During my recent vacations I went to India i.e. Bharat. Here are my impressions.
The geometry of my birth, my roots, started me from Bharat
The Karmic forces evolved me to belong to India.
INDIA is chauffeured cars, sun mica tycoons, barristers, generals, race horse owners, arrogant and unthinking,
BHARAT is baggers, traffic clogged streets, starving spectral “brutes”, docile servants,
India’s housewives smell of deodorants translucent in chiffon series,
Bharat’s naris smell of sweat which drips from their elbows when they wipe marble floors,
India is Convent crisp English accents, learnt at Doon school, Loves or Sanawar,
Bharat is crowded schools, broken furniture and trees as classrooms
India is ex Maharajas, smuggled diamonds, black money, antique pistols and water polo,
Bharat is where relatives can’t be invited for supper because of their “foolish” behavior.
India is simultaneously rigid, hierarchical and exclusively ego centric,
Bharat is openly dialogic, and Cosmo centric,
India is gold rimmed spectacles, arrogant arches of eyebrows,
frosted eye shadows and transparent lip glosses,
Bharat is bizarre looking loiterers, endless rows of unemployed youth leaning against fences near a tea stall.
India is dark suited businessmen hurrying to keep up with the Jones,
Bharat is half naked slum children sleeping on wet floors and dying,
In short, post-independence India is an accumulation embarrassment.
Article extracted from this publication >> March 20, 1987
