Now that we have the weather man predicting snow for Thanksgiving, my dear old lemondrops and the wild norwester seem displaced metaphors.
What do you do when your metaphors let you down? You look for new metaphors, do you? Like icicles and a low cloud…or something like that?
It’s just been six months that I came here, and I am a confused diasporic Indian already. Not really sure what that means either. Should I just say I am a bit confused? Right, I used the word ‘diasporic’ just to sound important.
The other day, we had this usual party at a friend’s place. And people were dancing. Just like (some) people do at parties. To some of our popular Bollywood beats. ‘Our’ Bollywood…right.
So is it really? I mean, sure. A Shahrukh, or an Aishwarya, or a Mani Ratnam, or a Rehman…sure, Indian, ours. Absolutely. But what about the huge rest?
I apologize here. In my last post, I had unceremoniously dumped a Julia Roberts movie because it stereotyped my country. I never realized, it’s an internal conditioning that my breed suffers from. You cannot really blame a random American like Ryan Murphy for portraying all the wrong things about India, when you have your own people letting you down…so often.
The other day, a friend, quite good naturedly asked me who my favourite singer was. I said, well that’s a whole lot, different countries, different languages. The friend replied ‘I’m talking about normal, Hindi stuff’. I presume then, liking something other than standard Bollywood fare is a tad abnormal!
Don’t get me wrong here. I have nothing personal against Bollywood. I mean I am a fan of Big B just as one of our neighbourbood panwallas, a youngster, or an aunty is. But I have so much more to me to share with a larger audience than one of these movies. I have an Amjad, or a Shivhari jugalbandi, or a Tagore, or a monsoon raag, or just the thought of monsoon….some home cooked food, the thought of a sunny afternoon in a Kolkata bylane, the thought of Pujo, a trip to the reserve forests for the big cats….
I am confused, as I said. And my metaphors are letting me down.
6 comments:
Long time no see...no hear, no read.. huh?
guess u were busy getting confused.
welcome to the club, champ :)
Ki korbo...I am seriously confused about my identity here...you will be amazed to hear things that get passed of as Indian...I am so disgusted
chill, babe. I have learnt to take it on my stride these days :)
When people ask me what my family did back in India, I say that my dad was a "snake-charmer" :)
like how in the north they talk about the south indians,- as the madrasis and their surprise at a packed KFC here in Hyderabad, oh they eat something else other than idlis and dosas? now, how fair is that?
I love the metaphor and the title of this post - it's almost poetic!
Yeah Ritz...I know what you mean...and D, thank you for liking the metaphor...I like it too
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