What Indians don't seem to be learning? Can they?

What Indians don't seem to be learning is that cars, mobiles, IT companies and malls don't make a successful, civilized country. More important is whether they can smile at each other, keep the streets clear of garbage and...YES!...honour queues. Will they ever learn?
(For more INDIA INSIGHT stories see other blogs here and at www.myspace.com/india_realities i.e. india underscore realities) My latest blog at Myspace is: Many GREAT WALLS divide today's India.

He said: 'Any fool can blog! Any fool cn twitter!'

My friend, a great reader, read my last INSIGHT blog and said with a bored yawn: 'Not bad. But I'm sick of the whole business. Any fool can blog! Any fool can twitter! Blogging has made almost everyone a writer. And most of them seem to be trying to turn the English language into bird droppings, piles of it, enough to build huge islands of guano on the oceans of the internet.'

Well! Not a bad turn of phrase. I could only smile back at him. After all he was a good long-time friend. And a great reader. And he had never dropped a single drop of anything on the oceans of the internet! I said: 'Look, they're not trying to produce literature. But surely bloggers are strengthening the idea of freedom of speech around the world.'
(For INDIA INSIGHT stories see other blogs here and www.myspace.com/india_realities i.e. india underscore realities) My latest at Myspace is: Many GREAT WALLS divide today's India.

A LOT OF MICE HIDING IN RISING INDIA

A Top Priority Business in India is Showing-off. Yes! That's the honest truth. And it has always been so. Those who have flaunt before those who don't have, without a heart or conscience. Even religious celebrations are proof of that compulsive desire. Now, of course, in globalizing India there are far more opportunities to flaunt - foreign brands, flashy clothes, bikes, cars and more. More people have more money.

But there are a lot more people who have nothing to flaunt. They are the mice - trying to manage, trying to survive. They may get a mobile and walk around talking into it. They're trying to compete. But often they the end up trying to hide their miceness, trying to go as unnoticed as possible.

In India's commercial capital, in the last two weeks alone, there were about 16 suicides of school or college kids. The media are coming up with all kinds of explanations. Surely, there would be multiple reasons. But none of the media - many of them are also busy flaunting - have mentioned the miceness in rising India, the growing numbers of mice who can't compete in the intense business of showing off.
(For more INSIGHT stories, see other blogs here and at www.myspace.com/india_realities i.e. india underscore realities.) My latest blog on Myspace is: THE FASTEST GROWING BUSINESS IN INDIA IS SHOWING-OFF.

IS BOLLYWOOD HEADING FOR A PERSONALITY CRISIS?

The biggest Bollywood hit of the year came in the very last week of 2009. The movie is called 3 Idiots.

And that sums up the story of Bollywood's developing psychological crisis. 3 Idiots is a Hindi movie. But the title is half in English, allowing that 3 is written similarly in the two languages.

And it's not only title writers who are confused whether Bollywood is in Bombay or Hollywood. Story writers can no longer set their routine dance-into-love-and marriage stories in India. Bollywood directors are no longer comfortable directing movies on location in India. Bollywood actors are no longer happy to hop and dance around with a crowd of supporters on Bombay streets. They all want to be in Zurich, London or L.A.

If this trend continues Bollywood writers, directors, actors and whole chorus lines may need to be hospitalized and treated. No! Certainly not in Bombay or Mumbai! In Zurich, London or L.A. Provisional Diagnosis: Identity Crisis or Splitting/Cracking-up Personality.
(For more INSIGHT stories see other blogs here and at my india_realities site www.myspace.com/india_realities) My latest blog on Myspace is: INDIA: RACING INTO A HAPPY 2010...AND AMNESIA.

MEMORIES OF OLD BOMBAY AND BOLLYWOOD - 2

As I mentioned in an earlier blog, the three studios located on Dadar Main Road made the street Bombay's Bollywood in the old days. There was often a crowd at the gates, waiting to watch a glowing painted-up Meena Kumari arriving in the back seat of a car or a hopeful Dharmendra walking in.

In those days it was easy to travel in the city. From the time I was eight my parents had no hesitation allowing me to go to town (the Fort area), riding in a G.I.P. (Great Indian Peninsular Railway; now, the Central Railway) or by tram, which was just a one-anna ride anywhere up to Museum. Or, perhaps, Colaba - I'm not too sure. There was always place to sit in a tram or train.

There were more Irani restaurants (like Cafe Paris in front of the University and and Leoplold's in Colaba) those days than south Indian or Udipi. All the restaurants had radios blaring. You heard film songs all day - a Noor Jehan, a Punjabi full-voiced Shamshad Begum, a Saigal, or a softly sentimental young Lata Mangeshkar.
Later the Irani restaurants had beautiful juke-boxes and at the drop of a four-anna coin you could watch the records roll around to play Sail Along Silvery Moon or Tony Brent's Cindy, Oh Cindy - one of his earliest recordings after he left Bombay for America.
(For more INSIGHT STORIES see more blogs here or at www.myspace.com/india_realities ) My latest blog at Myspace is: BACK TO BANGALORE - TO SHOCK AND AWE.

Oh yeah! Bombay was then a cosmopolitan world city.

WHERE ANCIENT ALIENATIONS EXPLODE TODAY

India. Globalizing India.
- Where millennia-old caste is a daily cruelty in many parts of the country, sparking intermittently into violence.
- Where religious extremism continues to trigger futile provocation and retaliation.
- Where divisiveness based on language and ethnicity sputters on, turning people into 'insiders' and 'outsiders' in their own country...and leading to bursts of violence, either to break away from India or to create smaller states with narrower and narrower identities.
- Where age-old oppressions lead the no-hopers to call themselves Maoists or Naxalites and perpetrate indiscriminate violence that doesn't in any way bring them hope.
India needs -
Economic progress.
Population control.
Universal education.
Universal health care.
Decisive action against corruption.
And innumerable other basics, like pavements which people can climb and walk on without risk of requiring orthopaedic attention.
BUT AS A BASIS FOR ALL THIS INDIA'S PEOPLE NEED AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE REAL SPIRIT OF NATIONHOOD.
(For more INSIGHT stories see other blogs here and www.myspace.com/india_realities) My latest blog at Myspace is: THE BEAUTIFYING EFFECT OF GLOBALIZATION.

MEMORIES OF OLD BOMBAY AND BOLLYWOOD

I hope to make this a series. So I'll begin with some description of time and place.

My earliest memories are of the 40's. British days. We lived on a street in Bombay - Dadar Main Road - which can be called the Bollywood of that time. There were three film studios on that road - Ranjit, Shree Sound and Ranjit Movietone. Stars and lower denizens of the film world went by all day. The view from the third floor verandah of Sakina Building was interesting. Across the road was a south Indian restaurant - a vishranti griha - where, outside, they would be twirling yellow jalebis into hot oil or deep-frying bhajias. At the street corner a stone's throw away was an Irani restaurant which wafted out the scents of pastries and bread pudding.

The restaurant radios (when radios were scarce) would competitively blare out film music. And then suddenly they would be outdone by the air raid siren. It was war time. The busy street would go quiet. People would vanish indoors and black curtains would be drawn across windows in all buildings. The only people on the street would be men of the air raid patrol - with red ARP bands on their arms.

Yes! It seems a totally different time. It was! Another century!
(For more INSIGHT stories see other blogs here and at www.myspace.com/india_realities) My latest Myspace blog is: DO WELL-OFF INDIANS LIVE IN AMERICA IN INDIA?