as a nation of starving millions who ought to put their money to better use than test firing missiles, we are also the most misunderstood country on earth.
The average Indian therefore, tirelessly expresses his dissent to such culturual, sociological and economic profiling. "They just don't get it, do they ?" Its frustrating to see the world's inability to understand India and Indians in general, when our contradictions are completely understandable to ourselves.
Or are they? The fact is sometimes our contradictions are so bizarre, its hard for even Indians to find a logical justification to Indian behaviour. Take the recent controversy about pesticides in Colas for example. So we are perhaps a really health consious country with a very high life expectancy rate, fantastic medical care for all, who eat really hiegeinic food in clean restaurants. Of course not! If anything we're at the bottom of the pile as far as healthcare goes. Anyway, forget that for a moment. So there is this rumour that in Mumbai, the sea water's gone sweet (as a result of some divine miracle by the gods). Wait, there's more. People actually start drinking that water in hordes, arguably the filthiest sea water on earth. And collect that water in empty bottles of, you guessed it, the banned colas. It doesn't stop there either. The next day, the nation comes to a halt as rumours spread about idols of Gods in temples drinking milk, telecast live on national television; as the miniscule thinking population watches helplessly.
The unfortunate reality is, it is this thinking population that is India's interface to the world; and it is this population has to answer curious questions like "So why Indians drink sea water from dirty beaches?". How do you defend a populace that you do not relate to at all ? The best thing to do is perhaps to take a leaf off the Obelix line: "These Romans are crazy!"
posted by Angshuman @ 5:09 PM,
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The book
Sunday, August 20, 2006
A sizeable portion of human thought process is about comparative analysis, usually subconscious. This essentially happens when there is a change in state, for example, a new city, a new job, a new diet; and this brings in an automatic tendency to compare the present situation with the past. The outcome of such brooding is usually predictable. The present seems much better when there is an assured and early return to the previous situation; the past is beautiful otherwise.
After graduating from College, I moved to a different city in Southern India, Bangalore. I started hating it a week after I reached there. For the next three years, I continued to hate it. I kept comparing it to the city I grew up in, Delhi. I developed a deeper appreciation of the qualities of Delhi that I was oblivious to when I stayed there. A few years later, I relocated back to Delhi again. The three years in Bangalore had changed everything about the way I looked at the city now. Back in my confort zone, Bangalore didn't seem so bad anymore. An occassional short visit to the city today makes me truly feel there are quite a few areas in which Bangalore is a lot better than Delhi. And I am quite sure I would relapse into my utter distaste for Bangalore if I were to relocate to that city again.
Last week I was on holiday in Jaipur, a short 5 hour drive from Delhi. I was mildly taken aback during the stay there. Living in Delhi can lead you to believing that an overwhelming majority of us Indians are a bunch of rude, ill-mannered, selfish boors with lots of money and little by way of education. In Jaipur I practically found just the opposite. I found people smiling at strangers, shopkeepers giving you lesser denomination currency even when you didn't buy from them, drivers waiting patiently behind you if your car stalls in the middle of the road.
This also flew in the face of all explanations of 'Dilliwaale' being, well 'Dilliwaale'. It obviously wasn't anything to do with the straightforward ones like adverse climate, or the diet, or the terrain. It didn't have much to do with some of the more interesting reasons either, like north indians being genetially programmed to be 'aggressive' after millenia of invasions from the middle east.
Back in Delhi and back among the earthy populace here, I am calm. It would have been different had I not travelled other places earlier in my life. The bottomline, most places suck one way or other. You just make your peace with it, the catch being to imagine some of the things you would miss if you weren't where you are right now. Meanwhile I attempt to celebrate modern Delhi's gift to modern India: the infamous book of Hindi expletives.
posted by Angshuman @ 12:48 AM,
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My Kodak moment!
Saturday, August 19, 2006
Whew! Half a decade after I first thought about it, I finally created a blog. Funny how sometimes an incredibly small thing can hold up something much bigger. As it happened, I couldn't think of a name for the darned thing.
A lot of mud has flown down the yamuna (and a lot many cars have remained stuck in the great Delhi-Gurgaon traffic jam) since then. A blog isn't a big deal in an age when its more common to have a blogspot address than have an email address. For me the big push came when the rascals shut down blog access from India for a few days, and well intentioned people advised me to use pkblogs.com to access my (nonexistent) address.
Anyway, enough of what led me to it. Right now I can almost share the feeling Galileo had when he invented the telescope, or when Newton finished the last chapter of his Principia Mathematica.
I savour this moment.
posted by Angshuman @ 11:19 PM,
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