Indian Talent, Global Content
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Meeting Michael Woods at the Reading Mall
The institute I am unfortunately spending my summer at is so isolated that they have to arrange a bus every Sunday so that the students can go to the nearest location of civilization. And pray, what is their definition of civilisation? Shopping Malls! That’s right. Every Sunday, the students here get trafficked to shopping malls where they spend the whole day, until the bus brings them back. Just my luck to have chosen this place to land at! What a grand idea of relaxation….ugh! Since shopping malls are what they are, I hadn’t ventured out to taste this interpretation of freedom until the last week, when I decided that it would be better than rotting in the hostel. We were supposed to go together, but halfway through, the people I was supposed to be with got down from the bus without informing me. Not the first time I was left in the lurch and by no means would it be the last, I’m sure! I found a book by Michael Wood (that chap who was the face of the BBC series “The Story of India”, wherein he portrays India with an affection that some of us Indians lack.) But I didn’t know he wrote books. Curious, I picked it up to find out that it was a book on South India—“The Smile of Murugan.” Half an hour (and an expensive masala dosa) later, I found myself with the book, sitting somewhere inside the mall, reading. Michael Wood had always struck me as someone who came in without pre-conceptions, with rare honesty and clarity. That was more than evident here. The book was about his pilgrimage to temples in Tamilnadu. It is easy to go down the wrong track when writing such a book. Not only does he not make any judgments about what he sees and experiences, he writes with an affection that is not to be found in most books about India, whether by Indians or outsiders. And as he rightly says, often India is reduced to the North and at the most, Calcutta and Bombay (or Kolkata and Mumbai.) Rarely is the existence of the South taken into account. As I advanced through the pages, I found myself wandering the streets of Chennai (which was still Madras at the time of writing) with Michael, visiting the Marina beach, playing with the kids, enjoying the sea breeze and dipping my toes in the waters. I could hear the rustling of silk sarees and smell the flowers. I immersed myself in the sights, sounds and smells that are so unique to Tamilnadu and Chennai in particular. There was not a hint of the condescension that agnostic foreigners (and agnostic readers, like me for instance, I might add) would usually have for traditional India and its customs. Instead, there was a palpable curiosity that seeped its way through the pages, keeping me hooked, immersed and oblivious to all the frenetic activity around me—people screaming and shouting, eating junk food, shopping till they dropped, coming and going on escalators. I was with the author on a journey to this enchanting land. His writing, though certainly not poetic, captures what he experiences with a refreshing directness that is so often missing when some authors try to add extra flourish to their accounts. I could see what he meant when he calls Tamilians the guardians of the last surviving classical civilization. There is a very distinct and sharp difference between the South and the rest of India. In fact, it was a shocking experience for me when I first felt it; no less than what I might have felt had I landed in a different country. The North, certainly the urban areas, seemed to me to be more open, so much less bound by tradition and perhaps, just perhaps, as the author suggests, the poorer for it. For traditions have a value which transcends their utility and era. There is an ineffable, inexplicable allure to the age-old customs, beliefs and values handed down through the generations in an unbroken line—to the author and so also to me. I could feel this distinctly as a youth who, having thrown it all away was in the process of rediscovering it, and being all the more confused as a result. Yet, it is tradition that had given people their own identity. When modernity rubs away at tradition, as it must, for better or for worse, this identity is lost. I could relate this so easily to my own life. No longer was there solid ground beneath your feet. All was fluid and nothing was certain. One’s moorings once lost, are never regained. Freedom is never free. What a world it is that we live in! A world where a boy growing up in Madras is no different in his tastes, preferences and thinking than a boy from Manhattan. We live in a world where all is homogenized. Some would celebrate this and they have their valid reasons. For who, including me, does not like freedom? Who wants to be bound by meaningless traditions? Yet, are we now so free, that we are enslaved by that very freedom? Michael Wood is an unlikely tourist in that he recognizes the essential dilemma of a person as curious of an ancient culture as he is; as in quantum physics, the observer cannot be separated from the observed. As interest grows, culture is increasingly packaged for tourism, thus destroying the very essence of what tourism really is all about. This is welcome, as he notes, for it brings much needed wealth to those involved. But at what price? In Wood, we find an observer, passionate about the culture he encounters. And while he is fascinated, he is detached enough to observe all the curious paradoxes that such a journey entails. Rare is the book which has such sensitivity. Michael Wood lighted in me a desire to travel to Tamilnadu too, to an ancient and rich culture, which I had been oblivious to though I lived just across the bordering hills. I wanted to see for myself its temples, architectural wonders and living monuments. How ironic that a Brit had to inform me of my neighboring state! Five hours had passed. I had been brought back to the mall by hunger. There was a food joint nearby and since I had no other choice, I ate a vegetable sandwich. At least that’s what it claimed to be, for it tasted like cardboard. (Not that I’ve ever tasted cardboard.)This, I reminded myself, is the kind of thing that the modern, upwardly mobile, urban and increasingly middle-class youth of India aspire to eat. It was soon time for everyone to end their shopping-mall picnic and to be packed off to the institute. I entered my room to find that it had the belongings of another occupant in it. Until now, I had had no room-mate. But it turned out that I was to have a room-mate now. And wonder of all wonders, he was a Madrasi… Meanwhile, half the book still awaits. Wood has only just begun his pilgrimage….
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