We Indians are a proud lot. We should be too, because we're privileged enough to be born in that part of the planet whose evolution to it's present form is not just remarkable but also riveting. It is the land where saints have trod, where the bravest have been born and the wisest interred. The key word though, is privileged.
We middle class, educated, English-speaking, Oscar-loving Indians have grown such a habit of being proud of all things even remotely Indian, that we have all but numbed our brains with it. In fact we Indianise things so that we can be proud of them. Take the example of Sunita Williams: a brilliant lady she is, and I my respect for her remains immense and unmitigated, but really, can we as a nation stake any claim to her success? She is 'of Indian origin', a term that describes most of our present day national heroes, and that means born to an Indian father and Slovenian mother in her home country of the United States, bred there. She set out on her space expedition in an American made craft, with an American team, from American soil. Yes, I'll admit there may have been many more hands of Indian origin involved in the success of that mission, but did that justify the nationalistic euphoria that broke out here, one that would be befitting an entirely Indian mission? And back home, our own home grown Sania Mirza, sweating it out on Indian courts, under the guidance of Indian coaches, in a not so sports-other-than-cricket friendly Indian environment, gets a fatwa for wearing what all women players wear and has her national commitment questioned time and again.
The latest case in point is the movie Slumdog Millionaire. As The Times of India put it, the original novel is written by an Indian, the movie has Indian actors and was shot in India, so that makes it an Indian movie. Alright, that's not hard to buy. It is an Indian movie with the story set in Dharavi, but that's exactly what we should not be proud of. It's a movie of horrors, that follows the lives of two little boys from the slums of Dharavi, orphaned by riots. Some may whine that the movie portrays India in a negative light, but they've missed the point entirely. They worry about what image of India it portrays to the world, which is always limited to the white world.(Agreed, many scenes in the movie, especially the depiction of the police, are distinctly discomforting, but they subscribe to the image that most Indians have of their own country.) Much as we would like to portray India as an emerging superpower to use that over over-used phrase, the fact remains that that kind of poverty and misery very much exist in the shadow of our sky scrapers and lake cities and you can't just wish it away. I certainly wouldn't call it the 'real India', another oft used phrase, but it is definitely a very real part of the real India.
Yet, the movie has won critical acclaim and it definitely is a fine example of film making, and above all, it is a front runner for the Oscars , so we must be proud of it and wear that on the sleeve. So we must ask Dev Patel ridiculous questions such as whether shooting in the in the muck lanes of Dharavi "helped him connect with his roots", to which if he answered in the negative, we all know, he would immediately be labelled racist, conceited, arrogant, traitor and generally an enemy of the state. It must ruffle our feathers that such a film was made by a foreigner, and a gora at that, so we must file cases in court accusing the film makers of insulting all Indians by calling them slumdogs, there by proving at once that we have plenty of time and money at hand. And we must cow down anyone in the industry and who was not a part of the film for expressing views contrary to the prevailing exhilaration.
However, I'd like to believe, and I think it is right, that these varied reactions to the movie are rooted in the common sympathy that we all feel for the under privileged. It is more of a case of people living in denial, rather than a case of being so accustomed to it that we don't care anymore. It's more of being so horrified by it that we want to turn away and run, rather than a case of selfishly deserting a sinking ship. Whatever it is, there are many Indians who valiantly wage a battle to better as many lives as they can. God bless them
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
It seems like they all decided to swoop down on me today. They hardly know each other, one of them definitely doesn’t know that I even exist and I’m sure they never conspired to set my brain in a fine muddle of self directed questions. In only living their lives the best that they can (and by best, I’m talking superlative) these fine people have got me thinking- yes thinking- and for once, not in terms of beguiling mark numbers and misleading grades: what on earth am I really up to?
The first of these three did intend to make me think. Not me, really, but all those who have an elegant habit of reading good books, or those like me who have friends with this elegant habit, and the even more elegant habit of gifting good books. I wonder if Richard Bach is really aware of how a simple stroke of his pen can send my neurons into a tizzy, on a wild chase to dig out that effulgent being he claims is hidden somewhere inside of me. I could, he professes, achieve everything that I want, if I only believe. But the trick is to believe. (There’s another trick, a much more basic one too, that is I have to know what I want, but we’ll deal with that later.) Jonathan Livingstone Seagull knew what he wanted. Nobody understood it, and they certainly didn’t understand why he went after what he did, and Jonathan never cared to explain. He didn’t know why he wanted it either, but that didn’t matter: he wanted it bad enough to achieve it. As I curled up in my bed with the book, soaring with Jon’s every effort to reach break neck speed, crashing into a heap of feathers and water with his every failure, I found woven into the words before me, a poignant depiction of the pain I have become so familiar with of late. I identified with Jonathan as he lay broken on the water, staring at another unsuccessful effort, thinking of his limitations, while his heart burst with the agony of not being able to give up and accept the mundane. Of course, Jon took wing again, soared to reach his dreams and much more, to finish the author’s work of sending out a message of self belief and perseverance and raising my spirits with him. Oh, and of course, making me think. But the part of the book that really brought a tear to my eye, was when Jon leaves Fletch to move on to another world. You don’t need me to teach you anymore, he tells Fletch, may be you have to find your teacher in yourself. There are few people who understand those lines the way I do.
My teary reverie was broken by my buddy, who called to tell me that he’d sent me a draft of his curriculum vitae, and that he wanted my suggestions to polish it to perfection. Getting online, I found this twenty three year old had a four page cv! Four pages! Geesh! I wondered what my cv would look like. It would barely fill four lines, I guess. Name: Ashkelonian Relic. Qualifications: Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery. Other activities…. No; it’s too painful. No writing cv’s for now. I opened other mail, and found one from G.
G, of course, is the one who started it all. She introduced me to Richard Bach years ago, with my now favourite “Illusions”. She was now e mailing to tell me that she was in this exotic country, teaching computer science to college students older than her, because she wanted the experience. G has way of doing things in a grand, though understated, way. She’s a researcher, and researchers always fascinate me as being those blessed people who are so enchanted by the beauty of the universe that they yearn for more than it offers the untrained eye. They’re the ones who want to change the earth every second, and to keep up with the changes that happen by a power beyond us, the wide eyed curiosity that we’re all born with being their faithful companion their entire lives. It was with G that I honestly spoke about my dreams for the first time in many years. We talked about chasing it, and how the path seemed strewn with minor obstacles I had seen few people overcome. We talked about what it would mean to realise it, and what it would mean to give it up. Though I was listening to everything G had to say, I was really thinking about the difference between myself and what I wanted to be. The reason why G is this fascinating person, why my buddy has this four page cv, why Bach’s Seagull shines immaculate is that they all found the courage to break the bonds of common conventions and wisdom that teach us to be ‘one of the flock’. While most of us find an illusion of security in the mundane, and balk away in fear from the unexplored, these guys eschew that which reduces life to a programmed cycle of night and day. They are the ones who keep alive inside of them, the zest for living each day to the fullest. And they have the audacity to live life the way they like it. Without giving in to ostents and laws and norms handed down for generations. I thought about it: None of us is going to live forever. For the Universe, we’re hardly a speck. It really matters to nobody whether you live life on the edge or just roll along a physical existence, living by rules you accepted without ever questioning their authenticity. Nobody other than yourself. So I think it’s up to each one of us to make the call- grovel with the unimaginative, or soar with the courageous.
The first of these three did intend to make me think. Not me, really, but all those who have an elegant habit of reading good books, or those like me who have friends with this elegant habit, and the even more elegant habit of gifting good books. I wonder if Richard Bach is really aware of how a simple stroke of his pen can send my neurons into a tizzy, on a wild chase to dig out that effulgent being he claims is hidden somewhere inside of me. I could, he professes, achieve everything that I want, if I only believe. But the trick is to believe. (There’s another trick, a much more basic one too, that is I have to know what I want, but we’ll deal with that later.) Jonathan Livingstone Seagull knew what he wanted. Nobody understood it, and they certainly didn’t understand why he went after what he did, and Jonathan never cared to explain. He didn’t know why he wanted it either, but that didn’t matter: he wanted it bad enough to achieve it. As I curled up in my bed with the book, soaring with Jon’s every effort to reach break neck speed, crashing into a heap of feathers and water with his every failure, I found woven into the words before me, a poignant depiction of the pain I have become so familiar with of late. I identified with Jonathan as he lay broken on the water, staring at another unsuccessful effort, thinking of his limitations, while his heart burst with the agony of not being able to give up and accept the mundane. Of course, Jon took wing again, soared to reach his dreams and much more, to finish the author’s work of sending out a message of self belief and perseverance and raising my spirits with him. Oh, and of course, making me think. But the part of the book that really brought a tear to my eye, was when Jon leaves Fletch to move on to another world. You don’t need me to teach you anymore, he tells Fletch, may be you have to find your teacher in yourself. There are few people who understand those lines the way I do.
My teary reverie was broken by my buddy, who called to tell me that he’d sent me a draft of his curriculum vitae, and that he wanted my suggestions to polish it to perfection. Getting online, I found this twenty three year old had a four page cv! Four pages! Geesh! I wondered what my cv would look like. It would barely fill four lines, I guess. Name: Ashkelonian Relic. Qualifications: Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery. Other activities…. No; it’s too painful. No writing cv’s for now. I opened other mail, and found one from G.
G, of course, is the one who started it all. She introduced me to Richard Bach years ago, with my now favourite “Illusions”. She was now e mailing to tell me that she was in this exotic country, teaching computer science to college students older than her, because she wanted the experience. G has way of doing things in a grand, though understated, way. She’s a researcher, and researchers always fascinate me as being those blessed people who are so enchanted by the beauty of the universe that they yearn for more than it offers the untrained eye. They’re the ones who want to change the earth every second, and to keep up with the changes that happen by a power beyond us, the wide eyed curiosity that we’re all born with being their faithful companion their entire lives. It was with G that I honestly spoke about my dreams for the first time in many years. We talked about chasing it, and how the path seemed strewn with minor obstacles I had seen few people overcome. We talked about what it would mean to realise it, and what it would mean to give it up. Though I was listening to everything G had to say, I was really thinking about the difference between myself and what I wanted to be. The reason why G is this fascinating person, why my buddy has this four page cv, why Bach’s Seagull shines immaculate is that they all found the courage to break the bonds of common conventions and wisdom that teach us to be ‘one of the flock’. While most of us find an illusion of security in the mundane, and balk away in fear from the unexplored, these guys eschew that which reduces life to a programmed cycle of night and day. They are the ones who keep alive inside of them, the zest for living each day to the fullest. And they have the audacity to live life the way they like it. Without giving in to ostents and laws and norms handed down for generations. I thought about it: None of us is going to live forever. For the Universe, we’re hardly a speck. It really matters to nobody whether you live life on the edge or just roll along a physical existence, living by rules you accepted without ever questioning their authenticity. Nobody other than yourself. So I think it’s up to each one of us to make the call- grovel with the unimaginative, or soar with the courageous.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Republic Day- Salaam!!
A question to my brethren: Are you what your country makes you, or is your country what you make it?
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