Bengali Nights

[fictional]

"At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance..... We end today a period of ill fortune, and India discovers herself again."

Happy Independence Day, everyone. Fly your kites high, for on this day, sixty one years ago, the British were kicked out! Well, sort of. They left behind their school system, their language (again sort of), their cricket and generations of inferiority complexes, but anyway.

I've been thinking a lot of about India lately. From my little cousin-brother moving here to start his ph.d., and observing his very first experiences with culture shock, discovering that I am, apparently, something to be warned about (!!!) as a corruptive influence (it is true that he's been here two weeks and has already been introduced to cocktails and *ahem* certain illicit substances - somehow my feelings are still hurt!) to thinking about Suzie Costello, and the weirdness of the South Asian representation on Torchwood and Who (a whole other post)...it's been on my mind.

I have such an uneasy relationship with the place.

Anyway, doesn't matter. It's still the root, no matter what I ever do, or how far I go. Nothing to be done about it. So happy birthday, India. I wish you all the best in outsourcing and industry growth, getting over the whole kashmir thing, and you know, while you're at it, finally getting over all that Hindu/Muslim turmoil. It doesn't look good on you, and it was fanned into flame by the British anyhow. Shouldn't we just get over it? Many happy returns & have a great day!

Love,
Kali

Comments

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

Happy Independence Day!

[antelope-writes.livejournal.com]

I understand your uneasiness with India up to a point. I've traveled around the world many times, lived in four different countries, and have emigrated twice as an adult, and never have I had as bad culture shock as when I went to India. It's just so different than anywhere else on Earth--and that's not necessarily a bad thing or a good thing, it just is. (Kind of like saying water is wet.)

Anyway, many best returns on Independence.

[sykii.livejournal.com]

Happy Independence Day!
(And, though I know you don't care much for their author, happy birthday to all the Midnight Children, too)

[sanginmychains.livejournal.com]

My entire knowledge of India comes from books (Anita Desai, Rohinton Mistry, Salman Rushdie), so my sense is that if you *don't* have an uneasy relationship with the place, you haven't understood it. But I could be wrong about that. Happy Independence Day, and enjoy your visiting cousin. It's the prerogative of older, more exciting family members to corrupt their slightly-youngers. Just ask *my* younger cousins.

[jbs-teeth.livejournal.com]

I was in Bangalore, and I have to say, while there was a little culture shock when it came to certain things (my god, the driving!!), I felt like it was a lot like Mexico, though I haven't been there for a while. The biggest thing with the interspersion of bald-faced poverty amidst the more Westernized affluence.

Great food, though, and elephants and monkeys. How you gonna not like that?

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

It is certainly a crazy place. I don't get culture shock from it really - I've been visiting summers since I can remember, so things about it: the smell coming out of the airport, jasmine, honeysuckle, burning cow dung, incense - it's all incredibly familiar. But my cousin is certainly having an interesting time adjusting to America. Certainly, India has its own, very specific rhythms, but I haven't traveled that much in the rest of South Asia, so don't have much to compare it to on that front.

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

I'm quite fond of the midnight children though! Thank you =)

I'm assigning Haroun & the Sea of Stories for my class.

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

Nope, I think you're totally right. It is a mass of contradictions, all mixed up together. And I make no claims to understanding it; for one thing, it's huge. So many different kinds of culture, and going back for thousands of years. It's OLD. Too much for mortal mind to wholly compass I think.

It's the prerogative of older, more exciting family members to corrupt their slightly-youngers.

*laughs* yep! And I'm having a blast doing so. I just wasn't...uh... expecting the older generation to, you know, be able to predict it. I guess my reputation precedes me? I think they think I've got some kind of dark, decadent, opium den/brothel set up going on here. I wish!

Let me hope they never, uh, find my blog. Then they'd be SURE.

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

Bangalore! It's supposed to be India's version of Silicon Valley. India has lots of versions of things that...uh...are very weird in comparison to the thing they are supposed to be imitating. (c.f. Bollywood/Hollywood). And yeah, the driving. Everything in India seems farcical to me sometimes. Like, they know everything they're *supposed* have, i.e. traffic laws, pavements, etc. but nothing actually works, and people don't actually seem to know what they're for.

I can totally see the Mexico comparison. New Orleans also really reminds me of Calcutta; an extremely European city in a hot, steamy, sensual place with a vibrant, powerful indigenous, non-caucasian population; shuttered windows, and extreme poverty.

When I graduated from college, I traveled through India (before I'd done a lot of visiting relatives, but never actually done much sight-seeing) and I got to race a camel in the Thar desert. It was awesome.

[oddnari.livejournal.com]

Cheers to that.

I don't think the Hindu-Muslim thinger's gonna end any time soon. It hasn't since 1192, though there were interludes of what we, in hindsight, may term epochs of peace and prosperity but by and large? Nuh-uh... we've been too distrustful of each other and the clever Brits just tore that hole in our social fabric just a little wider :(

It's unnerving, the mess that's been there since centuries... but there are efforts being made, FOR A CHANGE and that's always a good thing, however political the motivations for those efforts may be.

I won't say God Bless India... it doesn't need blessings as much as it needs a lot of shaking up and just getting things sorted out. :)

Here's to India truly becoming a global power-centre in the forthcoming years and staying that way.

[sykii.livejournal.com]

Awesome! I'm still bitter that we missed the opera version a couple of years back.

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

Me too!

We could recreate it. You could be Haroun. I would be...I dunno. Thoughts?

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

Probably you're right about the lack of ending of religious strife; certainly it's the case with religious division in the Middle East, but the thing is, we always read about the bits that tear us apart, and rarely about the things that pull us together. People have managed it, for periods in the past, as you note, and it'd be nice to see that in the accounts as well as all the horror.

However, hope springs eternal, and all that. ;-)

[sykii.livejournal.com]

I thought you and I would be Goopy and Bagha. Whichever you prefer :)