You know you've survived the summer in India when the weather outside feels really cool and refreshing and the thermometer still reads 91 Fahrenheit.
India celebrated its 60th anniversary of independence yesterday. I pasted below an article from The Indian Express because I think it articulates some of the same points I've heard neighbors and friends make. I've also included some photos from India Gate, which like the Mall in Washington D.C., is an open park with views of memorials and official buildings and draws a huge a crowd on Independence Day. Some come with food and picnic, but more often they just bring a kite to fly in the cooling Monsoon air.
People of the midnight hour
Farah Baria
Once the party is over, birthdays have a knack of throwing up
disquieting existential questions. Laugh or ignore them at your peril,
warn the seers, for they will return to haunt you. So 60 going on 16
obviously calls for some introspection. For six decades we have
studiously sidestepped that fundamental query: has it worked? The
answer, I’m afraid, is a churlish maybe.
I don’t mean to rain on our patriotic parade. After all, with a growth rate of 9.2 per cent, a stock market that seems hooked on Ecstasy, and the exhilaration of becoming the world’s third-largest, trillion-dollar economy, the India Story is as seductive as a self-improvement book that proffers nirvana in three easy steps.
There’s a reason for this misplaced euphoria, particularly, I think, for those of us who were conceived during the pecuniary impotence of the sixties and seventies. But now that Dr Singh (prime minister) has rewritten the history, our tide has turned. Recently, a BBC poll found that an unprecedented 71 per cent of us are proud to be Indian.
And yet, after 60 years of Independence, India simply cannot shake off her past. That’s why six decades of democracy cannot erase these...
TRIBALISM: A society governed by moral and cultural control, many tribal identities are forged by ethnic hatred — the kind that has butchered thousands in communal clashes since Independence. Yet our bigots are rarely brought to book. Worse, thousands are persecuted and killed in caste wars. As for moral control, we may be a nation of one billion, but sex is still a foreign contraband that would ‘defile’ our values.
FEUDALISM: A society based on power, money and royal lineage. Thanks to our feudal mindset, elected representatives can ‘rule’ with impunity, unaccountable to their ‘subjects’. Feudalism is also why, despite a multi- party democracy, the family at 10 Janpath has remained India’s de facto sovereign for four generations.
What’s more, feudal policies ensure that nothing will disturb the status quo between India’s haves and have-nots. So while 100,000 Indians are dollar millionaires, 380 million of us live on less than a dollar a day.
COLONIALISM: A
society based on racial superiority. Indians are probably the most racist people on earth. Our scope for bigotry is boundless: a
ny caste, religion, or ethnicity serves as a worthy target, from mian and madrasi to mathadi and mallu.
PHONEY SOCIALISM: A society based on token empowerment of the powerless. So while we debate on quotas for higher education, 40 million children will never go to school. While the PM pleads with India Inc for affirmative action, nearly two thirds of us have no clean drinking water.
Happy Birthday? Not quite. Which brings us to that other existential query: where are we headed? Hard to say. Yet one thing is clear: if India’s destination is the Future, we must leave our Past behind. And remember to travel light.
If I was Hindu, or if I at least believed reincarnation, I like to think I could have been a Bollywood dancer in a former life.
Not because I am a particularly gifted dancer presently, though I've been told I could hold my own in a dance off against Aishwarya Rai, one of Bollywood's more popular stars (clearly someone was brown nosing). Rather I like to think I was a Bolllywood dancer once upon a time because Bollywood dancing is the art of looking cool while reveling in silliness. Because how serious can you take yourself when you're dancing to lyrics that proclaim: "Shakalakah Boom Boom." My understanding is that the words are supposed to mimic a heartbeat.
Perhaps this could all be said about Britney Spears, but somehow Spears and her pop peers don't hold a candle to these dancers; partly because Spears' success evolved from outdoing her sluttyness and these dancers are fun to watch fully clothed.
Bollywood dance is transfixing. Your laughing with the dancers and the cheesy-ness, because you're escaping with them into this world where women move in their saris with seamless grace, men dance and lip-sync just as much as women and where the only traffic in the streets are the backup dancers. Don't forget the perfectly timed sunset.
The top songs of the day usually coincide with the top bollywood movie of the day. At present I believe one of the movies is Guru. The song is Barso Re (something about asking the clouds to open up and rain). That's my current choice, anyway. The movies, the music,the famous people together create a $2 billion industry and helps make India the only country in the world where Hollywood can't pull a large portion of the audience from the local cinema. Since Hollywood can't beat Bollywood, they are going to try and join 'em. They've entered the world of Bollywood movie making.
Bollywood dance combines classical Indian dance, Punjabi bhangra, belly dancing and hip-hop. The result is a high-inducing medley of shoulder pumping, wide-eye glancing from left to right and back, neck bobbling and hip wiggling choreography that's appropriate for weddings and night clubs alike. I don't think the same could be said about Beyonce's little butt thrust.
All this is just to say, Bollywood dance makes me smile.
Come on. Who couldn't use a little more 'cheese' in past, present or future lives?
People spend a lot of time talking about change in India. Everyday, someone is debating the country's social change, political change, economic change. Is it good? Is it bad? I don't know. That's why they're debating.
But I do know about a different kind of change. The change as in the cash. As in, ‘can I have change for my 100 rupee bill, PUH-LEASE?’
Why is it that no one in this country, which prides itself on its service sector, ever provides the service of having change?
Yesterday, a day filled with sporadic monsoon showers, I had to find change for a rickshawwalah, a fruitwalah, another rickshawwalah, and the bank teller. Yes, even the bank — a place that by definition is a house of cash – did not have change.
It started when I hopped in a rickshaw to meet a friend for lunch. All I had on me was one 100-rupee bill. It was a 30-rupee ride. I asked the rickshaw driver for change. He had none. Shocker. So I went into a convenience store and exchanged my 100-rupee bill for ten smaller pieces.Then went back and gave the rickshaw driver the exact amount.
Later on, I went to the newsstand. I wanted three papers for 9 rupees. I wanted change for my next rickshaw ride so I gave the newspaperwalah a 100-rupee bill with hopes he would break it. He did not have enough change. So I gave him my remaining 10-rupee bill.
I got in the rickshaw to go home. Thirty-rupee ride. Again, I was left with 100-rupee bill. The driver had no change. So I walked over to the nearby fruitwalah to get change. He could only break my bill if I bought something. T.K. Ji. (O.K. sir). I'll take some mangos, please.
Later in the day I made my monthly bank trip to turn my cash into a check for rent. The service fee was 56 rupees. I gave 100 rupees. The teller had 40 rupees, but was missing the 4 rupees change. He told me to go to the other teller. The other teller did not have change in his register either. Come on people. Work with me. Eventually one of the tellers went through his own pockets and made an exchange of a 10-rupee bill in the bank’s register for ten one rupee coins. Four were handed over to me with the four ten-rupee bills. Well at least I have the right change to pay for my rickshaw ride home.
Moral of the story:
Ten rupee bills may only be worth a quarter in the U.S., but they are gold in India.
