I want to write something that is relevant. I feel like I've been slacking off since Tsunami. I've nothing to say about the London bombings. Nathan and Mendon have already written about them and expressed my sentiments. There is a Miami student who blogged about the effects that they may have on US citizens (she speculated that we will be even less likely to travel abroad, and will largely remain closed-minded and stereotypical in approaching the rest of the world. This will, of course, only cause more problems). The only contribution that I can make to the discussion that has not already been made is the general opinion of this in India. Simply stated, there is none. No one seems to care. It was on the front page of the Hindu, but 37 deaths and a couple of bombs are just not a big deal, I suppose.
This brings me to the only slightly deeper subject upon which I'm tempted to write for this evening: Literature.
The reaction that I've seen here to the London bombings remindes me of a book that I read last winter: Zadie Smith's White Teeth. It was hysterical at the time. A novel about Indians in England, adopting their culture to what's available. Now a few things are standing out as prominently as Clara's front teeth used to.
Praise to Zadie Smith:
She wonderfully captured the Westernization of India. In her novel, India is less Indian than it's citizens residing in England. She presented a twin study of sorts, in which the favorite twin is sent to India, in hopes that he will become more traditional. The other is kept in England. The English twin becomes religiously fanatical and the Indian-bound twin starts into science and abandons faith. This, in my mind, is a perfect depiction of India although I didn't know it then.
She also wrote about India in a way that haunts me now that I'm here. She used white teeth, to the best of my remembrance, to write about the "rest of the world" from Western eyes, Clara's Jamaica included. They relate to the setting of the Heart of Darkness. Largely, the motif has come back to me in regards to her references to India. She writes about the natural disasters that occur in India, how accepting Indians are about them. They're just a part of life, as is the deaths they cause. I can't elaborate past this; it's just been over a year too long for me to talk intelligently about it. And it is just too appropriate that Clara's teeth were knocked out, just as cultures in Jamaica and India have been destroyed and consolidated for Western tourists. Abridged, if you will.
I also just read The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. She, too, wrote beautifully about the second colonization that India has experienced through tourism. Even after its independence, India has been made a slave to materialism and then forced to sell its heritage to maintain its worship. India has learned to sell off its gods for gold idols. This is not to say that spirituality is dead here, it still exists, but it has largely been severely corrupted. She wrote about Western tourists that want to get in and get out and get a taste of what they're told India is. They want an expensive postcard. It makes me feel very, very ashamed and guilty to be here and be white. It makes me very angry as well. I hate that my whiteness is an automatic call for beggars. THey see my skin and they come running. People who don't need to beg, in their nice saris with gold jewellery, will ask me for money. "Ma. ma. ma," the persistent call of those who only want my money. Even the auto drivers make me nuts. They automatically double their prices for me. I can never get a fair rate. I've maybe over done my rant, but the point is that The God of Small Things is a book in which I play a role. It is, to an extent, about what white people have created in India and how it is coming back to haunt me in the form of rich beggars, white prices, and this novel. It's about much more, but it is overwhelming me in this regard. The God of Small Things is also about injustice, and the consequences that our sins, as judged by someone else, create for us. It's about innocence, pleasure (and what we'll do to get it), and the ways that we try to deal with the difficulties of life. Many, many ideas in this book. I'll have to do some thinking before I can narrow it down further than all of that.
I remember all these feelings from my year of service work in Guadeloupe. I sort of detached myself from the situation and looked at it through the lens of sociology.
In Guadeloupe, it's not begging as such. Oh no, they'll give you something in return for your white woman cash. Yup, that's right, male prostitution - and white women, primarily from Europe - created this racket. Let's go on vacation to the islands and have a 'black experience' while we're there. Ugh. The things guys used to say to me to try to convince me to sleep with them, on the assumption that I wanted to sleep with them - ooheee!