Other Worlds

“It is a curious emotion, this certain homesickness I have in mind…It is no simple longing for the home town or country of our birth. The emotion is Janus-faced: we are torn between a nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known.”
― Carson McCullers, ‘Look Homeward, Americans’ 

It's been a while and I wondered, "Does anyone read blog posts anymore?" I'd be lying if I said I was torn between nostalgia and homesickness. For one, I have been posting very regularly on Facebook. But also because I have no such 'feelings' towards posting entries on the blog as I know for certain that nothing lasts for ever. It's because, just like our fellow primates (I have watched the chimpanzees at the London Zoo very closely), we get bored too easily. Look at how we read online: in just 10 seconds we decide whether we should read further or move onto whatever is next.

But I have also learnt that boredom is the biggest motivating force. It can motivate us towards either action or inaction. In fact, to accomplish (or insert any other word you'd rather ascribe to daily existence) anything in life one has to sacrifice boredom, it's not easy but it has to be done. At that the precise moment imagination walks in opening the way to other worlds.

Babblers

(All photographs by Anvita Lakhera.)

Identified as drably coloured, in conservation status they are categorized as LC- Least Concern. Anyone who has watched these birds for any length of time would testify that these words aren't quite what you'd associate with them, in normal parlance. For there is nothing drab about them when it comes to squabbling in the undergrowth or simply stalking the balconies in teams of seven plus members. They appear to be most concerned about everything that is happening in the neighbourhood. Gregarious, they chatter nineteen to a dozen and at the drop of a hat are ready to congregate in large groups for what appears to be frantic socializing.

The babbler may appear dull but then that maybe because we see things as we are, not as they are.

One fine day

What's this? No clues here. I’ll need to use all my monkey senses to get to the bottom of this.

Aaargh! Trust humans to take something perfectly edible and turn it into something utterly revolting. Sometimes I have serious doubts about evolution.

Hey! What’s this? Let me take a look. Seem like there's something inside.

Ah plastic! No mystery left to be solved here. This is something vile and absolutely no fun. Much like this damn place.

Now here's something I could use. If only I had a compass and a road map. I’d been outta here. Sigh!

(All photographs by Anvita Lakhera.)

Happily Ever After

The first time you hear them is when you are in the green vegetable isle stuffing handfuls of bhindi and broad beans into plastic bags. It is 8:30 PM on a Saturday night, so carbon footprint and food miles are not a priority; you simply want to get back home. That is the first time he says to her, “You don’t cook kathal these days.” She murmurs evasively. And since your mind automatically makes a mental note of the people you are eavesdropping upon (even if inadvertently), so as your hands pick and thrust through heaps of bhindi, you take a quick look. The man is your average urban Indian; overweight dressed in a striped t-shirt and jeans. A male version of the "Empress of Blandings". His wife by comparison is Piglet. Perhaps more accurately a grasshopper. Next to him, she looks thin, frail and nondescript. They are your age, probably younger, the mind notes and closes the file. The last observation seems mandatory these days.

It is the way he says kathal that makes your ears stand on edge. Visions of a cool and large kitchen, hands soaked in mustard oil, the sharpened knife just before it makes the first strike in what would be hours of extreme labour, float in from nowhere. And you move along towards the pile of tomatoes. The kathal almost forgotten.

Later when you are picking grapes, disgusted by the man next to you who squeezes each grape before putting the bunch in the bag, that you hear him again, “It has been ages since I had kathal.” This time you deliberately look up. They are standing in front of the pile of kathal. The wife seems to have shrunk further in the past ten minutes. The man continues, “Last time I had kathal was when mummy cooked it. It was absolutely delicious. You never cook kathal for me. Lets buy some kathal today,” he ends picking up one of the bigger specimens on display while the wife demurs, “yes, yes I will make kathal if that is what you want. Yes, yes lets buy some kathal. If that is what you like.”

Vision of a tiny kitchen in a one BHK flat, in a suburban housing society with the outer walls gray and green from years of neglect in the Mumbai monsoon; a tiny kitchen platform large enough to hold the gas stove and maybe, if the builder was a human, a few jars of spices, frail hands soaked in mustard oil, the knife hacking the kathal, the oil sizzling in the kadhai, the smoke reluctantly leaving the tiny kitchen window, the sounds from the TV in the hall blaring the SA vs. India one day match commentary, float in. As do other more profound visions of matrimony.

Kathal will definitely be served for lunch this Sunday. For theirs is a happy marriage.

(For M+C on ten blissful years of matrimony.)

*bhindi is the Hindi name for okra

**kathal is the Hindi name for jackfruit

Misadventures in Social Work

We graduated with dreams and tools collected over seventeen years of learning and unlearning ready to plant new seeds, germinate fresh ideas. We took our shiny new tool box and ventured forth confidently to tackle the weeds choking our national landscape. We chose our area of work and were promptly termed “social workers”. We believed a few tugs here and a few pulls there and we’d have cleared some of the mess, at least a small part of it. For we didn’t have illusions of grandeur, we just wanted to do good work. But there were some hidden pests we hadn’t contended for.

First we encountered them in the city of tinsel dreams where an institute produces a fixed quota of social workers annually. But not before subjecting them to intense scrutiny, pre-judging them because of the “fancy colleges” they got their social science degree from and berating them for harboring dreams of working for the UN and other national policy institutes. To think we naively believed that was a noble aspiration. No, social work meant being selfless, working for no ulterior motive, more like becoming a nun or an ascetic. Here we thought it was a profession just like being a doctor or a teacher. So we felt ashamed, so very ashamed.

Then we joined organizations called NGO’s where for no ulterior motive, for we weren’t even getting paid, we picked up our as yet unopened tool box and looked to do some work. But at every step we were rebuked, laughed at for our naivety, and scoffed at for attempting to change things. You think change can happen so fast. No, organizations don’t work that way. There’s a structure, a chain of command, and an authority. We should have known for we’d cleared a paper worth hundred marks on structure and function of ‘Organizations’. So we felt ashamed, so very ashamed.

One day when we had typed a hundred letters and a million pamphlets on how to do this and how to do that, we met an old man, a member of that fast vanishing tribe called the ‘midnight’s children’. He looked at us with our plans and proposals and laughed. ‘This is not social work,’ he said wiping his tears. 'Social work was what we did digging the ‘so and so canal’ as fifteen year olds when Jawaharlal Nehru asked us to’. We quietly walked out of the room before he could quote the ‘ask not what your country’ thing for we were ashamed, so very ashamed.

With deflated spirits and getting heavier to lug around tool box we went for another meeting. The gentleman with graying hair sitting behind a cluttered desk on a swirling chair with a printed towel at the headrest smiled a beguiling smile. He looked at us and said, 'so how much money do you make or will you make or hope to make? For aren’t all NGO’s corrupt? Isn’t everyone in it to make money?' And other such clichés we’d heard many times about almost every profession including the very noble one that the gentleman himself belonged to. But we mumbled something about being a part of society and corruption being endemic to a people not to a particular profession but our voices petered off for we felt ashamed, so very ashamed.

Penniless, devoid of ulterior motive even ambition itself, working for what, to achieve what, we didn’t know but we made one last try. In a premier institute named after the above-mentioned Prime Minister we organized debates and discussion with our fellow kind, on issues that we felt were thought provoking or at least irksome for the generation that would inherit the future. All in the hope that maybe there is hope. But for most part they listened with a barely perceptible semblance of patience. One could almost swear they gave us a fair hearing because of our gender but the cynical questions, the doubts and reservations expressed at the end pointed towards something else. In course of their education they had learned something that we had somehow missed probably because we had been blinded by our enthusiasm. So we felt ashamed, so very ashamed.

We looked at our once shiny tools getting rusted and blunt. We shook our heads. The unfathomable shame, the insurmountable guilt, the sense of inadequacy made apparent by every single person we had met for the last five years made us despondent. Some of us shook it off like a bad dream and took that scholarship from that University in the US, others started making assessment reports for those very businesses that would destroy the very thing they had fought to conserve. While the more sensitive ones among us can be found typing pamphlets and letters while battling their sense of shame. All because we naively thought social work was simply a profession.

Walking in Delhi

(To learn more about walking in Indian cities click here)

To ask someone to walk in Delhi sounds preposterous and is often dismissed with a laugh. That was the reaction we got from our friend when we walked for the last time in Delhi. It was 2004. The event wasn’t so momentous that we’d record the date but it so happened that we left Delhi after a few months. So the stroll from Saket to Aurobindo Place Market on a winter afternoon is the last time we walked purely for the pleasure of walking in Delhi. The soft afternoon sun, the smell of roasting peanuts, small thelas piled with cheap woolens, even the languidly moving traffic seemed to add to the pleasure probably because we could navigate it so easily and quickly. We would have loved to say that the skeptic friend became a convert but in reality he too remembers the walk for precisely the same reasons as us.

Another memorable walk was some 10 years earlier when the IIT U special didn’t turn up and the three of us, all girls, decided to walk to Pragati Maidan from Pandara Road to catch the Noida special. That too was winter and Delhi looked so beautiful in the liquid sunlight that we ended up walking all the way to Miranda House for we were only nineteen and Sociological theory wasn’t something we looked forward to first thing in the morning. And what a wonderful walk it was. There were a few strange looks but for the most part we completed our journey unmolested, which is commendable considering one can’t walk a few steps without fending off unnecessary comments and unwarranted glances these days. The fact that we had clearly demarcated space to walk for the most part too helped. We tried to recreate the journey in the opposite direction but it was monsoon and that year safety of women was a major news item. So we caught the bus back home from ITO.

Having lived for over 12 years in Delhi we walked in all kinds of weather for all kinds of reasons. Along ruins, in gardens among chrysanthemums and roses, under Peepul trees with their leaves turning pink, up and down the Delhi University campus eating bhelpuri, on Prithviraj Road with bats for company, in Sanjay Van with the twisted Vilayati Keekar creating a mini Mordor, along roads densely packed with cars honking and the auto rickshaw we had abandoned getting swallowed by the smoke, on Kamraj Marg when the Amaltas colours the sidewalk gold, in Tughlaqabad with the moneys watching us even as we watched them, in JNU under the trees singing in the rain, to Khan Market to Aurobindo Place. A million walks in a city that seemed to be best explored on foot to enjoy its timeless beauty. But that was before Delhi became the city of a million roads and nowhere to go.

The only regret. Never being able to enjoy a walk along the Yamuna to truly appreciate the city that was built beside a river.

Bombay

(click to view image gallery)

Then they ask, “You never write about Bombay. Why?” And you mumble Delhi, the present, London, childhood and other such suitably enigmatic words. But you know they have lost you at ‘Why’. So like millions of other moments this one too passes into oblivion, even before it has had its moment. Nothing learnt, nothing unlearnt. All appropriately reduced to nothingness but for a flutter in your brain caused by the two words ‘Bombay’ and ‘why’.

It isn’t the first time that these words have been juxtaposed. And neither is it hard to write about Bombay. Bombay encompasses everything that connotes fantasy and reality. The word itself is infused with innumerable tales and adventures, so much so that one can’t utter it without summoning multitudinous visions shared by over a billion people. And even if it is whispered in the most intimate recesses of the heart all it’s associations and summations are a part of our private folklore. Our grand history. The simple story of our life. Oft repeated in moments struggling to hang onto this side of oblivion.

All that remains are discarded fragments. A certain shade of orange, the bark of a tree, the moon swooning behind Haji Ali, the flap of bat wings, a golden chariot drawn by seven horses riding huge black clouds, a window and sparrows, four kids and a little black dog, hens on trees, more clouds, yellow flower and red car, breakfast and sunsets. So on and so forth. Someday when it’s time to empty the dustpan we shall see what does the word Bombay really convey.

A love story

Our poverty is indeed very precious to us. We can’t share it, show it, or discuss it. For we love it so much. Almost to distraction. So much so that we cringe when a film shows a child jumping into a shit hole even though manual scavengers still continue to operate in our cities. As proof of our undying love we give them a special name and house them in a special place far away from our national conscience.

So much so that we look right through the beggar child tapping on our car window at the traffic light. And calmly continue typing there are no child beggars in Bombay for an article that would go on to get published in a national magazine. And people will buy the magazine from child hawkers at the same traffic light and read these words. Thus reassured maybe even smile as they look out at the cars lined up mile upon mile in a never ending traffic jam. And in the airconditioned comfort of their car they’ll coolly ignore the gentle tappity tap on their window.

Our love is so strong that we concentrate not on how to alleviate poverty but elevate it with rallying calls of ‘garibi hatao’ (remove poverty). We are bashful like a young teenager in love and almost turn red at any mention of it. So, our love call is never ‘garibi dikhao’ (show poverty) or ‘garibi batao’ (talk about poverty) but always ‘garibi hatao’. Ours is not the absence makes the heart grow fonder kind of love. But the out of sight, out of mind kind. Given our reticence on opening up about our relationship maybe our new love call should simply be ‘garibi chupao’ (hide poverty).

Liberation Pub

A few men descended on a pub in Mangalore and mercilessly beat up the women. They definitely need to be dealt with, as any civilized society would deem fit. However the more important question that isn’t being asked is how and why were the television cameras (as is always the case) on hand to record this barbaric act. And why didn’t the attackers get arrested immediately.

If this was a well-rehearsed theatrical performance to garner recognition for a little-known outfit in an election year then those who are exalting pub culture and failing to distinguish the sane arguments against it from the act of a handful of men are putting up a well-matched performance albeit in the other extreme.

The truth is that in this ‘new improved’ India the narrative is increasingly being dominated by “extremists”. All arguments are either or. And accepting one aspect means you can’t disagree with another aspect because the dialogue is never nuanced. You are for women’s liberation and you support their right to drink and thus by default you favour pubs and the distinct culture they represent. For those who naively believe that a pub is just a place where anyone can have a drink and not a whole range of wide - reaching and deep cultural impact need to examine the ideas they choose to support more closely.

Going to a pub and drinking is a lifestyle choice that we make. But by no stretch of the imagination can it become a sign of freedom or emancipation for humans, let alone women. Living in London has been the best advertisement to de-sell pub going and all the other unwanted baggage that comes along with it.

Some voices of sanity in India are warning us to pause and look where we are headed before we spiral into a nightmare only to wake up covered in our vomit and piss and probably not in our senses because of all the binge drinking the night before to realize that we’ve been stabbed in our guts.

And as for women and their freedom hopefully we’ll allow all women the right to choose what they want even if it means not supporting pubs and drinking alcohol. For surely that’s what emancipation is all about.

Feeling lonely?

They often compare loneliness to the stranglehold of a multi-tentacled beast. But all the while all around me I see companionship in it's various avatars bringing it down one tentacle at a time.

Beggars of London

Can an Indian write about poverty in London? And I don't mean poverty in Victorian London as depicted by Charles Dickens or encountered during one of her many walks through its streets some 100 years later by Virginia Woolf. But poverty in 21st century London. Poverty that exists here and now.

The same poverty that escapes people as they catch the first flight out of London to India, Cambodia, Africa, and hosts of other such places. Places where they can enjoy a comfortable lifestyle while sprouting moralistic rants against the not-poor-but-trying-to-get-by-

educated class or the ones who not unlike them have managed to make money, yes, created wealth, the worst offense that a man can commit, especially when surrounded by the poor, the dispossessed and the destitute.

These seekers of adventure in the course of 6 months, a year or maybe two years collect enough indignation for the wealthy and adoration for the beggars to write a decent sized book and bag a more than decent sized book deal back home. A personal memoir about how they fucked up their life in London and then a trip to India (or any other equally unfathomable destination) made them realize the triviality of their problems and the melancholic beauty of poverty. Their adventure complete, they promptly return to the home country. Sometimes never to go back again.

But they'll often tell anyone who cares to listen that the trip to India has made them a better person. For now they can appreciate poverty's inherent magnetism. Its heart of goodness. By merely being in its presence they became human and more humane. And they'll never fail to scorn at the rich classes or scoff at the sexual repression of the middle ones. Those hypocrites. Their films have no sex scenes! And also stick to the irritating habit of amalgamating and interchanging the rich and middle classes together. Especially so in context of India. Or using their experience of life in Bandra (Bombay) or Greater Kailash (Delhi) and in some extreme cases Dharmshala as a generalization for how all Indians think and feel. And always end by mentioning the irresistible charm of poverty.

Then maybe I'll say what about poverty in London? And their eyes will glaze over, as they'll mention the beggars under the underpass and outside the train stations. A minute will pass before I realize that they are re-visiting the splendor of India and not referring to the handicapped homeless man sleeping under the underpass close to Tate Modern with a board saying "I am a homeless handicap. I don't do drugs or drink alcohol. Don't beat me." Or the beggar outside Bethnal Green Station too miserable and cold to even lift his head and look up as you drop a coin in his Styrofoam cup. Or the old lady in Charring Cross dragging her tattered belongings in a broken shopping cart. And so the moment will pass.

But the thought remains. What makes people 'appreciate' poverty? Who are all these people who fly around the world seeking to dwell in the many splendors of poverty while ignoring it as they rush to catch the tube back home? And what is this poverty they find alluring? Does poverty always have to give something back to make it 'captivating' enough-make you a better person, help you appreciate your life more or make your problems seem trivial?

So, children of doctors from South Africa, stockbrokers from America, and bankers from London will keep seeking the adventure of their life in India. The incredible poverty will reassure them and re-invigorate them. But the struggles of those who manage to stay afloat. Those who unlike them can't run to London or Cape Town to seek beauty but instead look for it in their religion and their films. Those who had they been similarly blessed with the comfort of being just a flight away from escape would too find the time to dwell on the beauty of poverty. Indeed even write realms about it. These will only get derision and disrespect. These will always fail to stand up to the stringent moral assessments. These will always be shown the harsh poverty surrounding them that they dared to get away from, no, far worse ignore.

So, these children of the West will endlessly travel eastward searching for the dispossessed. Embracing the impoverished. All in an effort to drive away Ibsenian ghosts nibbling away at their souls. Exalting their ideas and ideals of poverty. All the while denying the rest of us a chance to move away from it. To not dwell upon it all our waking life even though we maybe separated from it by a few paces or in many cases just a generation. Also denying us the choice to sometimes ponder upon the ordinary. How can you talk about normal problems of life when your country has so many beggars? Why don't you feel anger and rage? How can you not see the "real" life around you everywhere?

Thus 'developed' by their jaunt through poverty in the by lanes and alleys of India these honorable and naïve citizens of the world will hold forth on morality in every global platform. Telling those who don't fall under the ever-shifting lines of poverty what ideals to aspire towards, what issues to rage against, what answers to search for in their art, what reality to depict in their films, what kind of music to compose, how to react when faced with a beggar sleeping under some underpass, how to talk about poverty. In short how to become more human. Better human.

And they'll turn vicious when faced with an idea germinating in these same places with abject poverty, which runs counter to all they hold moral and dear. Maybe even questions their idea of what is ethical and honest. Or even poverty itself. For don't they often miss the other more potent one festering among their midst? This poverty of empathy, this poverty of vision, this poverty of ideas. This incredible poverty of the ability to look at life as it exists everywhere. But who will tell these beggars of London to not go searching for it in places foreign but appreciate it in ideas foreign, even those often opposed to their deeply set prejudices. To acknowledge that 6 billions souls can't chase the same ghosts or cherish the same ideas with equal fervor. That would indeed make them more humane. So, can an Indian write about this poverty in London?

Sewa Nagar Revisited

I remember Sewa Nagar. The roadside stalls selling fruits, cheap plastic combs, sunglasses and the usual stuff you never think about because in India it’s always available somewhere close to you. It may catch your sight as you zip by in your car. And then you’d ask your driver to run and buy 2 kilos of those delicious looking mangoes or say “aarey litchi bazaar mein aa gaye. I didn’t even realize. How time passes?” Or you maybe sitting all bundled up in the bus, trying to protect yourself as best as you can from the man sitting next to you lest any part of his body touches yours, when your eyes fall on a pheriwallah and his cart brimming with belts, handkerchiefs, socks and combs. And you’d suddenly realize “Oh shit! I need to buy a new belt.”

I remember Sewa Nagar for what it was. A street with vendors occupying a small space on the pavement and offering a whole world of goods and services to a city with no time to think. So that people needn’t make a special effort to get something as simple as a comb. Where at lunch hour guys from the local ad agency and the rickshaw pullers could rush for its 8 rupees lunch of hot and cooked-right-before-your-eyes baingan bharta and chapatti. Or the 5 rupees choola kulcha with lots of lime and green chilies. Or to just stop by to get the shoe mended before a meeting. Or a punctured tyre repaired. Or simply for a pudiya of peanuts to pass the time while waiting for the bus or the light to turn green.

I remember Sewa Nagar for what it is. A pheri bazaar in any city of India. A means of sustenance for those who exercise their right to a livelihood with dignity. A place where the carwallah and the cyclewallah are equally welcome. A place that reminds you of the passage of seasons even though the daily drudgery of life may seem monochrome. Diwali Diyas, Summer Mangoes, Monsoon cheap umbrella. A place where you can assess the clout of Gods and film stars by analyzing whose poster is given place of prominence. A kaleidoscope of popular culture. A place where the marginalized millions can measure how they get shortchanged daily when their earning of 30 rupees diminishes rapidly in value.

Then suddenly one day I see Sewa Nagar for what it has become. Not a small nondescript street market but an arena for the play of larger than life egos. A hopelessly one-sided confrontation between the pheriwallahs and the police, the courts, the politicians, the drivers of big cars. A question of who decides who has the right to a livelihood and who doesn’t. Or the right to reside in a city. A measure of the great tectonic shift in how a city chooses to define itself. A symbol of our dying empathy. A wistful shake of our heads at all the madness and colour and culture we wish to let go of and for what. A Haldighati for reclaiming the soul of a nation.

A rant

It's obvious from a recent article in The Guardian that Nirpal Dhaliwal doesn't like Hindi films. And he hates Rock On. Good for him. But then why do we have to suffer his asinine Hindi film reviews, week after week? Every week Guardian's website has some weird headline regarding the latest Hindi film which is followed by an even weirder analysis of the film. Often comparing it unfavourably to some stupid Hollywood film.

That is Nirpal Dhaliwal. Guardian's man in Mumbai, Delhi and India. Sent to mock Hindi films, and Indians, and report on all that is wrong with them, or so it seems.

But first Mr. Dhaliwal establishes his credentials as a virtuous citizen of this world and thereby usurps the right to mock Indian hypocrisy via films. In fact we stand no chance in front of his moral upbraiding. He is so full of self-righteous concern about India's problem that he chooses to vent all his anger on films. And then too, instead of trying to understand why Hindi films move masses across class, caste and linguistic borders he earns his remittance by supplying lazy articles mocking them. And can they be more generic? Or more pandering to western tastes?

He is most of the time preoccupied in comparing Hindi films with Hollywood ones- no sex, so little gross stuff like puke or people getting smash drunk, everyone is a polite, mollycoddled uber nerd. He loves the word mollycoddled. It is his biggest grouse against us. We are mollycoddled urban Indians who like to watch tame films about mollycoddled uber nerds living with their mums. God forbid if a film about molycoddled beings becomes a hit. For then he becomes especially vicious. It's almost as if he wishes he was mollycoddled. Some kind of Freudian obsession maybe.

His latest moralistic rant against Rock On is so full of western clichés that the only granny rocking here is Mr. Dhaliwal and his outdated "westernized" perspective. The reality he feels most Indians ignore is actually our life. We live it everyday. Even after Mr. Dhaliwal puts away his pen after the mandatory tribute to the beggar under the underpass to enjoy Delhi's nightlife or to listen to Joy Division to articulate his frustration. We'll be living it even when he packs his bags at the end of his Indian summer.

His jaded analysis trying to relate the film to MTV-addicted-middle-class-urban youth is so juvenile that it can only be countered with laughter. He is so cavalier that he doesn't even pause to clarify what he means by middle class urban youth. Surely now that he is living in India he doesn't think that the Indian middle class is a monolithic, monochromatic whole. Further on he continues his argument by dividing India into two clearly demarcated rich and poor classes. Yes, the rich are mollycoddled, bourgeois hipsters living with their mums in short bad people and the poor, helpless, dispossessed who don't channel their rage to form Punk and Rock bands like in the West, are the good people. Maybe he secretly wants to write a Hindi film script. And after annihilating weak trash like Rock On that hides the ugliness of India he concludes by lamenting how Indians don't articulate 'the anger, melancholy and haunting beauty of what I see around me everyday" by following in the footsteps of British bands. Does he even know what he is talking about?

The point Mr Dhaliwal doesn't seem to get is that Indians have a distinct culture and taste and style. The day MTV started playing Hindi film music and McDonald's started serving McAloo Tikki burger India once again redefined modernity. And it was distinctly Indian. And we like our films that way too. Distinctly Indian.

The question for Mr. Dhaliwal is can Indians lay claim to a modernity that is far removed from what the West considers it to be? Can Mr. Dhaliwal and Guardian ever acknowledge it? And do Indians care for their acknowledgment?

So, why is Guardian giving such mediocre write-ups such prime space on its website? And why does it need to have some guy mock Hindi films and Indians when clearly his views are almost meaningless. Surely, Guardian doesn't think projecting cobwebbed ideas about India is in. Yes, India is the flavour right now. But somebody needs to update Mr Dhaliwal and Guardian that looking at India from 'western tinted' glasses is so old-fashioned. India and perceptions about India have moved on. Maybe its time to move on from Guardian's jaundiced outlook too.

As for Mr Dhaliwal maybe he should move on to Bob Dylan.

You try so hard
But you don't understand
Just what you'll say
When you get home
Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?