Letters from Underground: 1

The first thing that strikes you when you land in England is how could these people have ruled over us for so long. Oh no, not because they feel physically incapable of doing so, far from it - they are all uniformly tall and not all look constipated, but because all around you is so bleak that it takes some imagination to assume that anybody "heroic" could rise from this bleak-infested hole.

It is unequivocally brown and murky, with flowers added and lawns laid almost as a hesitant (and much fought over) afterthought, as if the presence of such things even mildly alluding to the cliche of the avian and "apian" is anathema to the very precinct of academic excellence this place was supposed to be. Either that, or I am an unimaginative person with no appreciation of the fine art of landscaping and have too much time on hands, which if they were the sort, would now be shaking other such species of varying color over polite yet mindnumbingly dull conversations, tending to be political, if only to justify their presence there as a "Scholar".

If the first two paragraphs appeared grim and rather unsettling as a premise, I only have my poor skills to blame. For, I feel rather wanted and welcome in this place. The weather is a perfect foil to my own largely moorish countenance (How safely do I make such uninformed statements - at so many levels! I have - still - not read the Wuthering Heights.) The sun refuses to shine over this place, like he has today, and makes everyone pale and ghostlike, and in the spirit of Karen Walker, I can imagine at times that I see right through their skulls should they pass by a lightsource. The pallor is really rather alarming.

Of the mindnumbingly dull conversations I spoke of earlier, it has struck me as very odd (and yet oddly reassuring that despite the myth of globalization and our self-endowed importance as being a country and force to reckon with, it really is not quite like that; I could in fact be having these conversations in a paragraph in A Passage to India, me being Prof Godbole of course) that the most common topics of choice have been in (lamentable) order of preference - Slumdog Millionaire, Caste System and if I can marry out of it, Mode of transportation (Do you use elephants still? - a question I was asked. Yes, being my answer), Baaalywood dancing. Not for a moment am I suggesting that these are in anyway removed from India's reality or that being a "Scholar" one must have a view decidedly more superior about things perceived to be "higher". I just wish we had done a better job of conveying a more realistic stand on what India is all about, and not just the extreme romanticisation of poverty (pet peeve) and exporting it to an audience that is sure to lap it up, for it is a reality so far removed from their own and hence "exotic". True, the poverty is very in-your-face, you can't escape it, but I wish that weren't the only thing that got them talking about India. India is also about 400 million people like me, and you.

Talking of me and you, it only struck me now that this place is for me and you, and not some naive and unrealistic political argument. So, the next letter would be about my extreme inability to wash dirty linen, and the extreme happiness one feels after cooking (even if the process to me means, dunking a cover in boiling water).