Don’t Bother: You’ll Never Get It

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I’m still processing the bilious sortie by Shashi Tharoor, the Indian diplomat and author, outgoing undersecretary-general of the United Nations and failed candidate for the top job, in the opinion pages of last Friday’s New York Times. It’s the one where he announces that America and Americans are congenitally incapable of comprehending cricket, that the condition is incurable, and that after valiantly performing such educational mitzvahs as diagramming cricket play possibilities on bar napkins for baseball fans during breaks in World Series games, he has now given up; and hereby retreats to the world of connoisseurs who will gather, he tells us, to watch the final at the home of an expatriate where “of course there will be no Americans.”

Here’s his parting shot:

So here’s the message, America: don’t pay any attention to us, and we won’t pay any to you. If you wonder, over the coming weeks, why your Indian co-worker is stealing distracted glances at his computer screen every few minutes or why the South African in the next cubicle is taking frequent and furtive bathroom breaks during the working day, don’t even try to understand. You probably wouldn’t get it. You may as well learn to accept that there are some things too special for the rest of us to want to waste them on you.

Lovely! Elegant! Thoughtful! Um… diplomatic! Ever considered working for the United Nations?

Alright, so everyone has an off day. And sure, yeah, most people in the U.S. don’t get cricket. Not exactly a novel observation. So why not leave it at that? Instead Tharoor decides to actually argue the case, justifying his dismissal of this thing called “America” with an array of absurd statements. Americans, he says, “have about as much use for cricket as Lapps have for beachwear.” They follow baseball instead, which “is to cricket as simple addition is to calculus.” Tharoor has “even appealed to the Hemingway instinct that lurks in every American male by pointing out how cricket is so much more virile a sport.” All to no avail. But thanks to satellite television and the Internet, now “you can ignore America and enjoy your cricket.” After all: “Why try to sell Kiri Te Kanawa to people who prefer Anna Nicole Smith?”

But all of this is mere appetizer for the main dish, the Comparative Analysis of National Character. Take it away, maestro:

In any event, nothing about cricket seems suited to the American national character: its rich complexity, the infinite possibilities that could occur with each delivery of the ball, the dozen different ways of getting out, are all patterned for a society of endless forms and varieties, not of a homogenized McWorld. They are rather like Indian classical music, in which the basic laws are laid down but the performer then improvises gloriously, unshackled by anything so mundane as a written score.

Cricket is better suited to a country like India, where a majority of the population still consults astrologers and believes in the capricious influence of the planets — so they can well appreciate a sport in which, even more than in baseball, an ill-timed cloudburst, a badly prepared pitch, a lost toss of the coin at the start of a match or the sun in the eyes of a fielder can transform the outcome of a game. Even the possibility that five tense, hotly contested, occasionally meandering days of cricketing could still end in a draw seems derived from ancient Indian philosophy, which accepts profoundly that in life the journey is as important as the destination. Not exactly the American Dream.

All together now: MACACA, PLEASE!

Seriously: What on earth are you talking about? And what does it tell us about what you see when you think of America, and what you see when you think of India? And with all due respect, what kind of UN Secretary General could you have possibly made with a worldview at once so rigid and so fey?

It’s tempting to engage in a line-item refutation exercise, going through the brother’s points, trivial and serious, one by one. For instance, it’s not Lapps, you’re supposed to call them Sami now. Don’t they teach you anything at those urbane cocktail parties? Also: Ever heard of jazz? And best of all, did you read the letter in the New York Times where the writer schooled you on the more-than-12 ways to get an out in baseball?

But all that is noise. What really disappointed me about this article, now that I’ve had a little time to think about it, is the unthinking, crude cultural nationalism, the willingness to truck in stereotypes, the implied view that no matter how much globalization and immigrant entrepreneurship and diasporic arts and international travel and trade mix our populations and produce hybrid souls like the bulk of the readers of this site, National Character is pre-determined and will prevail. Way to validate our concerns, our dreams, our debates, our professional and political and personal choices!

Instead we get us versus them, a view of the world that is positively Bush-like in its reductionism and reliance on obsolete understandings of the nation-state. Not surprising in the end, I guess, from someone whose novel was called “The Great Indian Novel” (oh but you see, that was ironic) and whose forthcoming book is “The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cellphone: India, The Emerging 21st Century Power.”

I’ll believe it when we beat Sri Lanka.

119 thoughts on “Don’t Bother: You’ll Never Get It”

  1. @ Anju: I agree totally. I think people are making a mountain of a mole hill here ! There is no harm at all in what he wrote. It is a free country and every person can have an opinion and state it.

    Surely he deserves a chance to take a small dig at the Americans – all in good humor ! – America did the same to him in that secret-ballot veto for the UN Gen. Sec race 😉

  2. So puhhleeez dont give that crap load of justification as to why Ameicans abroad stay ignorant of other cultures or people or places…..

    So a poor American (they do exist, you know), dropped into a different culture would be able to just stay completely aloof and ignorant? That’s ridiculous. The reason Americans abroad stay aloof is because people cater to that attitude.

  3. ||I seriously hope that was with tongue firmly in cheek. Otherwise the absurdity of the comparison is mind-blowing. || @Kobayashi: ||Oy vey. Chickity check yo self before you wreck yo self…||

    Apologies. My bad. Didn’t have the patience to read your earlier comments.

    However, now that I did, I have something to say to the guy who said “absolutely no way Jazz can come close to the intricacies and complexities of Indian classical music”.

    Please listen to an incredible album by R. Prasanna called ‘Electric Ganesha Land’. This is a Carnatic musician’s tribute to Jimi Hendrix. Prasanna has been called one of the most innovative sounds in contemporary guitar (“Prasanna plays guitar, quite simply like nobody on the planet” – PHIL DI PIETRO, ALLABOUTJAZZ.COM). Coming from someone who plays as regularly on the Chennai Carnatic concert circuit as he does with Jazz greats in NY City, this album may give you a different perspective on your blinkered view on the great musical traditions of the world. Music in all its forms is a gift to be enjoyed, not used as a proxy for nationalistic bravado.

    About Tharoor’s article, I think he was spot on. I think Siddharta’s post is self-denigrating, where he tries hard to be apologetic to hide his own sense of embarrassment. I would be interested to know what his reaction would be if Tharoor’s piece was directed at a country, say like Indonesia…or maybe Peru…you know, a country where cricket is as alien as kabaddi, but one which does not permeate the urban Indian mindset like America does. Would he have cringed or laughed? More loyal than the queen, Siddharta?

  5. As for your cousin being an opera fan and not into Indian classical music….hey, coloratura arias found in many 19th cen operas, are an opportunity for a vocalist to show off her/his ability to improvise…sound familiar?

    Sure, similar to the performace kalpanaswarams and niravals of a well-rendered keerthana. But the hallmark of a Carnatic vocalist is the Ragam Tanam Pallavi, where the entire thing is improvised within one raga. But my cousin’s reasons for not liking Indian music aren’t due to technique, she just doesn’t like how it sounds, period. While I can appreciate the difficult technique of Operatic singing and I can enjoy it from time to time, it doesn’t excite me the same way a khayaal or a sung ragam do. Likewise, I would never expect most people to feel the same way about Carnatic or Hindustani they way I do. The point I was trying to make is that it’s pointless to try and push one music genre as “higher” or “better” than another. Tastes are tastes.

    “The jazz analogy is used so rampantly that people forget that it is just a loose analogy to explain Indian classical to lay people.”

    Like I said, I don’t know enough about jazz to really evaluate this statement. But wouldn’t you agree that, for example, carnatic renderings of keerthana’s for example, especially insertions of kalpanaswarams and niravals sound a bit more like jazz theory than anything in western classical music? The other day, I was reading the “Time Out” travel guide to Mumbai and Goa, and there was a section titled “Scat Like Ella” that was about opportunities for learning Indian classical music.

    But I agree with you on your point that people often don’t realize how trying it can be to put your own stamp on anyone particular ragam-and I don’t know if there is an equivalent to it. Maybe someone who’s more knowledgeable can elaborate on this.

    Must say, this thread has made me more inspired to learn about jazz theory, though.

  6. Music is a gift to be enjoyed, not used as a proxy for nationalistic bravado.

    Well said.

  7. It is an American’s take on cricket. It is full of inaccuracies and exaggerations. But it makes extremely amusing reading. In my opinion, it is in this spirit that the Tharoor article is written.

    Last week an SI guy was on Letterman. And for a full five minutes they discussed his views of Kabaddi matches he had watched at the Qatar Asian Games.

  9. I encourage you to read Bill Bryson’s take on cricket in “In a sunburned country”.

    And I encourage you to listen to “In a Big Country” by Big Country. They’re from, like, another country or something. It sounds big.

    Americans all over the world are famous for their dimwittedness and ignorance not because they can but because they live the life of a frog in a well.

    Okay, okay. Us Americans, even desi Americans, are fat, stupid navel gazers who couldn’t find cricket on a map (seriously, I checked my Rand McNally atlas and I’m pretty sure it’s not there). Is everyone happy now? Yeesh. I guess it’s not enough I gotta catch ish from racist people in my own country, now I gotta go on the internet to get hated on because I don’t care about cricket.

  10. You know, Tharoor’s just got that kind of sense of humor. He comes across as almost childish at times in his attempts to be witty, but I think it’s the Brit thing more than an anti-American thing. He’s not all bad.

  11. What sports were popular in India before the Raj?

    C’mon !!! The real India sports are “Kushti” and “Hockey”

  12. “IndianaJones/Anna: Switching handles in the same thread is not appreciated, especially if done to support or address points you previously made. It’s something we’ve banned for in the past. Consider this a friendly warning.”

    Consider it taken….just took too long to settle on a name!

    “Okay, okay. Us Americans, even desi Americans, are fat, stupid navel gazers who couldn’t find cricket on a map (seriously, I checked my Rand McNally atlas and I’m pretty sure it’s not there). Is everyone happy now? Yeesh. I guess it’s not enough I gotta catch ish from racist people in my own country, now I gotta go on the internet to get hated on because I don’t care about cricket.”

    Hey rah, nobody hates nobody and I didnt mean all that anyway! Let me explain it to you. You see, its something like, “I can bash something I love when i get angry, but an outsider cant do the same thing” sort of mentality. I think thats pretty fair dont you think? Suppose you have a best friend and you rave and rant against her/him, but then someone else pitches in and begins raving and ranting against him/her, wont you get defensive about your friend? There are times when I hate the game too, and now after the miserable show put up by the Indian team in the world cup, Im like “Do whatever the hell you want,Im not even bothered anymore”, but even then if an outsider makes a silly comment about them, Im gonna still stick with the team…

  13. And I encourage you to listen to “In a Big Country” by Big Country. They’re from, like, another country or something. It sounds big.

    Haha. It doesn’t just sound big: its sounds… (wait for it)…epic.

  14. DJ Drrrty Poonjabi, that video brought back a lot of memories, but also gave me the same dissonance that all 80’s videos give me…because watching them as a kid, all those singers/musicians looked so big and grown-up; now they look younger than I do. I guess the only consolation is that those actual singers/musicians probably look ancient now.

  15. I think there’s an element of tongue-in-cheek to Mr. Tharoor’s piece (he was a very funny guest on Colbert Report, so he’s well versed in ironic humor) and rightfully placed sports-ism. Everyone who’s ever loved a sports team or a country team has engaged in a little “we’re the best, you suck.” For example, this very funny piece on Duke says it all 😉

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYOgC2Qbqh4

  16. Most of my relatives in rural Tamil Nadu over the age of 30 know next to nothing about cricket. They tend to view enjoyment of the sport as an affectation by social climbers. They grew up playing football, kabbadi etc. I think there’s a large part of India that doesn’t “get it”

  17. Shashi Tharoor is an extremely intelligent man. He must have taken into account peoples reactions from his piece. I dont think the man really cared. I really do think the man is trying to make create noise..noise usually translates to more sales of his upcoming book. And i do think the man intends to stay in the public limelight for quite the while. Being fox news…helps the effort.

  18. Whoa! I don’t buy PC as such. But this was borderline bigoted. I also cringed at the astrologer line.

    I’m indian and don’t care much for cricket except when we play pakistan.

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