March 13, 2009
Inside the ragged pantry cart on a train to Mumbai, a train cook, Pratik, sprinkles cardamom over an enormous wok of sizzling onions and is thinking of Hollywood film reels. 'The movie is not real, it is not like India is today,’ he say's before wiping his brow with his sleeve. 'No one from the chai wallahs to the First Class AC passengers on the train can really say what the real India is today except that it is not like what Slumdog Millionaire makes it to be’
Gaurav, an Indian-American, sees things differently. He is seated in the Second Class AC cart and recently moved back to Delhi to assume a management position for a development NGO. He believes the movie is an exact representation of modern India that people like Pratik just cannot see yet. 'In India and in other developing countries most people are used to struggling everyday just to get by. They do not have time to reflect and piece together a narrative of their life. What is so great about Slumdog Millionaire is that here you have this nobody, this chai wallah, and the narrative of his life is pieced together to show it to have meaning in the end.’
He argues these narratives are not only instrumental for developing ones individual identity but are also important for shaping a country’s identity as well. ‘The stories become a self-fulfilling prophecy and represent what the future may hold,’ say’s Gaurav. ‘Hollywood has been making movies and music of African-Americans making it out of the inner-city for years and look at America now, they've elected a black community organizer as president.’
What bothers Pratik, the train’s cook about Slumdog Millionaire more than anything is that the movie was made by the West and is marketed around the world as portraying how India is today. "I don't care that the movie is fantasy," say’s Pratik. "I like fairytale. We have Bollywood here which is one big fairytale, but it is our fairytale. What I don't like is to create a fairytale about us and have other people believe its true. What if you call Microsoft for help with your computer and I pick up the telephone in Mumbai and say, 'Hello this is Pratik in Seattle, how may I help you?' If I am living in Mumbai, it's a lie, even if you in America cannot tell the difference."
And this is what Pratik believes Hollywood is saying with Slumdog Millionaire. It sells India as America, and for Pratik the concern is that Hollywood is exporting a fairytale of what America wants India to be, a nation of upward mobility where dreamers and entrepreneurs are rewarded with millions of rupees.
Today in many places all over India there are no shortage of dreamers and entrepreneurs trying to make those millions. Especially in the field of technology. And these entrepreneurs have been successful in setting up outsourcing factories, generic pharmaceutical industries and software firms that have created great wealth for a few individuals. The reality however, is that most places in India still have no drinking water, electricity, sewage system and public transportation.
The question remians: With Slumdog Millionaire, is Hollywood creating its own caricatures and manufacturing its own fantasy of the new India? Is it leaving behind the majority of Indians like Pratik and making it more difficult for them to formulate an identity of their own India that does not mirror what Hollywood is portraying?
Inside the train, the meals, now ready, are being hurried to the passengers before they turn cold. Gaurav, our Indian-American friend seated in his AC cart, watches the workers dash and jump hurdles trying not to spill the thirty different dishes of which to choose from. Sikhs, Jains and Bengalis sit across from him and remove the foil from their trays as cardamom, coriander and cumin fill the air. Gaurav looks around at the varied faces and their meals and shakes his head. “India is too complicated, there is too much diversity and chaos for it to be transformed by call centers and software firms. India will just be, like its always been, a world of its own, quite happy and content in doing its own maddening dance.”
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Bitch is the New Black?
During the United States Presidential campaign we had our first female presidential candidate and our first black presidential candidate. Tina Fey went on SNL and asked people Why are they abandoning Hillary for Obama? Is it that most people think Hillary is a bitch? “Ya she is,” Tina say’s “and ya so is this one,” pointing to Amy Poehler her co-host. “Bitches get stuff done…. So I am saying, Texas and Ohio it’s not too late. Get on board….Bitch is the new black.”
I know many ‘bitches’. In fact I work for one. She is my attending Neurosurgeon Dr. Tina Duhaime who is a fervent supporter of Hillary Clinton. And she shares many of the same ambitious qualities and status within her field that Hillary Clinton does in hers. First becoming an extraordinary skillful neurosurgeon and then being one of only three females to be elected as an active member of The Society of Neurological Surgeons. But why is it that I could so readily accept Dr. Duhaime as my President and not Hillary Clinton?
It is because Dr. Duhaime also possesses feminine qualities which Hillary Clinton does not. Even while rejecting the “touchy feely” aspect of medicine for “outcomes and results”, I am always struck by the consolation and empathy that comes through during every one of Dr. Duhaime’s interactions with patients and their families. To ascribe that as a feminine quality is not being sexist. Just as I would not find it sexist if someone was to dismiss the new choice for James Bond because he was not manly enough.
This aversion to Hillary because of her lack of feminine qualities also resonates with most European women. When I asked my female friend in Paris why she didn’t like Hillary it was not because of her support to invade Iraq or her plan for Universal Healthcare, which she supports or because Hillary was a women. It is because “she acts like such a man”.
This response I found odd coming from a European women, especially considering recent elected European female political leaders Margaret Thatcher and Angela Merkel don’t necessarily strike me as womanly. In the United States the closest women we had as our Queen was Jacqeline Kennedy Onassis. I don’t know a man in the world that would turn down an evening with her sipping Negronis at Bemelman’s Bar at the Carlyle on any day of the week. In an ideal world it seems what we’d all prefer is for our women leaders not to be alpha males, but to be strong and carry with them great feminine qualities which men could all learn from.
That is why we will continue to love you Tina Fey. That is why I will continue to adore you Dr. Tina Duhaime. Tracy Morgan another SNL cast member who a few weeks later responded to Tina Fey’s proclamation would never shy away from calling either of you two his girl. So what I want to say is that we love these powerful women not because bitch is the new black, but because being a feminine bitch is.
I know many ‘bitches’. In fact I work for one. She is my attending Neurosurgeon Dr. Tina Duhaime who is a fervent supporter of Hillary Clinton. And she shares many of the same ambitious qualities and status within her field that Hillary Clinton does in hers. First becoming an extraordinary skillful neurosurgeon and then being one of only three females to be elected as an active member of The Society of Neurological Surgeons. But why is it that I could so readily accept Dr. Duhaime as my President and not Hillary Clinton?
It is because Dr. Duhaime also possesses feminine qualities which Hillary Clinton does not. Even while rejecting the “touchy feely” aspect of medicine for “outcomes and results”, I am always struck by the consolation and empathy that comes through during every one of Dr. Duhaime’s interactions with patients and their families. To ascribe that as a feminine quality is not being sexist. Just as I would not find it sexist if someone was to dismiss the new choice for James Bond because he was not manly enough.
This aversion to Hillary because of her lack of feminine qualities also resonates with most European women. When I asked my female friend in Paris why she didn’t like Hillary it was not because of her support to invade Iraq or her plan for Universal Healthcare, which she supports or because Hillary was a women. It is because “she acts like such a man”.
This response I found odd coming from a European women, especially considering recent elected European female political leaders Margaret Thatcher and Angela Merkel don’t necessarily strike me as womanly. In the United States the closest women we had as our Queen was Jacqeline Kennedy Onassis. I don’t know a man in the world that would turn down an evening with her sipping Negronis at Bemelman’s Bar at the Carlyle on any day of the week. In an ideal world it seems what we’d all prefer is for our women leaders not to be alpha males, but to be strong and carry with them great feminine qualities which men could all learn from.
That is why we will continue to love you Tina Fey. That is why I will continue to adore you Dr. Tina Duhaime. Tracy Morgan another SNL cast member who a few weeks later responded to Tina Fey’s proclamation would never shy away from calling either of you two his girl. So what I want to say is that we love these powerful women not because bitch is the new black, but because being a feminine bitch is.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
I want to see Barack Obama President of the United States
I want to no longer be surprised to find out where all the money I loaned my brother for his 'studies' went every time I Google search my name and see my brother's name next to multiple hundred dollar campaign contributions to Obama.
I want my friend Brandon not to be mad when after an all night phone conversation trying to convince his grandfather from North Carolina to vote for Obama, his grandfather ends the phone conversation with, 'Well... after all these years I never thought I'd be voting for a nigger.' I want my friend to think of this as change.
I want African-Americans across the United States to be proud, the same way Irish Catholic Americans were proud when John F. Kennedy won the White House and the same way Greek-Americans were proud when Michael Dukakis almost did the same.
I want to hear Beyonce sing Happy Birthday Mr. President in the White House and then rumors started of an affair. I want Beyonce to write in her autobiography years later that Barack refused her advances that night and I want the pundits and late night talk show hosts to then say for years to come that that turning down Beyonce’s request may have been the worst decision he made during his presidency.
I want Barack Obama at the end of his eight years to reflect on his time in office and admit that being President put a strain on his relationship with Michelle and his children. Then I want him to ask for forgiveness from the American people for not accomplishing all that he promised, for not fixing the health care system and not getting all of our troops out of Iraq. But I want for us to accept his forgiveness as there are now 50 million less people uninsured and no more military were sent in to occupy another part of the world.
I want Americans to say things are not the same as they were eight years ago and believe that in eight or even four more years they can still be made better not only for themselves.
And during the end of Barack Obama's presidency when the media are fighting over the coronation of America's next King or even Queen I want an Englisman to turn to his friend in a London Pub and say after his third pint of Guinness, ' I told you those Americans weren't as bloody stupid as you said they were.'
I want my friend Brandon not to be mad when after an all night phone conversation trying to convince his grandfather from North Carolina to vote for Obama, his grandfather ends the phone conversation with, 'Well... after all these years I never thought I'd be voting for a nigger.' I want my friend to think of this as change.
I want African-Americans across the United States to be proud, the same way Irish Catholic Americans were proud when John F. Kennedy won the White House and the same way Greek-Americans were proud when Michael Dukakis almost did the same.
I want to hear Beyonce sing Happy Birthday Mr. President in the White House and then rumors started of an affair. I want Beyonce to write in her autobiography years later that Barack refused her advances that night and I want the pundits and late night talk show hosts to then say for years to come that that turning down Beyonce’s request may have been the worst decision he made during his presidency.
I want Barack Obama at the end of his eight years to reflect on his time in office and admit that being President put a strain on his relationship with Michelle and his children. Then I want him to ask for forgiveness from the American people for not accomplishing all that he promised, for not fixing the health care system and not getting all of our troops out of Iraq. But I want for us to accept his forgiveness as there are now 50 million less people uninsured and no more military were sent in to occupy another part of the world.
I want Americans to say things are not the same as they were eight years ago and believe that in eight or even four more years they can still be made better not only for themselves.
And during the end of Barack Obama's presidency when the media are fighting over the coronation of America's next King or even Queen I want an Englisman to turn to his friend in a London Pub and say after his third pint of Guinness, ' I told you those Americans weren't as bloody stupid as you said they were.'
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