An Emerging India on your screen
‘A Suitable Boy’ by Vikram Seth is a thick book, but that wasn’t the reason I didn’t get beyond the first couple of hundred pages. I was young then, and was probably on the lookout for something more quick-paced. Besides, the India that it described was more or less the India I lived in, so…
From here to Tokyo and beyond….sharpen your cross cultural competency
Try telling your expat friends, ‘the Dutch are very hospitable’ or ‘the Dutch love to spend their money’. You should get some interesting responses! Turning stereotypes around can show you the underlying truth when grouping people on the basis of their cultural background. This handy tip is to be found in Esther Janssen’s book ‘Van hier…
‘The Hindus’ – 1
‘The Hindus’ by Wendy Doniger tells ‘an alternative history’ of the Hindus from c.50,000,000 BCE to 1500 BCE to the present. Considering this claim, 700 pages are rather modest. Doniger clarifies that she doesn’t believe that any one person can tell the story of Hinduism. Perhaps this is also one reason (amongst others) why she…
Spirit sans Spirits
I found myself sitting shoulders tense and raised, forefingers plugging my ears as hard as I possibly could. Damn – I’d forgotten my earplugs, even though I knew I was going to ‘The India Fair’. On stage the singer, a young man, yelled into the mike – ‘volume, volume’ and the volume rose even higher.…
Jai ‘Gobar Rashtra’!
IYD is not the same as DIY. It is a name given by the BJP, and sometimes used to keep the memory of P alive. A strong leader (otherwise called ‘the watchman’) knows how to do this. The important thing about YD is that you have the most benefit from it if you DY yourself.…