Welcome to the Friday Loose Bloggers Consortium where Anu, Ashok, Conrad, Delirious, gaelikaa, Grannymar, Magpie11, Padmum and I write on the same topic. Please do visit the linked blogs to get nine different flavours of the same topic. Today’s topic has been chosen by, I am sorry to say, yours truly. Sometimes, some of us don’t post due to preoccupation with other matters and since we are a ‘loose’ consortium, it is accepted that it will happen.
I am sorry because when I suggested the topic, which was a few months ago, something was right on top of my head and today, no matter how hard I try, I am unable to recollect just what it was that was bugging me then. Age is beginning to tell!
This picture, a cartoon published in our Times of India, says a number of things about India and let me try and list them. Let us take the ascetic first.
What are hidden in his cloth bag are likely to be a substantial amount of cash, a portable DVD player/TV set and a smart phone. The former to while away the time when he is not in meditation by watching Bollywood blockbusters/Cricket matches. The latter to speak to his colleagues, followers and perhaps a hot line to God and to send and receive emails, and who knows, surf the web for blogs and leave comments on matters spiritual. He is what we can call the Indian equivalent of the Beatnick. He is very likely to have a following, primarily of gullible, non modern, non western Indians and some Americans from California too.
Now let us take a look at the other fellow. He is very likely to be a young Indian in his early thirties, who bankrupted his rural based farmer parents to go to the USA or Australia to acquire an MBA from some unheard of University, which is of no recognized value in India. Having failed in his attempts to secure employment and permanent resident status in either country, he would have returned to India and would have found employment in a call centre. What will be noticeably absent from his many pockets will be cash, but that will be compensated for by at least half a dozen credit cards, a smart phone, a couple of letters from his bankers about the defaults in installment payments due on his credit cards, keys to his top of the range SUV, Notices from his bankers on EMI (Equated Monthly Installments) in backlog, condoms, and other paraphernalia necessary for that kind of lifestyle. His car is likely to contain, a lap top, an Ipad, a portable bar and Bose music system. His solution to come out of all the mess that he has landed himself into, is to pressurize his wife to get some cash from her parents. She in turn would be most likely on her way to the police station to lodge a complaint against him and his unsuspecting parents for dowry harassment which is a crime in India.
Now there is the third character in the picture. The dog. It is like most modern, non Westernized Indians. If it cannot eat it or fornicate with it, it does what it does on the picture. Totally natural, uninhibited and very very Modern Indian.
I now leave the imagination of my readers to run wild and decide what is Modern, what is Western and what prompted me to suggest this topic.
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