Just Do It

Where are all the Indian flags? Is it odd that I only caught sight of one the sixth week I was here or is it odder that I live in a country whose stars and stripes proudly stand guard outside of even Burger Kings and so I find a flag-shortaged country alien? While India has taught me a lot about America, it has also confused me on ideas like humanity.

I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me explain, as usual, with some amusing sights and scenes and then we’ll come back to the mumbo jumbo (at which point, you can tune out and just look at the pictures. I won’t mind; really).

Amusing sights.. let’s see…
Well there’s the fact that men here aged 14-29 tend to wear almost exclusively, even in the solar flare called Rajasthan, tightly fitting embroidered jeans. Could be just another Western inspired trend similar to the wealthy people in Jaipur fashionably eating at the Pizza King and McDonalds (which could be a manifestation of modern day self-inflicted cultural colonialism.. but again, the BS will be dug at only later so be patient). The top two funny-in-an-unsettling-sort-of-way embroidered jeans I’ve seen were both spotted by Rick while we were on buses and both featured embroidered ass pockets (the general area of which is frequently and uncomfortably close to eye level while riding the buses here.) One of them said, in swirly fancy golden letters, “ERECTION” on the right cheek and the other memorable pair read “Torture,” also on the money maker. I’m not sure how in tight and embroidered jeans currently are in America, but I know erection jeans and rear torture are always funny things to joke about.

The daycare across the street, numerous kid products (like the blackboard packages given to our kids), and the odd passing tuktuk features painted-on pictures of Mickey Mouse. Sometimes Mickey is even joined by an alternate-universe-Daisy, or a slightly-disproportionate-Goofy, and sometimes he’s even painted actual Mickey Mouse colors! (And sometimes he’s yellow.)


I’ve already typed about the importance of the Michael Jackson type, dancing (and on a grand scale, too) maestro, supposedly inspirational, ‘white’ character of celebrity; but in that same picture of the fake Michel Jackson backpack there’s also a fake Tom and Jery bag and next to it a fake Adidas one. Now while I’ve gotten somewhat over the initial ‘wow, just like in national geographic!’ factor of seeing rural women walking around with heavy things eloquently balanced on their heads; and I know fake name brands are everywhere in the world (yes, even in Iowa – Skeechrs, anyone?) but it never fails to strike me as odd whenever I see an elderly woman in traditional garb walking with a fake Nike duffel bag full of vegetables on her noggin.

Also: the swastika. No, it hasn't been appropriated here as it is used at home (Mickey Mouse means happiness to our children so the swastika should mean racism for your antisemitists too!) Quite the opposite, it is the West who ‘stole’ the symbol and so we should be the ones at the erection jeans butt of the jokes on misused signs. Far from its more sinister Western associations, the symbol here is one of religious calm. Peace, unity (ahem- which is why it was chosen by the aforementioned hate group), shanti, health: the ‘swastika’ (sorry I don’t know the actual name for it) is everywhere here, I can see at least two from where I’m sitting right now. It’s a shame I don’t have many Nazi friends because there is no shortage of cheap gift souvenirs here they’d go sahmayachhh for. Of course, I’d never tell them the ‘original’ meaning of the hateful tattoo they’d adorned their upper arm/chest/forehead with just as I’d never tell an Indian that Erection jeans are soo 2008. To each his own, I suppose.

And while we’re on the culture train, one more thing I’d like to slip in here before wrapping up would be marriage. Sohan, our camp manager, was married at age 10. Some students who’ve tied the knot: Raju, age 12, Chansingh, age 11, Maya, age 9, and Sunita, age 7 or so and who I actually remember noting as ‘one of the younger ones’ in my first in class written observations. Gopal, another IDEX guy who’d spent some time with us here in Patan, was married five months ago when he was 22. It’s becoming more common to put off marriage til the late teens/early twenties, but parental control is still the name of the game in the overwhelming number of weddings. For Gopal, that meant a light conversation one day that he’d be getting married the following weekend (for the record, “thanks mom and dad!” was not his response.)

Love marriages are on the rise, and I can’t help thinking that that’s only another sign of Western cultural influence. Could it be that the Bollywood stars imitating in quote and behavior the antics of Hollywood stars (the details on which are always explicitly covered on Page 2 of the Times of India) has in turn spurred the youth of India to act like the celeb loving youth of America? The simple explanations are that things like Mickey Mouse are universal symbols of childhood happiness that can be readily accepted worldwide and that the borrowed symbols offered in blue jeans and swastikas are basic examples of one culture taking in another’s flag and using it as a curtain. The cynical explanation is that true cultural hybridization/borrowing is a myth; that colonialism has today been replaced with cultural hegemony; and that the West now calls imperialism development of new markets.

I toy with each idea, those of an anticapitalist anthropologist and a culturally respectful economist. While the funnily inappropriate uses of borrowed images and societal themes are fun to point out, the bitter aftertaste of colonialism and the general history of cultural hegemony make me wary to congratulate the Indian who marries for love, eats Pizza Hut, and wears jeans.

The good news is that the sheer differences of views, especially on things we normally hold near and dear to our hearts (arranged marriage, name brands, crime, class, homosexuality, the armed forces, religion, etc.), have led me to accept that today’s mixing of cultures is probably not a sign of total domination of one by another. The bad news is that that still doesn’t explain why people would become angered up to violence on matters of gender rights, corporations, being gay (which is illegal in India, by the way), the military, and faith. Eh, I’ve got another week here; maybe the answer will come to me by then.