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,
2 Comments:
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At 7:54 PM,
DreamCatcher said...
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Attitudes are changing though. The first time I went abroad - to Malaysia in 2001, taxi drivers would will making conversation typically ask on hearing about India was -which hotel you are going to cook in. They were so tuned to thinking about India as merely cheap labour. My last trip there, in 2003 or 2004, the reaction was - Ah India, a big country, people very good at computers.
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At 11:26 PM,
Angshuman said...
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First comment on my blog! thanks!
I agree, perceptions are changing. Which is probably what raises the stakes. Earlier, what happened in India didn't matter to people, nor did everyone's opinion matter to India. Thinks are different now.
Besides its not just about what others think :-)
