Making sense of the subcontinent
I’m a list guy. I have 18 separate lists where I keep track of things to get done for different areas of my life. I have no faith that my brain will remember more than 3 things at a time, so everything else goes on a list. There is nothing that epitomizes a satisfying workday for me more than crossing off dozens of tasks.
However, my approach to lists has often gotten me in trouble in India.
For the most part, India stayed out of mainstream Hollywood movies between 1985 and 2000.
During the same time period, India’s economy was changing forever. The economic liberalization laws of the early 1990s opened up India’s doors and paved the way for its gigantic economic climb. Anyone who has lived in a major metro will tell you that the India of the 1980s looked nothing like the India of the 2000s.
India was ready for a new identity. The dominant movie images of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom no longer held any relevance (if they ever did). This was a new country, and it needed a new narrative to tell the world. They wanted something that showed how far they had come. They wanted a story to showcase how an entire class of New Indians had emerged.
They got Slumdog Millionaire. [Read more…]
Continuing with Hollywood movies about India that educated the West, here is another from the early 1980’s.
Statistics:
While the target audience for James Bond is quite large, the UK has always had a special relationship with India. They have built-in stereotypes that come from generations of eating Indian food and buying medicine from Indian pharmacists. (As opposed to Americans, who first need to be convinced that India actually exists.)
So would a film that features a British hero naturally be a better source of knowledge about India? We’ll see. [Read more…]
“So this is where we learned about India.”
I had just returned to the US for a visit and decided to watch a movie during some downtime. I chose Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom because I vaguely remembered it being set in India. It was the first time I had seen it since I was six and my mother forced me to shut my eyes during the ‘heart removal’ scene. (Thanks, Mom.)
Watching it later in life, with a few years of living in India behind me, all sorts of things started to make sense. Stereotypes, generalizations, cultural attitudes – all nicely packaged in a blockbuster adventure.
One thing I am always amazed at is the lack of knowledge that people in the West have about ‘real’ India. Whether they see it as a land of snake charmers and turbans (1980s) or one big call center (2000s), these perceptions seem to stick. After watching Steven Spielberg’s movie, I figured out how they’ve gotten stuck in most of our minds.
So, I thought it would be fun to go back and analyze a few movies about India from the last forty years that have served as ‘educators of the masses’ for people who have never been to India. I’ve started with the big blockbusters that would have been seen by a majority of movie-watchers. [Read more…]
You know that feeling you get when your inbox gets to zero?
You feel like you really accomplished something. Like you are on top of your game. Like you really earned your money today.
In India, that feeling can be deceptive.
You can have an empty inbox, but never do any actual business. You can reply to all your messages and SMSs, but never reach any of your targets. You can send a hundred emails a day, but never be any closer to your goal.
Why?
The problem might lie in choosing the wrong forms of business communication in India.
When it comes to communicating with India, there is one Golden Rule you must always remember: [Read more…]
About the time you start packing your bags for your trip to India, the question dawns on you.
What am I doing?
Maybe it’s clear for you. You are training some colleagues. You are finding some suppliers. You are volunteering. You are choosing a vendor. You are attending a conference. (Do make sure you have the right visa for each of these!)
However, when you return and start unpacking your bags, you might suddenly realize the trip wasn’t as obviously successful as you thought it was. No one seems to be doing the things you trained them on. No one is replying to your repeated emails. All the processes you put in place seem to be falling apart.
You are left with a few pictures and a sinking feeling in your stomach that the trip was wasted. [Read more…]
Everyone loves to hate generalizations. In fact, they might be the easiest target for the cross-cultural police, who think everyone is the same (deep down), and everyone is unique (deep down).
This kind of thinking might work in some cultures, but won’t last five minutes in India. As soon as you get here, you start making generalizations because it is so “other”, and you don’t have a mental category for what you are experiencing.
But in a country filled with so many sensitive paradoxes, nothing will get you into trouble faster than making a blanket generalization (#Thinskinned).
This is the tension you face as you try to make sense of the new world you are working/living with. What are you allowed to say? What is true? Don’t all generalizations break down anyway? Should we just abandon them altogether?
No. Generalizations have a lot to offer us.
If you want to start a lively and quickly tense discussion among Indians, have them start talking about regional differences.
Along with religion, this is a highly sensitive topic that is guaranteed to get lunch tables and chat rooms flowing with all sorts of interesting comments. Coming in as an outsider, it is important for you to build some awareness of the different regions, and what they think of each other.
There are no set boundaries for the regions of India, nor are there a set number of them. Some will say anything below Mumbai is South India and everything above it is North India. Others say there is a North, South, East, and West India.
For the sake of discussion, I will use six regions, adding Central and Northeast India to the above list.
Here are some necessary disclaimers, as this article is likely to offend someone: (#ThinSkinned)
[*Editor’s Note: I changed this term from “stereotypes” to better reflect the view of this article on generalizations and stereotypes]
Away we go…
[Read more…]