Pop quiz: what is this NYT story about?
Kali, Hindu goddess of destruction, thinks otherwise. She is angry, say the colorfully garbed women massing in the holy tree’s dappled shade…
… idol-makers… came from their villages to work their craft for Calcutta’s festival for the 10-armed goddess, Durga, the invincible killer of demons. Statues of Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge, lay cast off under the highway overpass, waiting to be resurrected. [Link]
If you said ‘a mundane highway appropriations bill,’ you’re psychic. New India hands, dust off that pith helmet and shake off those jodhpurs. Here’s the official NYT checklist on what must go into an India story (and what did, in fact, go into this one):
Taj Mahal Sacred cows Camels Holy trees Benares Ganga Hindu theology Bullock carts Rickshaw-wallas Awkward polytheism metaphor Religious nuts from small towns British colonialism Kali (bonus points!)
Mmm, I love the smell of incense in the morning. This story has that touch of Orientalism which wins Pulitzers. What, no bride-burning, snake charmers or Thuggees? If Amy Waldman keeps it up, she could pen something for the South Asian fiction shelves. Maybe it’ll even have mehndi hands and a sari border. Calling Lady Mountbatten — she’s truly gone native.
Here in NYC, we just passed a referendum to build a new Second Avenue subway. The Calcutta Telegraph’s coverage would be terribly incomplete unless it included the following:
The Mall of the Americas Dogs which are (gasp!) allowed into houses Buffaloes Pat Robertson The Virgin Mary toast Christian theology Farm tractors Windshield men Awkward Crusades metaphor Religious nuts from small towns British colonialism Waco (bonus points!)
Otherwise, your readers might not grasp the story. And we can’t have any cultural misunderstanding here. It might make Jesus angry.
Oye RC did you do a scientific survey of first genners ? Where is the 90% figure coming from ? What you should have written is ‘90% of the first genners I know‘. And that means squat. Same applies to your other comment. Oh and unless you had some convoluted pun in there, hierachical is misspelt. Now about the article. I found it quite inoffensive and non-judgemental. Sure it has references to cows and goddesses etc. but being from India (unlike many of the confused folks here) I don’t find that so objectionable … its one part of Indian life. I liked the article because it didn’t dwell solely on that part. Yeah, have to agree with Cicatrix that there is a kind of paternalistic woe – quite a theme in Amy Waldman’s articles incidentally – about the loss of a way of life. But not many Indians will share the feeling because we aren’t so much in love with the idea of an idyllic indigence.
Well, I am not a “confused” second gen’er but a first generationer ..aka..FOB 🙂 and NO, my parents arent poor by any stretch of imagination.
And NO my comment was not based on any polls/surveys.
Does anyone have friends and/or colleagues who hail from Africa? I am curious about their reaction to Somini Sengupta’s articles.
Neale
Neale, do you mean their reactions to her writing when she was in West Africa, or to her Indian stuff?
Olinda, Her writing when she was in West Africa.
Neale
Dogday, Cicatrix, I think you’re being misled by:
The length of the piece relative to the anecdotes. It’s informative in addition to being exoticized.
The Internet Explorer fallacy. Once something’s been integrated, it appears integral by definition. The question is, out of all the anecdotes in your notebook, why these stories, why this emphasis? Look at it from the standpoint of the writer, not just the reader.
Shahidul Alam, a veteran Bangla photojournalist, gave a keynote at this year’s SAJA convention. He complained that the only images of Bangladesh that sell are those of starvation. Editors do not buy photos of everyday life, of happy kids, of families, because they don’t play into the Western narrative.
A highway is a versatile, wildcard metaphor. Like a river, like a mirror, like a telephone, it can be used to link many different anecdotes as long as they’re even tangentially related to transport and motion. In speech and debate we kept an arsenal of wildcard stories: the bird story, the frog and the scorpion. As intros, closers, spicers and metaphors, they’re unparalleled. But they can just as easily be artifice.
I suspect that Waldman could find a way to invoke Kali and ’10-armed goddess’ Durga in a story about a chip fab in Bangalore. Starting a story on highways with ‘Kali, Hindu goddess of destruction’? Are you f* kidding me? Certain things should set off your bullshit detector. When a novelist comes in for a reading and starts playing sitar music in the background. When someone you just met mentions your ‘exotic’ looks. Waldman sets mine off loud and clear.
Different store, click the link.
How many stories on Japan in American newspapers begin with the Meiji Restoration?
Bollywood is much kinder than the racism I’ve seen in India itself.
How about a simpler hypothesis: as a fellow American, you want people to stop lumping you with their idiotic Temple of Doom world-view.
Are those points qualified (‘many,’ ‘some,’ ‘subset’)? Are they false? Falsify them for me. Or is your objection to the mere act of abstraction?
Starting a story on highways with ‘Kali, Hindu goddess of destruction’? Are you f* kidding me? Certain things should set off your bullshit detector.
Ha Ha! Hilarious dude…btw, kudos for calling a spade a spade.
Manish beta,
This lowely gora girl is just wanting to say nice things about our beautiful culture, no? So many people have been telling me about this article and asking about how I do puja at home!
Don’t be so ashamed of your rich heritage, beta. Now I can double the price I charge for those little 50 rupee statues of Ganesh I bring back from India by the suitcase-load! First-class, yaar!
your ever-loving Aunti-ji, cicatrix
ps- That ABC Carpet and Home shop you write about so much? They are ordering my Ganges Holy Water by the case! I just hold little bottles to my tap when the rusty pipes make the water brownish, but please don’t be telling them that… I wave some incense over the bottles before I ship, so that is good enough, no?
That seems like the current american usage. Asia also excludes india in that context. However i have seen several OLD european text from ranging from w ‘label’ oriental used was applied to indians. What makes it interesting in india is that there are companies like Orient publishers,Oriental bank etc…. I dont know why the name is what it is. In UK Asian means Indian,pakistani,bangla,srilanka and possibaly afghanistan. Asiad games were kind of popular in india(a mini olympic of sort.) Last time when they were held in india(1982) the participants included iran,iraq,syria,lebanon,kuwait…. I’ve never come accross where middleasterners were labelled as asian, but i’m sure that it exists somewhere.
Manish
I do agree that some of the “sacred cow” references might have been a bit cliched, but the fact remains that most of the stuff Waldman talks about is in fact, well-researched and insightful. Temples on the roads, cattle crossings, bullock carts on the highways are in fact daily, routine occurences on Indian roads and precisely the problems faced by road developers too. People here in India do take their gods seriously and have to be convinced hard to perform actions which might offend those gods.
Well, for this specific article, I do forgive her any strains of orientalism, because I think some of that is essential to make the article interesting to westerners.
For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been traveling all over South India by bus, making my way from Kanyakumari (southern tip) back to Mumbai, by government transport buses. I read this article in the middle of this trip and boy, it hit home! It is exciting to see all this happening with your own eyes.
hey geek – i for one would love to read your adventure on a blog someday… take care…
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hi i want to say hello