Out of the many delicacies life has offered me, globetrotting is my favorite. It has indeed been a pleasure to have worked with great people both in academia and industry who evaluated my so called credentials to be worthy of sponsored international travel. Other than that, I thank first, my parents and second, my boss to have provided sufficient funds for personal travel expenses :-)
So now, having said that, and taking the topic through an orthogonal path, here's the question:
The majority of malls in US/UK/Asia/EU serve local foods (bagels/tacos in US, noodles/rice in asia, bread/pizza in Italy etc). But its rare to find a mall in India that serves indian sweets? I am sure many malls in India would have an awesome cake/pastry store. But why not the good Indian sweets? So is the case with samosa/kachori/mirchibadas.
Also it is quite natural to expect Ben & Jerry's to kick-off a chain in Indian malls. I wonder if people really don't know the amazing digestive orgasm our kulfi's and rabdi's are capable of. Or is it that the gen-X has blatantly rejected to crave for these wonderful Indian dishes?
It is ironical that one can find Coke or Pepsi almost in any mall, but its rare to find khas/gulab sherbet or good old lassi/chaach. If we don't get pepsi, we take no time to pass critical comments on that place. However, have any of us really thought about how the presence of real "indian" foods would make a difference?
There is a good chance that you would find people smoking outside the malls (thank god that they don't allow it within the premises). And so would you see folks chewing gum frequently. However, do we consider setting up a paan shop in a mall? Cleanliness is a complete responsibility of the citizens themselves. Moreover we have wastebins in place to take care of the "peek".
Moving forward with the issue: I have noticed that the majority of billboards in China, Japan, Europe display ads/messages in Chinese, Japanese, French/German/Dutch etc. However, I feel the deep impact of the 200 years of imperial reign when I see us, Indians, showcasing themselves in the Brit Lingo.
I was updated that our very own shiv-sena "forces" tore/broke down many stores in some mall in Maharashtra just because they didn't bear their names in Marathi. I just want to ask them if they looked around for marathi on the Adidas/Reebok/Bata shoe they were wearing or the Lee/Levis/Wrangler jeans/tees they had donned.
My point is not to demean the pros of the country. I want to stress on the fact is that we Indians are winning the world over, however I feel that we're paying a great cost for it, completely unaware of. It is the cost of losing our individual identities as Indians, very much like the Sameer who turns into Sam or Vikram who turns into Victor in the indian call-centres. People mock at their nature of job, but then I feel each one of us is on the same path.
My deepest quest come to this: The leading/growing economies of the world - China, Japan, Germany, France or US/UK never gave up their own cult as a price to progress, then why India? Isn't this another form of "foreign rule" that we're unknowingly surrendering to? Ever wondered why are we so good at "providing services" to other nations while the biggest problem of our country remains to sweep out own homes and throw away the deepseated evils from our society? Is it mere humbleness or is it the long-term effects of a captive nation under many races of "foreign rule"?
As Kim says, "think about it"!
-A
I was updated that our very own shiv-sena "forces" tore/broke down many stores in some mall in Maharashtra just because they didn't bear their names in Marathi. I just want to ask them if they looked around for marathi on the Adidas/Reebok/Bata shoe they were wearing or the Lee/Levis/Wrangler jeans/tees they had donned.
My point is not to demean the pros of the country. I want to stress on the fact is that we Indians are winning the world over, however I feel that we're paying a great cost for it, completely unaware of. It is the cost of losing our individual identities as Indians, very much like the Sameer who turns into Sam or Vikram who turns into Victor in the indian call-centres. People mock at their nature of job, but then I feel each one of us is on the same path.
My deepest quest come to this: The leading/growing economies of the world - China, Japan, Germany, France or US/UK never gave up their own cult as a price to progress, then why India? Isn't this another form of "foreign rule" that we're unknowingly surrendering to? Ever wondered why are we so good at "providing services" to other nations while the biggest problem of our country remains to sweep out own homes and throw away the deepseated evils from our society? Is it mere humbleness or is it the long-term effects of a captive nation under many races of "foreign rule"?
As Kim says, "think about it"!
-A
woah! this is a set of questions that will probably need a book to discuss (mind you, not resolve!). To add my two useless cents, let me resort to a geeky nested-list format:
ReplyDelete1) The mall question:
We "got" malls as mainly a way of exposure to western shopping culture. So the Indian component has been small, but I'd say it does exist. The target audience of the malls has changed from the rich (in the beginning) to the common people, so the nature of shops might also undergo change. Why the complaint about only sweets though? :)
2) Civic sense - no comments :P
3) Billboard language -
a) India is the only country in that list where the national language is not spoken by a significant part of the population.
b) English is an official language used by many people.
c) It makes economic sense to have your billboard understood by max no of people.
d) The billboard language is heavily influenced by the target audience. So when you say many billboards are in English, you are observing only part of the whole story.
4) Shiv sena question - No comments because of the non-issue being discussed. The shiv-sena had no right to do what it did. Period.
No way I'm going to even try talking about the main question of the post! I would like to point out, though, that a more basic and relevant question to think about might be "what exactly is INDIAN culture?" with emphasis on the "indian".
What you said about 3 is the underlying basis for the last thing. And the main issue is this- by all conventional country-forming wisdom (of the time at least), India probably should not have been a single country. We did not have a common language, common religion, common arts, common cuisines. The only thing making us a country was a common freedom struggle. One could argue that geo-politics also meant we had to be one country, but we don't know for sure that balkanization would have been disastrous (in wiki fashion, citation needed).
ReplyDeleteBefore the British, India as we know it now was almost never under a single ruler, but was a collection of regional kingdoms. The cultures of these regional kingdoms were fairly different. The British were the first single rulers of the whole of India. Of course this meant that English became all-prevalent in official usage. Our constitution continues to allow English as the official language after failed attempts to make Hindi the only official language. Hope that helps with the language question.
When I asked what Indian culture is, I meant "what are the common threads for all the people of India you want to refer to as Indian culture?". Or do you think Indian culture is the union of all the different regional cultures? In any case, the point being that Indian culture is hard to define. While "unity in diversity" is a wonderful thing in principle, in practice it is quite difficult (though we have done a fairly good job of it)
and of course, i'm always up for idle speculation :)
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ReplyDeletegreat written
ReplyDeletei would like add a few?
why american(or their culture) is influencing us so much is because of their soft powers - Macdonald,their lifestyle etc etc.. and Indians needs to think it over..that if they will blindly follow these "foreign manners" -the time is not so far when our kids or kids of kids will inculcate american ethos within themselves.
also for India - to give its economy a strenth it should start strengthening its soft power-its very own multi-cultural society, multilingual people, Punjab or Haryana ki lassi, sarso ka saag(market them - think!!).
these soft powers will give a global platform/presence/appeal to showcase its diversity(cultural,lingual).