|
Going by the programmes beamed by various electronic channels based abroad, India is the flavour of the season at the moment. Every other day, there is either a travel-through-India story, a cookery trail across the country story, or a Business show featuring the honchos of the industry, or palaces that awe. Many take all this interest in the country with a pinch of salt. A country long picturised with a cow on the street or half-clad kids begging pathetically, it is as if the media- and people who matter, have all of a sudden discovered that there is another facet to the country after all- beyond the begging bowl, beyond garbage-piled streets and women in ghunghats. All thanks to the juggernaut of the Indian economy, alongwith China, the Asian giants, perhaps. Suddenly, the foreign brand managers are tripping over each other to launch their lakh-plus watches, sleek cars and fashion garments. Then there are the less pricey brands which target the famed great Indian middle class.
All this is very well, India making its presence felt in Davos or Paris. But perhaps, ‘they’ as well as ‘we’ in the media should tarry a little to find time to look at life on the streets to get a glimpse of another, perhaps more real, world. According to a current weekly, photographs are getting much attention as ‘art’ and many reputed photographers are dusting off their old prints depicting ‘life ordinary’ on the streets. New photographers too are focussing their lenses on life of the hoi polloi – on people going about their work- and life, who have perhaps never heard of Prada or Rolls Royce. And what a treasure-trove of experience it can be for a media looking for ‘Incredible India’!
I was walking by the footpath near Sealdah station on a lazy Sunday afternoon when I saw the squatters. Women whose meagre bundle of clothes and a few utensils were neatly piled up; nearby a baby was sleeping unconcernedly. The women were talking animatedly about something, somebody. I scanned their faces to see misery lining their faces; instead, they seemed to be at home having an adda as if by the village pond. No doubt they have migrated to the city due to poverty or due to a life untenable back home but their faces seemed to accept it and make the best of it. What gives them this elastic adjustability?
Or look from the window of a bus and you’ll see groups of men, mostly Biharis (Raj Thackeray would have been incensed) freshly bathed and sitting in a circle singing a bhajan, or, playing cards in complete camaraderie. It’s not difficult to deduce that they are cart-pullers or porters or at some low-paying job. Why don’t unhappiness line their faces while highly-paid professionals go about with grumpy faces? What gives them this equanimity?
Or look at a miserable patch of land anywhere in the city where boys from slums play cricket with make-do wooden bats and jump up with joy at a ‘catch’. Juxtaposed on the new-kid-in-the–block look of today’s glittering metros, these scenes, these people make a more rounded face of life at large. You cannot ignore either to get a more authentic face of India at this juncture.
|
){kind=link}