Digging for Meaning

Its Holi time. :) The best time (for some) to be in India. It is a global party to prepare ourselves of the terrible weather that will soon turn us into homebodies - scared of stepping out in the day time 45 degree dust bowls. One last day of being out and enjoying it - beat the heat with style. Social media, the zeitgeist barometer, though indicates a different Holi to me this year. On the one hand, there are people talking about the HoliCow party - stripping holi to its most basic ritual, and turning it into a modern dance banality. And on the other, there's concerned city folks who are advocating abstention from the whole thing - save water/ "Think of the poor" - droughts across India/ natural herbal colors as replacement for the more energetic color+water combination. (Should we blame this on ACs? I have a hypothesis - Holi will be played more vigorously in towns where there is low penetration of Air-Condition machines. There is a correlation between 'for...

Exhibit 1a. Girl wearing a chuda, off for clubbing late at night This is one of those simplistic visual tropes one might expect in any 'tradition meets modernity' narrative. In one of the automobile brand ads, I believe there is one such shot too. (the brand champions the insight about modernity being tempered by the Indian youth in Indian terms. What this assumes is - to be Indian is to be ritualistic. and to be urban/modern is to reject the rituals. Brands come to rescue us here and provides an in between truce. 'adjust kar lo'.) Usually the narrative is set in the premise of 'victory of the young', as 'smart strategist'. Smart strategy - yes - to the extent that traditions and modernity, both are reduced to mere symbols that are entertained for maintaining the status quo. That's the strategy- to strip our acts off their meanings. Why wear a chuda? ' I am supposed to. must be the right thing. I am confident now of being Indian. Thi...

saw ' pom poko '. Its a story of how an able, happy community of tanukis face their extinction in the face of rapid urbanisation that causes the loss of their homeland, their lifestyle and their food. Its really amazing how Japanese movie makers so empathetically voice dissent while fully cognizant of the futility of it all. The sense of capitulation at the climax of many such movies are scripted in a way to invoke not a sense of loss, but a sense of preservation of whatever small life, pride and identity is left. Under the mask of laughter, there is a vigorous attempt at forgetting the loss and making the most of the present. I wonder how deeply has Hiroshima affected the Japanese psyche, or does this sense of 'interal triumph in face of imminent capitulation' goes beyond Hiroshima, in their amazingly rich culture? ____ while thinking of this, got reminded of the Japanese response to the Tsunami in march 2011. Had read about their belief of ' wa wo mottte toutos...