Dear Prez Obama ji,
So you’re gonna come calling and we in India are damn excited about it. After all every time an American President decides to step on our humble shores, we make a practice of cart-wheeling in glee and going all gungho with our colours-culture-and-curry brand of hospitality.
Of course, we collectively fell in love with your effusive charm two years ago. Today as you battle greater challenges at home, the sentiment is more ‘Oh Baba!’ than ‘Oh Mama!’ But the Taj, our very own ground zero is dressed up fortress-like to welcome you. You will surely do the rounds of our corridors of power, meet the A listers- perhaps a designer village with the resplendent flavours of incredible India and some impromptu dancing for florescent photo-ops.
We are excited that you are coming in your first term itself unlike Bush ji and Clinton ji before you. We’ve heard that you bring the largest ever corporate delegation, representing 250 companies along with you that have GDPs more than those of many countries. Now isn’t that great news?
Okay so here’s the thing. Other than the power of brilliant oratory and your 1000 Watt smile-who is your dentist by the way? Is he an Indian? -- we wonder what kind of carrots you bring along this time? And they’re all good, yeah. Carrots are full of anti oxidants and anti-ageing. Just what we need for some longevity of purpose in great Indo-US relations. Ahem, so do we get the dual technology transfers and support for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council in return for FDIs and the challenge of keeping China in check?
There will be multi-billion dollar defence deals and I am sure India—and taking cue from that, Pakistan—will end up buying many more weapons of mass destruction like two kids trying to outdo each other to appease an indulgent Uncle Sam.
But may I tell you that we don’t need the weapons. A long series of your predecessors have done the same over the years with the sole aim of keeping this region polarised and uneasy, with daggers drawn all the time so that you remain a super power.
Let me remind you that you and your country have influenced popular culture in India across the board. Spurred on by the soft power of all things American, we all began dreaming of going to America to live the American dream. We gave up our lassis for Coke, our samosas for McDonalds, we made Reebok and IBM our very own.
We cherished the ‘Wonder Years’ and wondered why our schools didn’t have less rules, less uniforms and more proms. Seems those hours we spent slogging through boring-looking, sedate classrooms kept us in good stead in the long run. I believe today all Techie companies in US swarm with Indians. A friend who works for Cisco told me on gtalk last evening that their office in California feels more Desi than Dilli ever could!
From Oprah and Elen Degeneres we learnt that those hush hush issues we were always taught to keep quiet about, didn’t always have to be swept under the carpet. We found our voices and the courage to let it all hang out and you’ve got to see our reality shows today to believe how uninhibited and open we have become. Some of our ‘it’ gals can put your Paris Hiltons to shame.
As young Indian women stormed male bastions and put marriage on the back burner, in their newly found independence and insouciance, it was those spunky women in ‘Sex and the City’ and the Ally McBeals who were more our soul allies than the zombies belted out by Ekta Kapoor and Co. If we did even manage to reach the alter, our woes were more in tune with ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ and ‘Desperate Housewives’. You know, today we cannot imagine life without our Levis and our Gap T-shirts and our Facebook, Twitter and gmail accounts, our Apples, our iPods and iPads. And thanks to these symbols of American enterprise, we’re all friends out here. Yes, ex- husbands, ex boyfriends, bosses, children, parents, drivers, Indians, Pakistanis-we’re friends like even ‘Friends’ could never be. The lines are blurring. And what we have learnt from this friendship is that people anywhere in the world want just peace, means of livelihood and stability.
We have become so American that we do not even need to go to America to live the American dream. Strangely, believe it or not, from Bhatinda to Bangalore we are living the American dream right here in our own country. In fact, it is time America comes calling to try and figure out how we made
the American dream our own. Hush Hush, don’t we have an inkling that
this visit is being seen as a ray of hope more for America Inc than it is for India Inc? A friend just tweeted- “We have 80m wired+40m mob net users using 1m+ sites, IMRB tracks 5k users on 800 sites, call it WHAM. I call it WANK.”
Such is the power of peaceful coexistence and non-aggression today. So stuff happens, right? You had a 9/11 and your predecessor went into a frenzy declaring a war on an indefinite target that has gone on way too long that even you haven’t been able to put an end to. We had a 26/11 but contained ourselves to wait and watch and get on with life, channelising our anger and frustration in constructive activities.
My sincere advice to you? Choose commerce over combat, trade over tirades, and weapons of mass communication over weapons of mass destruction, and you’ll be just fine. We were already sold over to the contagious appeal of your ideas and way of life. Let that appeal abound.
So you could omit offering lollies of ever mounting defence deals to us and more defence aids to Pakistan (wonder how these things go hand in hand?) to further destabilise the region. You could omit the endless wars to smoke out suspected terror threats who are today actually being cloned to make rapturous comedies. Basically, let’s bridge the gap.
Yours truly
Shivani Mohan is an India based writer. She can be reached at smshivanimohan@gmail.com
This article was first published in Khaleej Times on 6th Nov 2010
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