Hypocrisy and the Indian...

I've always wondered about this. I'm not forsaking or attacking anyone here, just something i find a bit annoying or even funny at times. You do wonder if people are like this anywhere else. The tendancy to speak or act in total discord to what is expected or what you say...
I mean, lets look at the attitude most indians have towards sex. You say the word out or start talkin anything about it frankly, they act as if we have sinned. But like i heard somewhere...man, the country has a friggin population of 1 billion! Somebody's gotta be doin it somewhere!! Or, an american pal i made recently, who wondered at the fact that talk of sex is supposed to be taboo, but how come the only thing you see when you channel surf these days on TV is skin show. And that too...pretty suggestive stuff most of the time(and you hear of actresses saying they would not kiss on screen. Most of the stuff they do on screen suggestively would anyday qualify as obscene in my book). Although i gotta admit, things are better than they used to be, i guess...
Then of course, there are the veggies or the non veggies(whichever way you choose to look at it), who are non veggie but dont eat meat on particular days of the week, coz of certain God knows what supernatural phenomena. What i cant understand is, if you do eat meat, how in the world does it make a difference if you eat it on a sunday and not on a saturday? Do the animals love being dead on a particular day and not on others? Yes, yes, i know its all got to do with beliefs, but, whatever...
Talkin of beliefs, you have graduates or people who may have studied in major universities, who would still probably come back to look at how their stars align according to some village astrologer, or to get a blessing maybe by being kicked in the head by some saint. Wonder what is the whole point of calling yourself educated. And before anybody points out that beliefs should always remain, i have to say, there is a big difference between a belief and plain stupidity.
And then of course you have the Great Indian Marriage Trick, where people talk of great love but choose brides or grooms depending on purely practical choices. I guess there is no other thing which sullies the image of what a marriage is really supposed to mean than the amazing routine activity people seemed to have made it into here. We talk of democracy and how people have to connect irrespective of religion or caste...until of course parents find out their kid wants to get married to someone from another religion or even caste. wow-ee. When are people going to realise that for interracial harmony, things have to start from a grassroot level?

Anywayz...before i vent out any further and go absolutely crazy.. i guess i'l sign off...

An Inheritance of Small Things

When i put down Kiran Desai's Booker prize winning 'The Inheritance of Loss' (last years booker winner) a strange sense of deja vu hit me. My mind went back to the last booker prize winning Indian author whose book i had read, namely, the God of Small Things (which won the booker in 1997). I wonder what it is about Indian booker winners and amazingly sad narratives. While the God of Small Things was set in a picteresque Kerala backdrop and an orthodox Christian family, Inheritance is set in Eastern India in a small village called Kalimpong. The main characters here are an old, embittered judge, who just seems to want to hide away from the world at his home at the bottom of the hill. The judge is revisited frequently by visions of his past, as a student in England, where, as a result of his low self esteem, he withdraws deeper and deeper into a shell, and virtually turns into a monster on return to India and his young wife. At his doorstep one day, arrives his grand daughter, Sai. Fate thrust her into his home, when her parents die in Russia, and she has to leave the boarding school she was staying at. Also in the narrative is the cook who has been with the judge for a long while. The narrative keeps switching between Kalimpong and the USA, where Biju, the cooks son, is struggling as an illegal immigrant to finally get himself a green card.

As i mentioned before, the book reminded me in certain ways of Arundhati Roy's modern classic. The unbearably sad family living out their almost invisible existence with little to look forward to. Inheritance also provides a backdrop to show a Gorkha uprising in the hills, which lead to a lot of bloodshed and violence. And Sai is personally and deeply affected by this. The man she had come to love, Gyan, her tutor, ends up joining the uprising and forsakes her. The climax may seem a bit abrupt for some, but for me, complemented the unbearable sadness pervading the whole book and its tone.

Not one of my favorites, but definitely worth a read...