What James Blunt said. That. And a Few Other Things on Orientalism.

The thing about an average Indian is that when we think of Europe the places that come into our mind are England, Germany and Switzerland. We know they are not the only countries in the continent but we tend to remain ignorant about the others. Maybe it has to do with many of us having relatives in the above mentioned countries that we know have a considerable number of Indians living there. My very lovely Czech Republic happens to be one of the countries with hardly any Indians. In fact in a world that Indians are taking over population wise I came across only 3 Indian couples in Prague when I stayed there for a couple of days (all of them were Malayalees :) definitely something to discuss in a future post). It is only understandable that if the capital city has so very few spottable Indians how many will be there in this small town of Pardubice. As a result of this I am what they would call ‘exotic’ here.

At first the whole concept of being exotic was vague to me. This town has a university that has a few students from Africa, America and India. So it is not like people here have not seen those of darker shades. But a trip to a Moravian village (namely Radvanice) over a weekend opened my eyes to what ‘exotic’ actually is.

Here’s something about India. In my country, at least in the last century, people have developed a warped sense of beauty. Fair skin, skinny body and length of hair are some of the top most criterions to be met in order to be seen as beautiful. Having not been blessed by most of these qualities I had never imagined myself to be ‘beautiful’. But having lived in Europe for just two months I have begun to think otherwise. I have had random women come up to me only to touch my hair and say “Your hair, very beautiful.” Oh, and not to mention those who said I had beautiful eyes, skin colour and what not. It felt very good at first till I began to understand what is really happening. When I went to Radvanice I was told that my friend and I were the first Indians to step on the soil there. Many people there had never seen Indians in real before. Personally, the funniest incident was spending time at the local bar towards the end of which 3 elderly men came up and sat right next to me and started touching my hair and saying it’s beautiful. That’s when it struck me. I was reminded of one of those pictures I found floating around on Facebook recently. You can see it below. To these people I am the white child in the picture!

It then brought to mind the many many colonial narratives on the ‘exoticism’ of Indian women I had come across. It was disappointing at first. They did not think that I was beautiful because I was beautiful. For them I was beautiful precisely because I was ‘exotic’. So then I began wondering if I was actually beautiful or not. I realized that the very fact that I was pondering over such a thing was disturbing. I looked in the mirror carefully. I saw two things at once. I saw the average looking Tess in India and I saw the beautiful Tess who had come to live in Europe. And the only thing they had in common was the set of eyes, the small flat nose with a purple nose stud, and the lips. Everything else was what my environment and its people had given me. It just rendered the question “am I beautiful?” futile.

Let us move on to the other interesting things I understood after being in Radvanice. The parents of our host, two of the sweetest people I have come across in this country so far, had so many doubts about India. And very genuinely and apologetically asked us questions like “Is India full of elephants?” and “Do you still travel on the roof of trains?”. And it was not just them. I have come across many people here who are under the impression that India is four hundred years later still the way the early colonialists described it. Did I mention my parlour lady who on learning that I am Indian asked “Why wear you no bindi?" More than anything else these questions amuse me and definitely make good points for discussions in lectures. The problem however remains that the West knows us through what has been written and documented through films on us and you can imagine the kind of images these documentaries produce- sickly looking starving people, battered woman, naked children and yes, as one of the guys at the bar exclaimed “you India- Slumdog Millionaire!” And somehow we are responsible for this too. Pick up any brochure on Indian tourism. You will find on them pictures of elephants, camels, ‘native’ women in colourful attire, etc, etc, only reinforcing the image the West gave us. So maybe we have also unconsciously begun to see India as the land of snakes and elephants? We are selling them our exoticism and they are buying from us the bullshit they gave us in the first place. Technically speaking this is a strange situation but in all honesty it is funny too. So next time when a foreigner asks us “Do you still travel on the roof of trains?” let us answer them the way my friend answered that particular question- “Not just roof, we also horizontally hang by the bottom of the trains.” ;)

P.S.- If your knowledge of English music is even worse than mine (and that’s saying something) then it is for your understanding that James Blunt’s most popular song is titled You’re beautiful. Therefore the significance of the title of this blogpost.

~*~ *~ where MAGIC begins ~*~ *~

Because an entire post is dedicated to it, it must be obvious how amazing this place is. Located in one of the alleys that lead away from the Old Town Square in Pardubice is this bar called Klub 29. I have been to this place only a few times but there never has been a time when I came out of it not feeling at least 20 times happier than before.

Klub 29 is attached to Theatre 29 where they say amazing musical and theatrical performances take place but since I have not had fortune of being an audience to either of them I am not in a position to talk about it. So let me steer back to talking about Klub 29.

Other than the fact that this is where I discovered Jagermeister (my eyes are getting twinkly and yeah, I'm only learning about these things now) there are many factors that make this place one of the best in this town.

Factor 1: It has the ‘place next door’ ambience with informal furniture and casual décor. Nothing in this place reeks of artifice or unnecessary nonsense. Well, to be honest other than the beautiful fact that this bar is not stuffy and loud like how many bars tend to get, there is not much about the general looks of the place that sets it apart from the rest but then, that is where the ordinary part ends. I shall now proceed with the other factors listing them according to the level of their greatness in an increasing manner.

Factor 2: To begin with it has two good bartenders. Coy and sweet but always at your beck and call. Wilhelm and Bára (not sure about the former’s spelling). They give you sound and honest suggestions on what to try if you are in doubt.

Factor 3: It has the most number of varieties of Coffee beans to choose from. Yes, this is a coffee-cum-alcohol place, which is something I have never seen in India. So if you are a fan of good coffee this is the place for you to choose from the many kinds from different parts of the world. The one I tried today was from Salvador and it was interesting (pardon my poor geography but before I googled it up I did not know where the place is).

Factor 4: JARIN (pronounced यारिन). He is the owner and without a doubt the life of the place. It is no wonder that people love coming here. You cannot help it, you know, when this man gives you a reason to love this place so much. You will always see him taking turns sitting at each table spending time with his customers. Today we were the lucky ones who he chose to bestow his presence upon. He gave us the best Slivovice we have had so far. Also he demonstrated his elaborate coffee making process through the “vacuum press method”, if I remember right, by bringing a very interesting looking device to our table and dedicatedly brewing coffee in this apparatus that looked like had just been stolen from a chemistry lab. In the picture below you will see the master at work.

Factor 5: Oh, I did not mention the best part, did I? This place is where magic happens J  I am not joking. Be assured. You will never leave the place without having a story to tell. Good enough a reason to come here?

"I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed..."

Moving to Kochi from Orissa 13 years ago made me Bollywood crazy. Having spoken Hindi all my life till then I felt the lack of “Hindiness” when I moved to the southern city where hardly anyone spoke the language let alone watch Hindi movies. Moving to Bombay after 5 years of living in Kochi de-Bollywoodised me. I guess it had to do with being once again in a Hindi-speaking environment and well, Bombay gave me an overdose of Bollywood which made me value it less. After having come to Europe I find that I am once again leaning towards it although my interest in it had virtually died. I find myself helpless when faced with the beginning of autumn and the turning of leaves into yellow, red or brown. It already looks beautiful. How can a once-Bollywood-crazy person like me not feel like picturing herself as Rani Mukherjee singing Tumhi Dekho Na from Kal Ho Na Ho with Shahrukh-I-hate-him-Khan?

Coming back to the point, I started thinking of all the times Bollywood entered and left my life depending on where I was and how I was situated. It occurred to me that Bollywood was only one of the things in my life the importance of which evolved over time and many moves to different locations and situations. Another one of those that comes into mind is religion. I was born Christian and still am a Lamb of God J. But this feeling of being Christian was not something I grew up with. The way I was brought up, going for Sunday Mass was, to put it crudely, the only Christian thing we ever did. In fact in a place where I was the only Christian person other than my siblings I used to feel strange about being a Christian. On one hand I was proud of being different from the rest and on the other I secretly felt ashamed of being different from the rest. Why you may ask. Let me give you a simple example. This is a conversation I very vividly remember from when I was probably eight.

Friend: What did you do on Sunday?

Me: I went to Church

Friend: How often do you go to Church? And where is it?

Me: It is very far from here but we Christians have to go every Sunday.

Friend: So your God is Jesus, na? Why do you pray to a naked God? (Yes, the phrase used was ‘nange bhagwan’)

Me: He is naked because he was stripped off his clothes by bad people.

Friend: But if he is God why did he let it happen?

Me: I don’t know.

Friend: Our gods are very strong. They destroy bad people.

My friends had cool gods, you see, beautiful, exquisitely clad and invincible. And they had plenty of them. I had only one. And he died on a cross. True, he came back to life but why did he have to die in the first place? Yes, these are remarks taken from what could probably have been among the first ‘religious debates’ of my childhood with friends.

At one of the last masses I attended in Orissa before moving to Kochi, my friend- a Christian, another rare creature in my realm of non-Christian friends, brought to my notice that we belonged to a group called Catholics. The word rang a bell. I had heard it somewhere; it sounded cool. But then, I thought, if there were Catholics there had to be non-Catholics too. Who are they? And what makes them different from Catholics? At this point I was almost 13 and I cannot imagine a Christian of that age brought up in Kerala, Mangalore or Bombay not knowing who Catholics are. So there, that was my childhood. I grew up knowing way more about Jagannath, Saraswati, Lakshmi, Vikramaditya and Krishna bhagabaan than I knew about Jesus, Mary or Joseph (at that point God and the Holy Spirit being strange entities mentioned only during mass).

Then came the move to Kochi, a city with a 75% population of Christians. Seeing that I was the only un-Christian being in my circles I took it upon myself to dive deep into Christian knowledge. In 3 years I knew my Bible and I almost became a Bible-verses-spitting self –appointed preacher. The militancy gradually wore off in the next 10 years but I never ceased being a ‘believer’.

Before I came to Europe I thought I knew what Christianity was. Since I had for the longest time wanted to study Indian Christianity I thought it wouldn’t be so difficult for me since I was a Christian myself. I could not have been more wrong. This I started realizing only when my PhD guide and I started discussing what things like faith, doctrines and belief meant to Indian Christians. He prodded and pried my eyes open into seeing what European/ Western Christianity is. It was strange. And indigestible. I don’t know if I can empathize with it still. I explained to him how I understood things and most Christians I knew shared the same understanding giving him specific examples of why and how we practice certain things to which he responded in peals of laughter. He was amazed and fascinated by this odd belief we called Christianity and said that to the western eye it would seem absurd if not blasphemous.

So if a practicing Christian like me, who everyone around believes to have a lot of bhakti, can harbour the kind of beliefs that she does and still be seen un-Christian, what can be said of the few million Christians in India not all of whom have had the opportunity or even disposition to engage in any religious thinking whatsoever? It now begins to make sense why those missionaries said that even the Christians in India are ‘heathens’. We still are and probably will remain so. You see, it takes a lot more than the promise of eternal life to drive the Indian out of you. And now as I sit and wonder what is it that I need to explore academically in order to learn to do good research I realize that I am my own subject and maybe the scores of books written by our very own Mallu priests on the Indian Church may not be able to give me half the answers that my very own experience can. I now understand why they said research is not just academics.